Chapter Thirty-Three
Prince Arthur
I’m an arsehole for leaving—not a thought, just a fact—but a down right cunt when I catch a taxi and step foot onto Astrid’s boat.
We don’t talk much, really. We say hello and then she grabs my hand and leads me down to her bedroom. I don’t know why I do it. I don’t know why I did drugs. I don’t know why I hurt Phoebe so badly. Everything around me is so big and fucking loud and my head’s a black hole.
I’m not justifying it, nor is Astrid—because there is no justification.
And there’s plenty of times where I can speak up and go back home to her but I don’t for some reason.
Even when she looks up at me with her big blue eyes before unzipping my trousers and then when she pulls back for a second and then slips the straps of her silk nightdress down her body—there’s a quick second, short, but long enough for me to walk away.
I don’t, though, I stay.
Even before I turned up and she texted me, there was at least twenty minutes when I could’ve decided not to go through with it.
Astrid trails her hands up my shirt, unbuttoning it until it falls open and onto the floor with the rest of our clothes, looking just as disgusted as I feel. We both wonder why we’re doing this. We both don’t really want to be doing this so why are we?
It doesn’t make sense. None of it does.
Not even when she walks over to her bed and lays down, her movements are rigid, slow, unsure. When I get on top of her, I keep my eyes locked on the headboard, Phoebe’s face a hologram in my mind.
We don’t kiss. I know that doesn’t make it any better but still, we don’t.
There’s no movement to imply it’s a memorable time for either of us.
Unforgettable in a different way, though.
It’s a night we’ll both look back on a year or so when we no longer keep in touch with each other and remember it as a significant time when we realised there was lower than rock bottom.
Maybe she’ll go back home after the summer and tell her ‘Phoebe’ and maybe I’ll tell mine or maybe we’ll keep it a sordid secret but I think we all know that makes it worse.
Phoebe wouldn’t want to know, I know that, but she has to.
And I know it isn’t cheating, but to me, in my mind, it’s worse.
But then again, until Phoebe breaks up with Digby, we can’t be together.
I’ve made a lot of mistakes already and there’s one that will remain my greatest, but this, right here, this night, will be one I’ll never be able to bury.
Astrid turns her head to the side as we both finish, wishing we were with other people.
It wasn’t nice or satisfying, it just was…you know?
And you know after you’ve had sex you typically lay there for a couple seconds, sweating and panting? There’s none of that. We both lean over the side of the bed and put our clothes back on.
She looks over at me, her cheeks flushed. “Sorry.”
I button my shirt back up, look at her. “Me too.”
She crosses her arms over her chest. “You’ll tell her?”
I nod, she gives a small smile.
I sit on the edge of her bed to put my shoes on, she follows me, draws her legs up to her chest.
“Are we bad people?” She whispers.
“I am, you’re not.”
She shakes her head. “You didn’t cheat on her, Arthur.”
“No,” I agree. “But I was sleeping with her.”
“While she was sleeping with her boyfriend.”
“Fuck,” I laugh once. “Maybe we should all take a joint trip to the clinic.”
I get up, ready to leave.
Her friends aren’t here, if you’re wondering. They’ve gone out.
She stands up, too, frowns, bends down, picks something up.
“You dropped something.”
Opens her palm, Phoebe’s Tiffany ring stares back at me.
You could twist the knife deeper into me but it’s already there, coming out of the back of me, splitting me into two.
I snatch it from her, graze her skin, and shove it back into my pocket.
She laughs softly. “I know that ring. That’s Phoebe’s. You proposed to her when you were in school.”
Clear my throat. “Yeah.”
“And you’ve been carrying it around since—”
“Since the night I left her, yeah.”
“Do you plan on giving it back?”
“Need to tell her something first and then yeah, I do.”
“Why haven’t you told her already?”
“Because I haven’t been able to tell anyone.”
“How long have you not told her?”
“Years.”
She nods like she gets it but I know she doesn’t. She nods at a lot of things I say as though she understands and most of the time, she does but not this time. Not this.
“Do you want to stay for a drink?” She asks me in the quiet voice she’s been talking in all night.
I look out of the window, the sun is rising and I wonder if she asked because she forgot I was sober or if she asked because she thinks I need it and tonight I can make an exception.
And I’d love to tell you that I shoot down the idea straight away but I don’t.
I think about it for a few seconds but then that rational part of my brain that pops in every now and then reminds me that even though drink was never a problem for me, one would turn into two and then two would turn into five and five into eight and then I’d think, ‘fuck it, I’m already here so I might as well call it in. ’
“I should be getting back,” I tell her instead. “Your friends will be coming back soon, I suppose.”
She nods again, this time like she forgot the outside world exists because she was too wrapped up in our sad, miserable, pity sex. “Of course,” she gives me a small smile. “You go back to Phoebe.”
I want to tell her that I’m not sure she’ll have me but I don’t. I do really need to go back home.
“Alright,” I nod, rock back on my heels.
She smiles again, says nothing so I open the door to her bedroom and call a cab when I’m a good distance away from her boat.
It doesn’t sting anymore or any less as I put the key Phoebe gave us all when we were teenagers into the front door. It’s just a bullet in my head.
When I push open the door, Phoebe springs up from the sofa and stares at me. She’s in a big fluffy white robe, her wet hair framing her face and coming down to her waist. Fuck, her hair is so long. So are her legs. She’s pretty fucking perfect.
I ask myself for the millionth time this year why I hurt her so much.
She stands in front of the sofa, opposite me as I stay by the front door. Usually we’re like magnets. She’ll run straight to me, I’ll run straight to her but not this time because she knows. I don’t even need to tell her what just happened because the look on her face says everything.
I can tell she hasn’t slept, either which is probably making her more anxious. I can bet she feels nauseous, too—always did when she stayed up all night—so she’s probably panicking and wants me to tell her she won’t be sick but for some reason, I don’t think that’s her biggest worry right now.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her for what it’s worth.
“Yeah, me too,” she says, her voice broken.
I frown. “What for?”
She gives me a half arsed shrug. “For sleeping with Digby.”
“Stop apologising for things that you don’t need to be sorry for.”
She gives me this look. This look I know all too well.
She’s about to cry. Her eyes droop a bit—puffy and dark—she tucks her bottom lip in, this depressing pout.
But she doesn’t cry, instead she looks at me like she’s seen this exact scene before but she hasn’t.
I’ve only ever slept with Phoebe and now Astrid—which I don’t want to count but I sort of have to now, don’t I?
I take a step forward, see if she flinches or backs away but she doesn’t so I take another few steps until I’m right in front of her. She looks relieved for a second, like she thought I was just going to walk straight past her and up the stairs.
We don’t say anything.
There’s too much to say.
I feel sick as she folds herself into me, wraps her arms around my waist and buries her head into my chest. I pull us down onto the settee, she curls up, her legs tucked right under her body as her head rests on my lap.
I ask myself why and how it got to this point. I mean, I don’t think it was destined to be like this. Feels as though someone has ripped out chapters from our story and rewritten them blind.