My answer was curt and cold. “Alistair, go to your party.”
His smirk stretched to a crooked grin. “Well, see you in there.”
And he left, his essence lingering in the hallway, his soul burrowing into mine, latching on with long claws, refusing my denial.
The silence around me was punctuated by the thunderous applause that rang out from the other side of the wall.
* * *
I gave Alistair a ten-minute head start before I rejoined the party. By the time I showed up, no one even bothered to notice me. Alistair was across the room, surrounded by a group of people, talking business. I lingered by the food; with little else to do, I might as well enjoy the spread. I desperately wanted someone to talk to, but not just small talk. Alistair had kicked my senses off kilter after our little meeting in the hallway, and it was driving me insane to know that even a small conversation, a side comment, an insignificant gesture on his part, could drive me this wild.
I propped myself up against a cocktail table and prepared to weather the night. I knew I should be taking notes, but I was too drained to care about work duties at this point. Train stopped by for a moment for a checkup, but after barely twenty minutes he was dragged away by Gertrude.
I was so preoccupied with my own internal rants that by the time I registered him, it was too late.
Alistair came up behind me, and before I could react, he wound a hard arm around my waist and gripped me tight, too tight. His body heat seared me, as if all the clothes we were wearing didn’t matter. I had to check myself to keep from snapping my head around like whiplash and glaring at him.
“Having fun?” Alistair whispered into my ear, the thick curtain of hair that fell around my face wafting gently with his breath.
I continue to smile as if I had implants in my cheeks and stretchers in my gums. By some small stroke of luck, the area around me was relatively empty; it seemed Alistair had shaken off his admirers.
I answered in a clipped tone, “Stop it.”
Alistair didn’t answer, but the harsher dig at my waist was response enough. He spread his fingers out, his palm cool and firm against the silk of my dress.
I fought the urge to throw my elbow at him.
Wasn’t I going to apologize? Well, that plan had quickly been punted out to sea.
Back to games? Sure.
“Let go of me.”
Alistair did the exact opposite of what I was asking. He pressed me against him and slowly moved his hand across my lower hip, tracing the curve of my hip with his fingers.
“Say please,” he murmured against me. His touch, which had never been innocent to start with, had evolved into something suggestive and sexual. The placement of his fingers, the heat of his body against me, everything.
The only thing separating us from the hundred and fifty people, plus Gertrude, Thomas, and Train, was a tall and thin cocktail table and four thousand square feet of space which everyone was spread across. No one was watching us now, but sooner or later someone was going to notice that Alistair was missing and find him right here with me.
I needed him to leave, but not as much as I needed my pride.
“Go to hell,” I seethed back at him.
His grip tightened. “Funny, that didn’t sound like ‘please.’ We can try that again. How about ‘Please, Alistair’?”
“If you don’t let me go this second, it would ‘please’ me very much, Alistair, if I got this glass of wine all over your smug face.”
Alistair laughed quietly, a small puff that glided past my cheek.
My back went rigid with slight surprise. Alcohol? There was a distinct smell of hard liquor on his breath.
Was he drunk already?
My rage dissipated and was replaced with confusion, laced with worry. But before I could say anything, he very suddenly let me go and took a step back.
I turned around to face him just as he took two steps backwards, grinning.
“Well, that wouldn’t be too good, now, would it? Finish your wine.”
And with that Alistair was gone, having left as suddenly as he had arrived.
* * *
I made an immediate beeline back to my room, weaving in and out between guests, keeping Alistair in my sights out of the corner of my eye. He was now holding court next to the balcony, speaking intently as everyone watched and listened in awe. I avoided him in a roundabout fashion, circling the hordes of peoples and flattening myself against the walls.
I retreated into the quiet of the hallways and gave a sigh once I was safely in my bedroom. The clothes had been cleaned up and taken away and the room was now as sparkling clean as when I’d arrived.
I dropped on the bed and flopped back so I ended up on my back, staring up to the ceiling. The crown molding in this room was insane. Of course.
I sighed, then pawed through the sheets for my purse. I fished out my phone and after staring at the blank screen for a second, I turned it on and dialed.
It rang five times and right before I was about to hang up, there was a click. A gurgling noise sounded from the receiver. It was inhuman, almost.
“Hey,” I said.
The gurgling went up in volume. It sounded vaguely like, “Florence?”
“Yeah, it’s Florence. Are you sleeping?” I cast a glance at the clock over the television; it read 8:23 p.m. Close to midnight back East.
A protracted moan stretched out, punctuated by recognizable syllables. “Yeeeeeeees,” answered Tracy, at last. “Whaaaaatareyouokay?” she slurred.
“I just really need someone to talk to. I’m sorry to call so late. I know you haven’t been feeling well.”
“S’okay, s’okay,” she muttered back. “Just, hold on a minute, let me wake up.” A rustling sound came, then several hard bumps, and finally a loud thump punctuated by a groan.
“Okay. Okay. I’m up.”
“Are you okay? Did you fall out of the bed?”
“The carpet is cold enough to keep me awake yet comfortable enough where my weary body will be not protesting too much. No worries.” There was a scraping static sound on the other end. “Let me get my blankets. Blankets. Blankets. Okay. Okay. I’m okay. So what’s up?”
“I didn’t want to bother you since you’d been sick, sorry.” I had gone to Tracy’s apartment on Tuesday after the whole Upper East Side Gold Palace fiasco, but I’d mostly found her buried underneath a mound of comforters, sneezing and dripping snot all over herself. I’d bought her soup, gotten her medicine, watched a movie with her, and then left without talking about all the things I’d wanted to talk about. Not the bar, not the kiss, not the apartment. She was half-delirious with the flu medication anyway and rambled, half-asleep, through majority of the time I was there.
Tracy cleared her throat. “I’m better now. I’ve been sleeping all day, so it’s no big deal. Should probably shower. Oh, by the way, thanks for the soup and company on Tuesday. Did I get high on cough syrup?”
I chuckled. “Yep.”
“Most excellent. Alright, now tell me what’s with the late-night booty call.”
“I don’t know, I just need someone to talk to. Someone sane, someone who likes me, someone who’s on my side.”
“What side are we talking about? Are we invading a country?”
“Not sure. Alistair might be in the throes of planning to buy one, so can’t rule it out entirely.”
“Ahhh, so Alistair.”
“Always Alistair.”
Silence stretched, punctuated by a snort from Tracy’s side of the receiver.
“You going to tell me what’s on your mind?”
I fiddled with my hair, staring back up at the crown molding that was thick enough to constitute another ceiling. “Um … so if hypothetically—”
“Hypothetically,” Tracy repeated.
“Strictly hypothetically, if an old boyfriend wanted to get back with you, would you do it?”
“Depends on the boyfriend, how we broke up, junk like that.”
“The breakup was bad, you never thought you’d see him again, but he wants to get back together even though it’s been years and years.”
“Do I still have feelings for him?”
“Don’t know, you’re confused.”
“So bad past, confused me, hot rich bachelor of an ex? Powerful? Well-known? Name starts with an A? Could we have sex first and figure it out later?” Tracy laughed, then dissolved in a fit of coughing.
“No, you cannot.”
“Well, that sucks,” she wheezed between breaths.
“It does suck.”
“What the hell is this about, Florence? Enough with the hypothetical, just give it to me straight. My fevered brain can’t process subtlety.”
I rolled over so my face fell into the pillows. When I answered, my voice was muffled. “Alistair and I kissed the other day.” I paused, waiting for the squeal I knew was coming. And come it did, albeit in a high whistle replete with throaty bubbling sounds.
“That’s it? You can’t stop there, tell me everything.” Tracy was practically heaving.
So I told her. I told her about the dinner and the bar on Saturday, the kiss on Monday, the apartment on Tuesday, and now Thursday and the party and the weird vibes and second glances from everyone.
“And everyone is looking at me weird and it seems no one believes I’m just here as a journalist doing the article on him—”
Tracy interrupted. “Hold on, do you truly believe that you’re just there as a journalist, writing an article on him? That this hasn’t dissolved and morphed into something else entirely different?”
I sighed. “I know, I know. It isn’t just a job anymore. It’s messy, it’s complicated. There’s not an easy fix or solution to this.”
“You’re the one making it messy. You’re the one making it complicated. You have to make a decision. You can’t keep hopping back and forth, saying one thing but doing another.”
My voice went high with indignation, slightly shrill. “Don’t you think I’ve been trying? Don’t you think I’m constantly trying to tell him to step back in his lane, to leave the past in the past? He’s the one dredging up old hurt.”
“Maybe you just have to accept that your feelings are what they are. You’re trying to fight something and you can’t just win by sheer willpower. You can’t just tell yourself that he doesn’t matter or that what you guys share or shared wasn’t anything of importance to you. You have to stop trying to psych yourself out of reality. It doesn’t do you any good because you’re just lying to yourself.”
I didn’t answer.
“Tell me the truth, is this about the article? You’re always going on about the article, but is that truly what’s going to stop you? Because if you talked to Gordon about it, it wouldn’t be a big deal.”
“No, it’s not the article. I mean, Gordon wouldn’t be tap-dancing on his table, but I guess it wouldn’t be the end of the world.”
“Think of it this way, Florence—do you regret breaking up with him back when you were what, eighteen? Nineteen?”
“First of all, he broke up with me, not the other way around. But, no, I don’t regret the way things worked out back then. There was so much left for me to do. If I’d stayed with him, I would have never been able to do what I did for the past ten years.”
“So what’s on the docket for the next ten years?”
I answered in a rush. “I don’t want to get married just to get married.”
“No one said you have to get married just because everyone else our age is getting married. No one even says you have to stay with him, that he’s the one. You don’t have to get with him now just because you’re feeling pressured by the situation or by what he wants. What the hell do you want? Honestly, what do you want? You have to ask yourself if you’re going to regret passing this by, now that you have a second chance at something that meant something to you all those years ago. If you say no, make sure it’s based on the fact that you don’t love him, not because you’re afraid or because you’re prideful or hurt or just out for some passive form of revenge. Because if you’re saying no and justifying it to yourself based on negative emotions or even based on your job, then in the end you’re just hurting yourself. You deserve to give yourself a shot at something that could be great. What’s the best thing that can happen? What’s the best-case scenario? Do you want that? Because if you’re just focused on the worst-case, I’ll tell you, if you do this right, then the worst thing that could happen is that you disclose the relationship, the article bombs, Gordon gets pissed, but everyone moves on. And before you start in about career suicide, the inevitable has already happened and you’re already entwined in this mess, so you really should work to straighten it out on your own terms and not just rely on stubborn ignorance to take you the rest of the way.” Tracy sucked in a breath, and coughed at the end of her tirade.
I paused, a tad stunned. “Damn, I should take whatever you’re on.”
“One perk of being horridly ill is that you achieve a glorious sense of nirvana in the exact moment you’re able to breathe through your nose again.”
“What if he’s playing me? What if this is all some weird game to him?”
“Did the Alistair you knew play games? Is that the kind of person he was?”
I paused, rolling my cheek against the down pillow fortress I was buried in. “No, he wasn’t. But he’s changed.”
“People don’t change that much. People adapt, but if he was a good guy back then at the core, there’s no reason for you to tell yourself that he suddenly turned into a terrible dude just because he has some money and power now. Is it really that hard to believe that he just wants to be with you?”
I mumbled my answer. “No, I guess not.”
Tracy’s voice went up a pitch. “Of course not. You’re hot, you’re smart, you’re successful. Why wouldn’t he want to be with you? Just think of this as a reunion of sorts. You guys had a bad falling out, but that happens. It’s a lot more plausible that he was too immature back then to deal with what you guys had, but that he’s grown up and he sees what he’s missed.”
A loud thud interrupted my answer, scaring me half to death in the process.
“Shit!” I yelped, my body reflexively twitching in shock and fear, my phone flying out of my grasp.
Gertrude’s arched blond eyebrows greeted me, right above her barely concealed rage-filled glare. “There you are.”
“What’s going on? Is everything okay?” Tracy’s voice was teeny and shrill, my phone half-buried under blankets on the other side of the bed.
I pawed through the sheets and grabbed the phone. “It’s fine, hold on.” I covered the phone with my free hand. “Yeah?”
“Ms. Reynolds, you’re supposed to be out in the party, taking notes, working on your article.” Wow, Gertrude was pissed.
And I was in no mood for it. My catty, immature side took over. “Why do you care? You can’t wait to get rid of me,” I answered.
“If you’re here, you might as well do your job,” Gertrude snapped. She was really getting into a frenzy over this, my disappearance. She jabbed her finger towards the space behind her. “Mr. Blair wants you out there, so get out there!”
Ah, so this was what caused the sudden appearance. The sound of his name grated my nerves even more. “Well, Mr. Blair isn’t going to get what he wants all the time, now, is he? I’ll come out when I’m ready.” I sounded bratty, but I felt pretty bratty at the moment, so whatever.
“Unprofessional,” she muttered to herself right before she slammed the door.
“Hey, I’m back. Sorry,” I said back into the phone.
“Damn, what was that?”
“German engineering at its finest. I should go.” I gave a sigh and slid off the bed onto my feet.
“Are you going to be okay?”
“I’m not sure, but I feel better. Thanks, love.” I checked my reflection in the mirror, smoothing the flyaways along my hairline and shaking out the tulle in the gown
.
“Love you, take care of yourself.”
“I’m fine, just boy-stupid. Are you okay? Do you want Nicolas to come bring you something?”
Tracy’s voice took on a dramatic flair. “Ooohh, I wouldn’t want my Nicki to see me like this. I should only be a picture of beauty and perfection in his mind’s eye.”
I groaned in mock disgust. “I’ll have him drop off some soup and company.”
Tracy gave a loud snort. “Much appreciated. Bye.”
“Good night,” I said. I turned off my phone, sucked in a deep breath, and opened the door back to battle.
* * *
Thankfully, the rest of the party went off without much drama. I decided to shadow Train, mostly for safety but also because I realized he found all the halfway interesting people in the joint, and the night ended with some funny conversations and wise insights into the business process.
Once guests started leaving and the servers began cleaning up, I retreated to my bedroom to strip off the gown and heels, changing into my day dress before coming back out once the noise died down.
The place was deserted, pretty shocking how quickly it emptied out. Thomas and Gertrude were in the foyer, right by the arched and heavy front door.
“Where are you guys going?” I asked as Thomas grabbed his coat. I padded over softly on my bare feet, crossing the room of a now-sparkling-clean home. Amazing the speed and efficiency money could buy.
“We’re going to the hotel,” said Thomas matter-of-factly as he helped Gertrude into her coat. She fluffed her blond tresses over the upturned collar with her nose in the air.
“Wait.” I wasn’t not sure why I cared about these two and their sleeping arrangements, but something didn’t sit right. “I thought this home was part of the Malibu branch, and employees used it.”
Gertrude snatched at the fabric of Thomas’s sleeve and snapped her head impatiently to the direction of the door. She then trotted out like the prize pony she was, not even glancing my way. Thomas was slow to pull on his leather gloves as he answered in a reserved fashion, as if afraid that saying the wrong thing would set me off.
The Beginning of Always Page 31
