Scandalized(66)

“Why?”

“Because we put on a movie and fell asleep. Because it felt like a relationship.”

Eden laughs. “I’ve been with you guys. You are in a relationship.”

“I know. I think we sort of decided that last night?”

She goes quiet for so long that I’m just about to ask if she dropped out when she says a breathless, “Holy shit.”

“Right? Are we idiots for even trying?” I rest my hand over my eyes. “We only have two nights left and—”

“George.”

Abruptly, I sit up. When Spence and I broke up, I absorbed so much energy from Eden. I promised myself I wouldn’t do that again, and look at me now, just talking about myself. “Shit. Sorry. I am being a self-absorbed monster.”

Eden pushes out an abrupt “Georgia. Shut up.”

She never uses my full name. As in, I can’t remember a single time in our ten years of friendship that she has ever called me Georgia. My stomach sinks. “What?”

Her voice is shaking, her words slow. “Check Twitter.”

My Batphone vibrates on the bed beside me. “Alec is calling me,” I say, and then unease presses in cold at the edge of my thoughts. He has a marathon day—why is he calling?

“Call me right away after you talk to him,” Eden says.

I frown, confused. “What?”

“Just—go.” She disconnects, and I pick up the other phone.

“Hey, what are y—”

“I need you to pack up.” His voice is firm, tight, as if he’s pushing words out between tiny, shallow breaths.

Everything inside me comes to a standstill. “What?”

“I can’t talk,” he says, and it sounds like he’s walking. “I just need you to get all of your things and go home. Head down the back way we came in last night. Through the service elevator. Can you do that?”

My lungs squeeze in, compressing my heartbeat. I can’t figure out what’s happening. Is this about the article? There was nothing that Alec shared with me in the piece. The reception has been amazing, and he hasn’t been exposed, so this can’t be about that. I’m—I’m just frozen with confusion.

“Gigi!”

“What?” I say again, uselessly.

“Are you up? Tell me you’re up and packing.”

My face grows hot, my throat tight, and I stumble into the bathroom, throwing my things into my toiletry bag. Last night he washed my skin with aching sweetness. Now he’s telling me unequivocally to go home?

“I don’t understand. Are you okay?” All I get is the sound of feet clomping down a hall, the frantic murmur of voices. “Alec, what’s going on?”

He speaks to someone else in the background, and I hear Yael say, “Stay here.”

Alec returns. “Yael is going to meet you out back. She’ll take you home.”

“Alec, what—?”

“Why didn’t you include my information in the story?”

Everything in me hits pause. “What?”

“The story. You didn’t include anything I told you.”

“Because I didn’t need it,” I say, breathless from this inexplicable panic. “I wanted to protect you. Protect us. We had enough—”

“Never mind,” he says. “We don’t have time. Are you packing up?”

In the empty, calm room my head is a storm of chaos. I grab my toiletry bag and return to the bedroom, staring at the landscape of his clothes and my clothes draped innocently together over the back of a chair. I collect mine, shoving them into my bag. “Are you—”

“Gigi, are you packing up?”

I stare at my open suitcase, my things spilling out of it. So many clothes I haven’t worn because I live in my underwear here. I wear his T-shirts. “I am, but I don’t underst—”

“Gigi,” he yells, voice unrecognizable. “Fuck. Just—please. Hurry. Pack up and leave the room.”

Hurry. Pack up and leave the room.

My phone starts shaking. My hand is trembling so hard I can barely maintain a grip. I never could have imagined how it would feel to hear him be angry with me. A physical shove would hurt less. “Okay,” I manage, but the word is garbled by a confused sob. “I don’t know what I did, but I’m so sorry.”

“Shit.” When he speaks again, his voice breaks. “I don’t know—” He cuts away again, answering someone in the background again, before telling me, “I have to go.”

I hear the burst of a door, wind, and a blast of voices all around him.

And in the melee, only one voice comes through clearly, the sharp sound of a woman cutting through the chaos—“Alexander! What’s your connection to the Jupiter scandal?”—before the call disconnects.





Eighteen


Yael is already waiting for me when I lug my suitcase out to the loading dock, and for once, I don’t even try to make nice. With my bag thrown haphazardly in the back, I climb into the passenger seat, click into the seat belt, and wordlessly hunch over my phone to figure out what Eden saw on Twitter, what might have Alec panicking.

Immediately, in Top Trends, I find it and I feel the blood drain from my face.