I was halfway to the door at a full canter when Nathaniel’s voice stopped me. “Arden?”
“Yes?”
“Now that we’re done with the business side of things, I was wondering…” He broke off, and there was something oddly vulnerable about it. “Would you like to come to dinner with us?”
I lost control of my shoulder bag. Scrappy pieces of paper, old bus tickets, a tampon Ellery had made me carry for her once, and the remains of a half-eaten packet of sweets spilled across the pristine office floor. “What? Shit. Oh no, my jellybeans. What?”
“Well,” Nathaniel went on, making a tremendous effort to ignore the fact I was crawling about on my hands and knees, “I’ve thought for a while we didn’t get off to what you might call the best start. And since you’re a friend of Caspian’s, I would like to remedy that.”
I paused, jellybeans bouncing from between my fingers. The thing is, I did not want to go for dinner with Caspian and Nathaniel. Because, while I could theoretically imagine worse things—being stuck on an alien spaceship and hunted by a Xenomorph, for example—they weren’t happening to me there and then, and I could be pretty sure I wouldn’t be expected to smile and say thank you afterwards. On top of which, I was not Caspian’s fucking friend. I was his ex who was still in love with him.
“Look,” I tried. “Like, the thing is—”
Fuck. He’d got me. There was no way I could get out of this. I couldn’t claim to be busy because the invitation was too vague (“Unfortunately, Nathaniel, I’m washing my hair literally forever”), and I couldn’t just refuse because that would make me look like a total dick in front of Caspian. To him, this probably seemed like his current partner doing the decent thing by his previous, so my options were: Be the bad guy who rejected a peace offering, or tacitly accept Nathaniel’s reframing of my role in Caspian’s life. Basically I’d been friend-zoned by proxy. If he hadn’t been doing it right to my face, I’d have been a little bit impressed.
Suddenly, Caspian was out of his chair and kneeling in front of me. I’d forgotten the grace in him when he wasn’t self-conscious. The heedless power. And God, that cologne of his: those sweet, dark notes, all cocoa and sandalwood and the promise of wicked things. Oh help. He was too close and too beautiful and I wanted him too much.
He offered me a slightly fluffy jellybean. “Do come, Arden. It would be good to see you.”
“Would it?” That was fucking news to me. “Would it really?”
“Of course it would. As Nathaniel says, we’re friends…aren’t we?”
Oh, for God’s sake.Et tu, Caspian?But I didn’t quite have the bollocks to sayNo actually, I’m your scorned ex-lover and you know it. The thing is, Nathaniel inviting me to a Yah Boo Sucks Ardy dinner, I could just about get my head round. But why the fuck was Caspian on board with this? He didn’tactuallywant to see me, did he? And if he did, he had a fucking funny way of showing it.
Oh, wait. What was I saying? This was Caspian Hart. Not speaking to you for three months, then glaring at you coldly was practically his love language.
“Of course,” I said, through gritted teeth. “And dinner would be lovely.”
Chapter 12
Somehow, I made it out of Caspian’s office. But as soon as I was safely on the street, I collapsed into a huddle against the wall of the building, not sure whether I was going to pass out or throw up, my body reacting about as well as it had the time they made us do one of those beep test things in PE. But I got over it, and quite a bit faster than I had the beep test, which had left me so emotionally and physically traumatised Hazel had stormed into school and got it banned. Shame she couldn’t do that to Nathaniel, really. Although probably part of being a responsible grown-up and shit meant you couldn’t get your mum’s girlfriend to handle all your problems for you.
At any rate, I was starting to get funny looks. I was already way out of place in this part of London—probably I was the only person within a square-mile radius who wasn’t wearing a suit—but I wasn’t helping my case by throwing a massive wobbly. Time to limp back to the office. And at least I could compose myself on the Tube, since, far as I could tell, the whole point of being on the Tube was to ignore the existence of as many as people as possible.
Before I vanished underground, though, I stood in Liverpool Street Station, underneath the great iron ribs of its vaulted ceiling, scrolling through my contacts, looking for Bellerose. He’d given me his number while I’d been dating Caspian, but Caspian had also insisted I use a second phone and I couldn’t remember if it had occurred to me to synch my data in the haze of newly dumped heartache. Oh. Apparently I had. But then, there had been a small window of crystal-sharp competence when I’d been moving out of One Hyde Park. Having fucked up so many things with Caspian, and in so many ways, I’d taken a terrible pride in clearing out of his life neatly and efficiently.
He was a big fan of efficiency, was Caspian. And suddenly I was remembering him ruining Carcassonne, and missing him so very much. Missing him and mourning all the could-have-beens that had been trampled underfoot like cherry blossom in spring.
Enough. I called Bellerose.
The phone rang for a really long time. Just rang and rang—not even cutting off or going to voicemail. And I was just about to give up and try again later when he answered, managing to sound both exactly the same as ever, and not at all like himself: “What do you need, Arden?”
My mouth plopped open unhelpfully. Probably I should have, y’know, at least thought about what I was going to say to him. “I…I don’t think I need anything. I mean…I was kind of wondering if you were okay?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Well, I saw Caspian today. With Nathaniel, I mean. And you weren’t there.”
“He didn’t fire me, if that’s what you’re concerned about.” An odd note of bitterness touched Bellerose’s voice. “I’mtaking some time. Involuntarily.”
What the fuck did that mean? Bellerose was the perfect, um, whatever the hell his job was. And he was devoted to Caspian to a degree that, in any other context, would have been creepy. Actually, maybe it was creepy. But that just made this whole thing weirder. I was pretty sure it was psychologically impossible for Bellerose to do anything that Caspian didn’t want. “What I’m concerned about,” I said, “is you. I know how you feel about Caspian.”
He made a contemptuous sound—a sort of laugh, if laughing had a nasty second cousin nobody liked. “Don’t turn this into something sentimental. It’s humiliating enough already.”
“God, you’re so fucking like him.” Maybe that was why I wanted to shake both of them. “It’s okay to have feelings.”
“I am well aware of that, thank you. But I wouldn’t expect you to understand mine.”
