“Oh my God, Grace!” He barks out a laugh and shakes his head, taking my forearm in his large palm to pry the fork from me. The feeling of his warm skin in the cool breeze sends a shiver over my entire body.
Pausing midchew, I cover my full mouth with my palm to speak. “Did you just call me Grace?”
“Yeah, I guess I did.” He laughs nervously as his eyesfollow the edges of the concrete tiles below us. I cock my head in silent question as he scoffs, “Old habits.”
An ache lances my chest, remembering how the moment we shifted from using our last names playfully to using them as a social shield had gutted me. Sure, Hastings is better thanGracie, but ever since he started using my last name to address me it created an intimacy barrier I never thought we’d be able to break back through.
Deciding playful banter is our safe zone, I reply with “Hmm, feels weird. I don’t know if I can still see you as...” and hold my finger to my bottom lip to make a cartoonish pout. “Sorry, what’s youractualname again?”
He raises his eyebrows in a challenge, watching my finger. A flicker of something I don’t recognize passes through his eyes. “You know what? I am pressing charges. And I’m having this...”
He finally swipes the fork out of my hand and scrapes the final mound of pasta out of the box. I gasp, despite being so full of carbs I want to explode, and use my fingers to pick out the last few pieces of linguine from the box.
He laughs, shaking his head in disbelief. “You’re a monster.” He turns the fork in his hand.
My phone dings again. “Urgh, I probably should reply to Susie. Can you grab my phone? My hands are all pasta alla vodka-y.”
He reaches down to pick up my bag and pullssomething out that definitely isn’t my phone. My eyes widen. Oh my God, the magazine, curled around on the page with his face plastered across the glossy paper. My whole body tingles with embarrassment and adrenaline as I try to grab the magazine out of his hand, but I’m frozen. Maybe he can’t see the pages in this light?
He begins to read the page aloud, letting out a dry, coarse laugh that doesn’t reach his eyes. “‘Time to Mar-GO: Notorious party boy Eric Bancroft leaves Chiltern Bistro with yet another mysterious woman despite Margeaux Bardin dating rumors.’”
My cheeks burn as I glance down at the word “Prick” and the hand-drawn devil horns sprouting from his forehead. His gaze leaves the page and a flash of hurt crosses his face. His jaw ticks as he turns away from me and perches on the edge of the bench, letting the magazine curl in his tense hands between his legs.
Swallowing my shame, I go to explain but he speaks first: “You know, I see how people look at me; when they’re speaking to me they think they’re speaking to this.” He rolls up the magazine like a baseball bat. “‘London’s party boy who has a different woman on his arm every night.’” He turns his chin to me and lifts his eyebrows. “Which is blown grossly out of proportion by the way.” He sighs and turns his head back to the ground. “I didn’t think, after everything, thatyousaw me like that.”
I am about to say something in my defence, but my mind trails off. I’ve used the rumors to jab at him too many times.
“I didn’t use to, but we haven’t talked in six and a half months.”
He shifts. “You’ve been counting, huh?”
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
He spits a laugh with no humor in it. “You know, they don’t run the photos where I’m not with a woman, and when they do it’s usually one of my sister’s drunk or drugged-up bitchy friends I’m trying to help get home safely before they embarrass themselves in front of fuckingSocieteur, who insist on following us.”
He drops the crumpled magazine on the bench with a slap. “I’m lucky at least Dharmash has faith in me, because it’s clear Catcher only agreed to hire me because of that playboy reputation... and the Ditto project solidified that he’ll always see me that way. He never trusted me with it; he was never going to let me actually prove I can be good at my job.”
The hurt in his eyes is so jarring compared to how he acts at work. It’s almost admirable that he’s able to portray someone so confident when this is how he really feels.
I look around awkwardly, twiddling my thumbs and sifting through the bowl of alphabet soup in my head for a useful response. This is more honest than he ever was when we were friends. Maybe it’s because we aren’t anymore. He can finally be vulnerable; as if it doesn’t count with me.
“Why don’t you do something about it? Get them to stop.”
He runs a hand through his hair and lets out a sigh. “I tried to at first, and it worked for a while. But it was like as soon as I started working at Ignite, the press couldn’t get enough. Every quick drink with a friend became a headline for some gossip column. I was reportedly partying all over the city, a new woman every night, racking up bills at the most expensive places. Fuck, even my parents believed it. They believe these fucking magazines, Instagram posts and blogs over the word of their own son. They still do. And Catcher couldn’t resist the attention it was bringing in. It got to a point where it was easier to go along with the idea everyone already had of me than fight it. Why disappoint them with the real me?”
A twang of guilt reverberates in my chest. His reputation isn’t my fault, but I’ve tarred him with the same assumptions as everyone else, searching for evidence of said reputation like a sniffer dog the moment he welcomed me into his home.Societeur Magazinespoon feeds their readers these narratives, but I perpetuated it any chance I got—even when we were friends. Teasing him, calling him the same names everyone else did, and treating him as less than others because of his image. I’m too stubborn to apologize, but the desire to extend an olive branch is overwhelming.
“How about this?” I begin as his lowered head lifts to face me. “Maybe we couldattempta ceasefire... just for this project.”
He raises an eyebrow in question, making me instinctively roll my eyes.
“You’re great at onboarding users; I’m good at creating an amazing user experience. You can prove to everyone that you’re more than just a pretty face, and I won’t spend the rest of my professional life making sure Susie’s coffee is exactly ninety-six degrees. If one of us has a shot at getting this job, we have no choice but to work together.” I sigh at the final words about to escape my mouth: “Catcher was obviously completely wrong that we work well together—I came this close to skewering you tonight—but he was right about one thing: we do need each other.”
“Sooo, what I’m hearing is... you think I’m pretty?” His smile flashes triumphantly in the warm, humming light.
I raise my eyebrows and stare at him in carb-fueled disbelief. “That’s the one thing you got from my speech?”
“Fine, you’re right. No more mutually assured destruction.” He shoots me another smile, tight-lipped this time, a dimple appearing on his cheek.
