Chapter 19
19
“Should we order pizza?” Alice asks, seeing me nesting in fleece blankets on the sofa for the second night in a row. This woman has the metabolism of a grizzly bear. She could eat a seven-tier birthday cake and then still go out in a skintight dress to get burritos.
“Shouldn’t we have had that first, then the mountains of ice cream?” Yemi questions, pointing to our stacked speckled bowls littering the scratched wooden coffee table along with tear-stained tissues and half-empty wine glasses.
“The ice cream was an emergency protocol and should be stricken from the record,” Alice explains.
“Would you like to include the massive bag of crisps and the double G the card has an expensive matte texture. The logo on the letterhead says “CALICO” in blocky embossed cursive. The gallery? I immediately recognize his controlled but scratchy handwriting:
Before you even think about it, this is not me attempting to buy your forgiveness. This is an apology for not being a good friend, twice. I should have told you. It was a shitty thing to do and I’m sorry. You deserve so much better.
Eric
The card wobbles in my hands. Alice rests her chin on my shoulder, reading the note under her breath.
“What’s in the package?” she asks impatiently. “Can we open it?”
I nod silently, finding it hard to summon words.
You deserve so much better. I keep reading that line over and over.
Better than what? Than William? Than him?
“Holy shit.” Alice’s exclamation pulls me out of my trance to see a half-unwrapped painting in front of me. A flicker of familiarity hits me as more brown paper is pulled away to reveal a five-foot-by-four-foot canvas. Recognizing it instantly, my eyes widen. Holy shit indeed.
The painting, shadowed by piles of packaging, is the same one we saw in the gallery. The one I said I liked.
“What is it?” asks Yemi, taking in the abstract brushstrokes that form a brightly colored figure of a woman.
My mouth ajar, I say, “I can’t believe it. It’s a painting I said I liked at the gallery.”
“Woah. It looks expensive,” Alice adds in awe.
“Very,” I confirm with raised eyebrows. Remembering the price on that little plaque next to the piece in the gallery jolts me out of my nonchalant haze. I shake my head. “Too expensive—I can’t accept this.”
“But do you accept his apology?” Yemi adds, not taking her eyes off the painting.
I sigh, running a hand through my hair. “He didn’t need to apologize. I don’t think it was ever really about him in the first place. I think it was about me.” I rest the note on the counter, reading the last sentence one more time before pouring water into a ribbed green glass. “I’m angry at William for being such an arsehole but most of all I’m angry at myself for falling for it.”
I deleted William’s number when I got home, I couldn’t trust myself to not send him a barrage of angry texts or drunk-scream at him down the phone. My brain feels like a glass being held under freezing cold and then scalding hot water, destined to end up as jagged pieces.
Alice continues to stare at the painting, following the flowing lines around the canvas. “This is gorgeous. He must like you a lot.”
“Or feel really, really bad,” Yemi adds, bringing me back to reality.
“Well, he’s not the only one.” I sip my glass of water to clear the shaky voice from my throat. “He’s probably just trying to reestablish our truce before his big hotel meeting tomorrow.”
You deserve so much better.
Trying to put my thoughts in order is like trying to rearrange a deck of cards while wearing oven gloves. Attempting to find the reason lodged somewhere in the creases of my brain that can explain why I still feel more betrayed by Bancroft not telling me than William actually doing the deeds. More than anything, I feel like an idiot. Was I so fragile that he thought I couldn’t handle it?
“As much as I hate to agree with Eric, it sounds like not telling you was for the greater good. He was trying to protect you from suffering even more than you already were after your breakup,” Yemi concludes, perching on a metal stool at the kitchen island.
“But maybe knowing would have helped me get over William faster,” I say into my glass, my free hand resting on the card. “And saved me the humiliation.”
Alice stretches her hand out across the island and places it on top of mine. “Babe, I don’t think you realize how bad it got after William broke up with you. You were on the edge. You were barely eating, not talking to anyone, you basically had high-functioning depression.”
I cringe at the image of me lying in bed every night crying so hard I wanted to be sick. At the memory of how Yemi would make me dinner most nights and practically force-feed me. How Alice would make me participate in regular beauty nights with her, testing out the latest skin, body or hair-care product her boss had been gifted and discarded. In the office, I was just a more intense version of my usual self, but outside of the work bubble, I was barely keeping myself alive. The realization sinks to the bottom of my stomach like an anchor finding purchase.
Yemi stares at me, a crease slowly forming as she studies me staring at the card. “It wasn’t William you couldn’t get over all these months, was it? What actually happened that night?”
“When?” Alice asks, her head turning back and forth between Yemi’s and my stare-off.
Yemi, not breaking eye contact with me, says to Alice, “Last December, at the Catch Christmas party.”
My eyes prickle. “I guess I didn’t tell you guys the full story.”
I was freshly single, having been dumped by William and thrown out of his apartment just five days prior. The last thing I wanted to do was go to the party, but Catcher had insisted that all employees attend, and Susie specifically said I needed to be there with her. It was a disgustingly expensive event on the top floor of the Gherkin to celebrate the successes and growth of every company under the CG umbrella. My main objective for the night: drink as many festive cocktails as possible to forget all about my gut-wrenching state of loneliness and misery. My main achievement of the night: pure, uncensored embarrassment.
London lights glittered behind the crowd of people laughing, drinking and bobbing their heads along to the beat of the throbbing DJ set. After my seventh or eighth (or maybe ninth) Mistletoe Mojito, my head was spinning, and I could feel the music pounding through my bones. Susie had left earlier in the evening, thankfully missing my turn in the disco-ball-adorned karaoke corner belting out a slurred version of “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That),” doing the male and female parts and doing them both poorly. I was forcing Yemi to take photos of me in the decorative bathtub by the bar because it was filled with ice and expensive champagne bottles. Routinely scanning the crowd in the dark room framed by the London skyline for familiar faces, I watched as the more senior members of the Catch Group teams began trickling out, going home to their families and partners, causing the crowd’s shoulders to finally sag and loosen now that their bosses had disappeared. Yemi went to meet her boyfriend and I wanted to leave too, but all I was going home to was sadness. I also had this alcohol-fueled feeling that my night wasn’t complete yet, urging me to stay. I avoided my own gaze in the patinated mirrored bar as though catching it would mean acknowledging the self-awareness trying to crawl its way to the surface. The goal of this night was to forget how I was, why I was and who I was. My reflection was merely a snakeskin that would shed and be left on the dance floor to disintegrate.
Leaning against the bar, mostly because I wasn’t sure I could stand up without it, I could feel when Bancroft entered the room. Everyone shifted, as though putting their best faces on for his grand arrival. People like him have always fascinated me: what it would be like to arrive late and command a room with a look, a word, a furrow of the brow—which was exactly what he was doing when I turned around. And unfortunately, that brow was pointed directly at me. I met his intense yet playful stare.
“Look who decided to grace us with his presence,” I said louder than I intended as he glided toward me, giving the occasional nod of acknowledgment to his colleagues in the crowd. Looking him up and down, I clocked a jacket he’d never worn to work before. A tan leather moto jacket with sharp lapels. He always had an eye for what looked amazing on him, mostly dark neutrals, but I theorized there must be some sort of female influence in his life that kept his wardrobe in check. No straight man could look this good on his own.
“Were you waiting for me, Hastings?” He took the drink out of my hand and took a sip, putting his lips where mine just were, not breaking his gaze.
“You think too highly of yourself.” My fingers gripped the cold bar behind me briefly and then swished a rogue hair from my cheek. “I’m having fun.”
“For once,” he added through a tight-lipped smile.
“You’ve been having fun elsewhere, I presume?”
“You would presume correctly,” he replied with a wink, and I responded with an eye roll. His eyes were ever so slightly glassy as he held my stare for a second, causing his expression to soften. “So... do you wanna talk about it?”
“About all the fun you’ve been having this evening? Pfft. I’m good actually, but thanks!” I said, swiping my drink out of his hand.
“No, about...” He paused, picking his words carefully. “... him.”
I threw a fake laugh in his direction. “I really, really, really don’t.”
The last thing I wanted to think or talk about was William. I was miserable but somehow, despite the sky-high levels of inebriation I was reaching, keeping it together.
“OK.” He nodded resolutely and leaned over my shoulder to talk to the bartender. A few moments later, a fresh G with my highest heels on we were almost cheek to cheek.
The move, in my drunken logic, had been a good one to avoid an awkward conversation, but in making it I’d managed to get physically closer to him than I’d ever been before. It shocked me momentarily, to see his face so close up. The end-of-day stubble on his jaw, the subtle spattering of freckles on his cheeks, the bow of his full lips: features that were usually eclipsed by his penetrating eyes. I archived them, promising to pay more attention to each of them in the future. I felt his large hands smooth around my waist and grip me—in hindsight, probably to keep me upright. As everything else spun and blurred, my glassy eyes could only focus on him. His hands on me felt like a joyride; we were spinning with no direction in mind, just trying to not crash.
“You’re so pretty,” I slurred, scrunching my brow. “Everyone calls you handsome, but I think you’re pretty.”
He laughed. “You’re not so bad yourself.” He lifted a hand and wiped the hair from my sweat-laced forehead. “But I think you paying me a genuine compliment is a strong indicator that you’ve had too much to drink.”
Even when we were friends, our conversations always skirted the edges of seriousness.
I ignored his assumption. I could have a million more drinks! I was the Queen of Mistletoe Mojitos and nothing would ever stop me!
“What’s it like having eeeeveryone in the company adore you?” I slurred into his shoulder.
He laughed again but this time it didn’t reach his eyes. “Not everyone adores me,” he said into my ear, giving my waist a quick squeeze for emphasis.
“Yeah, I definitely just tolerate you.” I draped my arms tighter around his neck and swayed to the music, forcing him to move in sync with me.
“I tolerate you too.” He smiled a real smile this time. “But I’ve got a feeling you won’t tolerate me anymore if I let you continue to the point of alcohol poisoning.”
“Booooooo!” Right on cue I stumbled on my wobbly stiletto and grabbed a chunk of his hair to steady myself. His hand met mine at the back of his head and laced our fingers together.
“Come on, let’s get you a cab.” His warm voice traveled from his curved lips over the music to my ears.
“Picture first, then go,” I said like a child as I stumbled out of the crowd pulling him with me toward the Catch Group branded photo booth. Ten minutes later, he finally managed to steer me toward the exit.
The line for the lift was several people deep so we left the circular function room via the echoey concrete stairwell, his arm gripping tight around my waist to avoid a festive neck break. It pulled my dress up even higher, but I didn’t care, the fluorescent lights made the world feel even blurrier. The icy wind hit my skin as he pushed through the fire-exit door; I huddled close to him to stay warm. Police sirens echoed down the dark London streets, filling the silence as he pulled out his phone and I clumsily tried to punch my address into the bright screen. He read it out loud to make sure I hadn’t accidentally sent myself to Brighton.
“The Uber will be here in a few minutes. How are you not shivering right now? Your arms are freezing.” He faced me, rubbing his warm hands up and down my bare arms.
“Alcohol blanket.” I beamed at him as the lights from passing cars shone on his chiseled face. I wanted to touch him and couldn’t think of a single good reason not to. I put my hand on his cheek and watched as he automatically leaned into it, his stubble scraping my palm. Our eyes locked and he gave me that smirk. The one that made me blush the first day we met. The one that made my blood boil. The one that sent electricity shooting through me so hard I needed to squeeze my thighs together to make it stop.
We stayed like that for a few moments, frozen in this magical, glittering darkness where we could drop the guards we held in the daylight. I leaned into him until our chests touched, the warmth of his body enveloping me. He pressed his forehead to my brow and I closed my eyes. The bridge of his nose gently pressed against mine and I could feel his warm breath on my cheek. Finally, I gave in to the gravitational pull I’d been ignoring for months, turning my face and dragging my lips toward his. The impact of his soft mouth hard against mine sent a shockwave through me, a clicking into place unlike anything I’d ever experienced as I moved to deepen the kiss.
“Grace...” he breathed onto my lips, his voice low and heavy. “We can’t... I can’t.” His mouth pulled away from me, leaving a chill in its place. His brow tilted down and he shook his head as though he could hear every thought running through mine.
“Why not?” I gave a pout, eyes still closed. My ego was too drunk for denial and had the overwhelming urge to change this night for the better.
“I can’t. Not... like this.” He seemed to hate himself for saying that, for being a gentleman.
“I haven’t even drunk that much!” A poorly timed hiccup immediately followed, ruining my argument.
He shook his head. “We both know that’s not true. And anyway, that’s not the only reason.”
I stared up at him, eyes glassy from the cold and rejection.
“I can’t do this with you when you’re thinking of him.” His fingers squeezed my shoulders as if it was taking all his willpower to keep them there.
For the first time since Eric had arrived at the party, I pictured William’s face. Embarrassed, I pulled my arms away from him, crossing them in front of my chest, still trapped in his half embrace. I stared at the chewing-gum-spotted pavement, blinking furiously.
“Hey, look at me.” His expression was more gentle than I’d ever seen.
We were never close enough friends to spend time outside of work, and with every mingling breath we shared I was realizing maybe we didn’t for a reason. Not because we didn’t like each other enough to cross that friendship threshold, but because we both knew what might happen if we did. What I wanted, needed to happen right then.
He took a deep, shuddering breath, but before he could say anything, a car beeped its horn and flashed its lights in our direction.
“Eric?” a man shouted from the driver’s seat.
And then, in the blink of an eye, albeit a slow, laborious blink from my alcohol-glazed eyes, Bancroft had switched back to his usual self.
“My next clear memory was waking up with the worst hangover of my life and his suit jacket wrapped around me like an expensive-smelling cocoon.” Back in the kitchen, I finish with an exasperated sigh, taking in Yemi’s and Alice’s shocked expressions.
I don’t fully remember the rest of the night; it’s like a terrible nightmare you wake up from but have no memory of, despite your heart racing and body sweating.
“Oh. My. God. I can’t believe you didn’t tell us!” Alice gasps.
“I didn’t want to tell anyone.” I press my cold hand against my face.
“And I only suspected something had happened because Eric got in touch with me to get her home safely,” explains Yemi. “He wanted to confirm the address because Grace was too drunk to tell him.”
I shoot her a quick, tight-lipped smile because it’s the only way to explain that even though William breaking up with me shocked me to my core, losing Bancroft was a devastation I never saw coming.
Sighing, I say, “I never thanked you both. You two were basically keeping me alive, fed and washed those first few months. Thank you.” My eyes glisten with gratitude.
“And our master plan worked. We got you to shower! Mwahahaha!” Alice wiggles her fingers together, spinning on her high stool.
Yemi paces around the counter and hugs me. “Yeah, we mostly just didn’t want you stinking up our home.”
“How can I ever repay you?” I ask earnestly.
“Hmm...” Alice ponders, turning back to the humongous package taking up half the hallway with a cheeky smile. “I’d take a ridiculously expensive painting?”
“Oh God.” My hands cover my face. “It’s too much. I have to give it back, right?”
I lean against the counter. Tomorrow, I have to be a consummate professional for our big meeting at the Heimach Hotel when everything I want to do and say is against Catch Group’s Code of Conduct.
“I think you should sleep on it,” Yemi suggests as she shrugs. “You might feel differently in the morning.”
“Or when you see him at the meeting,” Alice adds.
This is Bancroft’s biggest little-black-book partnership opportunity: a meeting about partnering for Ditto users’ exclusive access to the Heimach Hotel’s gym, cycle class, spa and yoga facilities as well as discounts across the rooms and restaurant. Ruining things by being a no-show will jeopardize both of our shots at a promotion. I rub my eyes with my palms. How do I even start a conversation like that? “Hey, thanks for the multi-thousand-pound painting but also fuck you for keeping a huge secret from me. Are you ready for our career-defining meeting?”