When I knock, she opens the door immediately. There's another girl with her, Lennox, from my morning shifts at the café. Short dark hair, always wearing band t-shirts, perpetually exhausted but somehow still cheerful.
"Intervention time," Ivy announces, pulling me inside.
Her room is slightly bigger than mine but just as run-down. Posters cover the cracked walls. Her roommate's side is pristine; Ivy's is organized chaos. She gestures to her bed where she's set up an actual wine bottle and three mugs.
"We don't have proper glasses," she explains, pouring. "But alcohol is alcohol."
"I have class tomorrow morning," I protest weakly.
"You have Victorian Lit at ten. You'll be fine." Lennox hands me a mug. "Drink. Then talk."
I sit on the bed and take a sip. It's terrible wine. Sweet and burning at the same time.
Perfect.
"So," Ivy says, settling next to me. "Sebastian Thornhill."
"I don't want to talk about it."
"Too bad. We saw the posts and now we need details." She pulls out her phone, showing me the Instagram photos I posted. "Because these? These look almost... not terrible?"
"They're fake. It's all fake. That's the point."
"But you're holding his hand," Lennox points out. "And in the second photo, you're smiling. Barely, but it's there."
I grab her phone to look closer. She's right. There's a tiny smile on my face in that photo. When did that happen? When was I smiling?
When he told me his father said Thornhills don't fail publicly. When I called it abuse and he didn't argue.
"It's for the camera," I insist. "For the contract. None of it's real."
"Okay, but how was it actually?" Ivy presses. "Did he treat you okay? Because if he was an asshole, we can, I don't know, slash his tires or something."
Despite everything, I almost laugh. "You're going to vandalize Sebastian Thornhill's Mercedes?"
"If necessary, yes." She's completely serious. "You're our friend, Isla. We've got your back."
Our friend. When did that happen? When did these casual acquaintances become people who'd commit crimes for me?
Something warm and dangerous blooms in my chest.
"He wasn't terrible," I admit quietly. "He was... almost human."
"Almost human," Lennox repeats. "That's a ringing endorsement."
"I mean, he can't ice skate. Like, at all. He was terrified and holding onto the boards like they were life rafts." The memory makes me smile despite myself. "I ended up teaching him."
"You taught him?" Ivy's eyes widen. "The guy who's been tormenting you for two years?"
"I wasn't going to let him fall on his face. That would've been..." I trail off. Mean? Cruel? Exactly what he deserves after two years of making my life hell?
"Human," Lennox supplies. "You weren't going to let him fall because you're a decent person. Unlike him."
"Except he told me about his father. About why he stopped skating as a kid." I take another sip of terrible wine. "His dad sounds awful. Like, genuinely awful. And for a second, I almost felt bad for him."
"Oh no," Ivy says. "You're humanizing him."
"I'm not?—"
