Chapter 18
Richard Darlington: How False Accusations Damage Reputations
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Grace
“I have no decency, no dignity, and no self-respect,” I burst out as Rose returned to our table with a pitcher in hand.
Kate had already been asleep when I’d crept into Henry’s penthouse after my adventures with Ethan last night.
I hadn’t wanted to tell her in passing before work, so I’d waited until the three of us were sitting in our favourite pub that evening.
Now I couldn’t keep my secret to myself a second longer.
Rose poured us drinks. “What?”
“I messed around with Ethan.”
“What?!” she exclaimed again, this time clearly outraged. She was so shocked, she missed my glass, spilling what seemed like half the pitcher onto the table. “Fuck!” she swore, eliciting a mix of curious and disapproving glances from the surrounding guests.
Kate jumped up from her seat and hurried to the bar to fetch a cloth, while Rose and I tried to stem the puddle with paper napkins so it wouldn’t drip onto the floor.
“You had sex with Ethan Darlington?” Rose hissed through clenched teeth.
I had suspected she would react like this. She knew I thought Ethan was hot, but she’d always trusted I would never go there. And honestly, that had always been the plan.
“We didn’t actually fuck,” I said, trying to soothe her. “He just fingered me.”
“Oh, that’s obviously completely different,” Rose said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
“Here!” Kate called, returning with two cloths.
She hastily soaked up the spill with the dry one before wiping over the table with the damp one so the surface wouldn’t get sticky.
She took the cloths back to the bar before returning to settle on her barstool.
The other guests had turned away from us again now that the commotion was over.
“Start from the beginning,” Kate said. “What exactly do you mean by ‘messed around with Ethan’?”
“It means he finger-fucked her,” Rose said snidely.
Kate shook her head in confusion. Unlike Rose, she had no idea that I was physically attracted to Ethan. She only knew one side of the story: I couldn’t stand him. “How did that happen?”
I poured myself some beer and took a big gulp before recounting how Ethan had approached me on the rooftop terrace last night and how one thing had led to another—unplanned, but not unforeseeable. After all, there had been tension between us for a while.
“I felt pretty awful after the fight with my parents, and honestly, the last few months have been terrible. I just wanted to feel a bit better, and when the chance with Ethan came up, I took it.”
“Couldn’t you have felt better with another guy?” Rose asked.
“It wasn’t planned. It just happened,” I said, torn between apologising and defending myself.
I understood why Rose was disappointed, but I’d just explained—and shouldn’t she, as my friend, take my feelings into account too?
Not just the other way around? I’d felt better last night than I had in weeks.
Besides, Ethan wasn’t his dad. Rose shouldn’t judge him for something his father had done.
And who else could I talk to about these things if not my two best friends?
“I thought you couldn’t stand Ethan,” Kate said, still looking puzzled.
“I don’t have to like him to have sex with him,” I said, although that was only half the truth.
It was true that Ethan and I had spent most of our relationship at each other’s throats, constantly getting on each other’s nerves.
Mostly, that had been thanks to the way we’d first met and Ethan’s outrageous behaviour back then.
Since that day, he had more or less been on my blacklist. But people change, and so do opinions.
Until a few days ago, I would have bet that there wasn’t much beneath Ethan’s pretty exterior, but I was slowly starting to think I’d been wrong.
Kate nodded. “That makes sense.”
“Don’t encourage her!” Rose protested.
“Why not? They’re both adults, and they can do whatever they want. If it makes Grace feel better after everything that’s happened, then why not? Ethan’s attractive, and apparently, he’s fun.” Kate took a sip of her beer and looked at me curiously. “Right?”
I was grateful for the dim pub lighting, which hopefully hid the fact that I was suddenly blushing.
“Yes, it was very fun,” I replied, ignoring Rose’s dark look.
She would get over it eventually. “And unbelievably sexy. You can’t imagine.
He made me come twice. Twice! Back to back. I didn’t know that was even possible.”
“It is,” Kate sighed dreamily.
Rose grunted disapprovingly. “It sounds like you’re hoping for a round two.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. I’d wanted to write off the night as a one-off at first, but why should I?
This kind of distraction was exactly what I needed.
Last night had been the first time since Amy’s death that I’d slept without nightmares.
It surely wasn’t a coincidence—and I had Ethan to thank for it.
“I wouldn’t be opposed to a round two,” I said at last.
Rose threw her hands in the air. “I can’t believe this!”
“It’s just sex. You, of all people, should get it.”
“What you did and what I’m doing are two completely different things,” she said, folding her arms across her chest. “I have one-night stands with guys I don’t know and will never see again. There’s no overlap. But you’ve been into Ethan for months, and you work for his family.”
I shrugged. “What do you think is going to happen? We’re just having fun, that’s all.
Henry won’t fire me—that would be pretty hypocritical of him,” I said, glancing at Kate.
“Anyway, this thing with Ethan is purely physical. If we get bored, it wouldn’t break my heart or mess me up.
We’d just go back to our old dynamic: We ignore each other and occasionally hurl insults at each other. ”
Rose eyed me sceptically, but I could see her look of betrayal crumbling away, exposing what lay beneath: worry. She gave a heavy sigh. “I just don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I won’t. I promise. I know what I’m doing.” I had no intention of dating Ethan. There were no feelings involved. I just wanted to feel a bit less miserable from time to time. And if he and his magic hands could help me with that, then why not let them?
I wouldn’t fall in love with him.
I crept into my flat barefoot and on tiptoe.
It was already past midnight. We’d only meant to go for a drink at the pub, but afterwards, we’d wandered through St. James’s Park, and Kate had shown us the spot where she’d once stolen Henry’s phone.
Even after all these months, I couldn’t believe she had a criminal past. As we walked, we chatted about everything and nothing.
The subject of Ethan didn’t come up again, but I suspected I hadn’t heard the last of it.
I was padding quietly down the hallway in the dark, careful not to wake anyone, when Jason’s bedroom door opened. He flicked on the light, blinding me for a moment. Squinting, I looked at my brother until my eyes adjusted. He was wearing a Glass Animals T-shirt; they were his favourite band.
“Hey,” I said with an apologetic smile, keeping my voice low so our parents wouldn’t hear. “Did I wake you?”
“No, I was still up,” he replied. I glanced past him into his room. It was dark except for the bright glow of his computer screen, which showed a game he was in the middle of playing. “I was about to get a drink.”
I stepped aside. “Don’t let me stop you.”
Jason stared at me, his lips pressed together.
He seemed somehow disappointed, and I wondered if I’d said something wrong.
Or was he still upset that I hadn’t wanted him to have Amy’s room?
I smiled at him despite his sulky expression to show him I wasn’t angry anymore.
His question had just caught me off guard yesterday.
“Don’t stay up much longer. It’s getting late.
” I ruffled his hair playfully, which was getting harder to do, since he was shooting up like a weed.
A year ago, I’d been quite a bit taller than him, but now we were pretty much the same height.
I said goodnight and turned to go to my room.
My hand was already on the doorknob when Jason’s voice stopped me.
“You didn’t come home last night.”
I turned back to face him. His hands were shoved into the pockets of his jogging bottoms, and he was looking at me—or rather at my jumper—with reproach.
“I stayed over at a friend’s place.”
“Mum and Dad were worried about you.”
“They didn’t need to be,” I said, guilt pricking at me. They had messaged me several times last night and even tried to call me, but I hadn’t answered. I’d been too angry and upset at first and, later, too busy letting Ethan distract me. I hadn’t replied until this morning.
“Amy is dead, Grace,” Jason said. No matter how often I heard those words, they felt like a slap in the face every time. “She left to go to a pub with you and never came back home. All Mum and Dad have done since then is worry. Which you would know if you actually talked to them.”
My stomach cramped in a way that had nothing to do with the beer and greasy pub food I could still feel sitting in my stomach. “I would talk to them if they could bring themselves to look me in the eye.”
Caught, Jason lifted his head. Pain flickered across his features as his gaze hesitantly searched my face. He swallowed hard. “You just look so much like her.”
“You think I don’t know that? But I’m not Amy.” Even if I sometimes wished I’d been the one to die instead of her. Then I wouldn’t have to figure out how to live in a world without her or see how my very existence caused my family pain.
Jason shook his head. “Of course you’re not Amy. We know that. You’re you, and that’s a good thing. It’s just hard. For all of us.”
“Really?” Try as I might, I couldn’t stop it from sounding accusatory. “Because you all seem pretty keen to get Amy’s stuff out of the flat.”
The moment the words came out of my mouth, I regretted them. Jason looked at me like a wounded puppy, and I couldn’t help but think of Ethan’s words: Everyone grieves differently, and maybe my parents and Jason needed distance, not closeness, to heal.
I sighed. It wasn’t the right time for a conversation like this, but daylight wouldn’t make it any easier.
“I’m not against you taking Amy’s room. Some day.
But your question yesterday caught me off guard.
I didn’t think we were at that stage yet.
And when Dad said we could donate her things—it was just too much for me. ”
Jason took a step towards me. For a moment, it looked as though he might hug me, but something held him back. “We wouldn’t donate everything. But keeping her old underwear is hardly going to help us get over her death.”
“We probably shouldn’t donate them either,” I said, managing a faint smile. It felt crooked and awkward, but it was still a smile, and Jason returned it.
“No, they’d be better off in the bin.”
We fell silent for a moment.
“I’m sorry for running off yesterday and not getting in touch sooner,” I said at last. Thinking about it now, it had been pretty selfish to leave my family in the dark last night, especially after what had happened to Amy.
“I was upset, and I wasn’t really thinking straight.
I’ll let you know where I am next time. I promise. ”
“Or you could just not run off,” Jason suggested.
“I can’t promise that.”
“And I thought I was the melodramatic teenager in this house.”
I snorted. Jason was anything but melodramatic. He was thoughtful and level-headed. He got that from our dad, who never lost his temper and always kept a clear head, a useful skill for a heart surgeon. “Do you think Mum and Dad are really mad at me?”
“No. They’re just glad you’re OK.” Jason shifted uneasily from foot to foot, then asked quietly, “Are you OK though?”
“No.”
“Me neither.”
When I saw the tears in his eyes, mine welled up too.
He lowered his head, trying to hide his grief from me, but he couldn’t do it.
It filled the entire room, seeping into every nook and cranny.
I took a step towards him, and suddenly, for the first time in weeks, we were hugging.
I buried my face in Jason’s shoulder as he sobbed quietly into my hair, clinging to me.
The embrace didn’t take my pain away as Ethan’s had done, but it reminded me that I wasn’t alone in grieving Amy. And maybe that was just as important.