Unfortunately, neither Eden nor my deadlines are going to let me do this. Every time I spoke to my editor, Billy, when I was in London, he grew more and more invested in the Jupiter story. He wants five hundred words but is willing to stretch it to an almost unheard-of fifteen hundred if I can, as he puts it, “break a bottle over my head with this one.”
Eden follows me into my room and sits on my bed. “Start at the beginning.”
I push my suitcase into the corner and decide to ignore it for now. Maybe forever. “E, I have a ton of work to do.”
“Ten minutes,” she says. “I just need ten minutes. I mean, you could have called me in the car to save time.”
“I didn’t want to talk about it in front of the Lyft driver.”
“No,” she counters, seeing straight through me, “you had to google the fuck out of him.”
This is the one person who has known me at my best and worst. She was my college roommate, my postcollege roommate, my post-Spence roommate, and the only person in our circle of friends who never clicked with Spence, who warned me against moving in with him—I don’t trust him, George, she’d said, and I’m not sure how he’ll fuck it up, but I’m worried he will. She’s the one who took my side and suggested the five who sided with Spence in the split “needed cult deprogramming.”
Eden Enger has seen me heartbroken crumpled and rock-concert high and has never judged me for any of it. But right now, she’s about to judge my complete obliviousness. I’m just going to have to absorb what’s coming.
“Fine.” I sit down at the edge of the mattress and fall onto my back. “Get it off your chest.”
“Gigi Ross,” she growls. “How did you not know who you were fucking? Alexander Kim’s shirtless promo still from Quiet Devastation was my computer background for, like, six months.”
“I was living with Spence,” I remind her. “I didn’t see it.”
“Alexander Kim’s face has to be all over London!”
I nod. “Practically every tube stop. He’s everywhere. I have no good excuse, I just—” I drag my hands over my face. “I wasn’t tuned into the television world. All I was thinking about was this tiny handful of terrible people in the nightclub world. Be glad I didn’t come across him when I was there, and trust me, I feel stupid enough without your help.”
She pries my hands away and then lies down on her side next to me, propping herself on an elbow, head in her hand. “Start from the top.” Her warm brown eyes soften. “Where did you see him first?”
“Airport.” I tell her how I knew I’d seen him before—she snorts at this and then claps a hand over her mouth, promising with a look to behave. I describe how I couldn’t remember his name and how when I did remember at the hotel, I called him Alec.
“I think that’s how he knew I didn’t know him from TV,” I say. “And he dropped hints a few times—seriously, I am so incredibly dense—but I didn’t get any of them.”
“I bet that’s why,” she says quietly.
“Why what?”
“Why he let you use his shower. Why he bought you drinks. Why… all of it.”
“Because I knew Sunny?”
“Well, and because you didn’t really know him.”
I hate this sentence and have to work to not let the hurt pass over my face. The problem is that I did feel like I knew him. I felt like I showed myself to Alec and he showed himself to me, and we were real together. But obviously, that wasn’t true.
“Oh. No, no, no, that expression doesn’t work for me.” She leans over, studying my face. “Let’s move on from that.”
“Yes, let’s.”
I describe going to Alec’s room, the shower, the heavy tension afterward. “I felt him everywhere,” I say, adding at her giggle, “I mean, even with my back to him, I could have probably estimated how far away he was to within an inch.” I look at her and wince because I know this is going to absolutely shred her poor fangirl heart in the best way: “He has such an intense presence in person. It’s honestly insane.”
She screams, covering her face with both arms. “This is terrible.”
I nod. “It really is.”
“I can’t believe my best friend had sex with Alexander Kim.” She pauses, dropping her arms, eyes widening in renewed realization. “George, you had sex. With Alexander Kim.”