CHAPTER 30
Tits Out
IVY
Becks arrives twenty minutes later in a way only Becks can, the cabana curtain whisks back, she is already mid-sentence, and she has a tote bag the size of a small suitcase over one shoulder.
“This place isobscene! I came up in the lift with a man who was wearing actual yachting shoes. It’s fucking perfect. You nailed the brief! Now put down that glass and stand up and let me look at you.”
I stand up, smiling, but when she sees the cut she does a double take, her eyes wide.
“Ivy.”
“Hi!”
“What the fuck.”
“It's healing.”
“What theactualfuck.”
“It's fine.”
“It is notfine. Look at it.Lookat it. That’s… that’s an inch from your eye!”
“I know.”
“You said you got knocked about.”
“I did get knocked about.”
“You said you gotknocked about. Like you took a tumble. Like you fell off a horse. You did not say your face was acrime scene.”
I am about to answer when she pulls me in. She is shorter than me but she has always hugged like a woman trying to keep someone from falling out of a moving car, and she does it now. I put my chin on her shoulder. Her hair smells of the perfume she has worn since she was sixteen and the gum she has been chewing since lunch.
“I didn't tell you because I didn't want you to worry,” I say into her shoulder.
She makes a sound that is half laugh and half something else.
“What the actual fuck, Ivy. You didn't want me toworry. You almost died. You almost… you almost fuckingdied, and you did not want me toworry. You. Are. Out. Of. Your.Mind.” She holds me out at arm's length again. She studies the cut. She studies the rest of my face. She makes a noise low in her throat that is pure Becks—the sound of a woman processing information by way of inner profanity.
“Champagne,” she says.
“Is that your professional prescription?”
She picks up both flutes, hands me mine, takes hers, sits down on the daybed, and pats the spot beside her.
“From the beginning. Slowly.”
I tell her what I can. That Elena Kuznetsova came back, that Brumilde was the one who saved Alex's life. That Alex has a scar on his forehead that matches mine. I get through it without crying, but I see tears in my best friend’s eyes. The Aperol spritzes arrive at some point.
“Saint Ives.”
“Yes.”
“You and I are going to drink quite a lot today and I am going to pretend not to be furious that you did not call me the moment any of this happened.”
“That seems fair.”
