Kate waffled for a second. “Lacey, you don’t need to be hearing this right now—”
“Please,” I said, taking her hand. “Whatever everyone’s saying about me, it can’t be worse than what’s running through my head. I just want to stop wondering.”
She broke eye contact and tried to take her hand back. I held tight. “It’s probably best to make a clean break—”
“Katie,” I interrupted. I could feel my throat starting to choke up. I’d beg if I had to. “Please.”
Kate sighed, but relented. “The papers and gossip mags and blogs can’t get enough. The party line everyone’s trotting out is that Grant figured out you’re a gold-digger.”
I felt pain like a shard of glass stabbing into my heart.
Kate went on, staring straight ahead as she recited her news like she was reading it off a teleprompter: “He sent you packing, you’re hiding out licking your wounds. Meanwhile, Grant is a doing a Batman act and hiding out too, licking his wounds.” The faintest suggestion of a smile ghosted over her lips. “One paparazzi snuck onto his balcony. Grant almost threw him off before his butler intervened.”
A few weeks ago—God, it seemed like a lifetime ago—I would have made a crack about Grant having a butler. Now, joking was the last thing on my mind. All I could think about was how much I must have hurt Grant, for him to let people say those things.
And I had no one to blame but myself.
“A gold-digger,” I said, trying not to let my voice show the way I felt that tiny parts of me were cracking, shattering, and splintering apart inside. “Well. That’s a good angle. I’m glad he thought of that.”
“I’m sure Grant didn’t—” Kate began soothingly.
“It doesn’t really matter,” I said. My voice sounded like it was coming from very far away. It sounded cool and clinical, and nothing like I felt. “It’s all a PR spin, whosever idea it was. And it’s a good one. I couldn’t have done it better myself.”
“This is not a PR spin!” Kate snapped, a little too loud. The sound of the blender in the kitchen stopped; could my mom hear? Kate quickly lowered her voice. “This is your life, Lacey.” She hesitated for a second, and then tentatively offered: “You could send a message back with me, if…if you’ve got anything to say to him. If there’s anything you think he needs to know—”
“Grant knows everything relevant,” I said. But my voice began to crack on the last word.
“Girl, did you forget who you’re talking to? I’ve been your best friend since kindergarten; I know when you’re putting up a front. I’ve heard you rant about this man, I know how you feel—”
“Feelings aren’t important,” I said, looking away. “Love—or whatever it was I was feeling, attachment or affection or whatever—”
“Love,” Kate insisted.
“It wasn’t real,” I argued. “It was just—an extreme situation, and emotions were running high, and there were hormones and that oxytocin thing you were reading about in Women’s Health and—and it doesn’t really matter, Kate. Whatever it was, it’s over, and feeling anything about something when it’s over doesn’t make any sense at all.”
“Right,” Kate said with an exasperated eye roll. “Because everything worthwhile in life definitely makes complete and total one hundred percent sense.”
“I’m not going to indulge myself,” I said. “I’m not going to sit around thinking about my emotions and feeling sorry they’re not reciprocated.”
Kate tutted. “And that’s not what you’re doing out here?” She stood, gathering her things. “Tell your mom sorry I couldn’t stay for the smoothies. And remember, Lacey—you can’t hide out here forever.”
TWO
Kate has this annoying habit of being right. I couldn’t hide. Not if I wanted to keep my job, and my pride. And let’s face it, those were the only two things I had going for myself right now.
So Monday morning, I girded my loins for battle, by which I mean I put on the latest set of lingerie Kate had brought me, plus a perfectly tailored Italian cut suit, and I headed back to work.
For a moment when the car rounded the corner and the Devlin Media Corp tower loomed in the distance, I felt exactly like a princess sent out to the lair of a dragon. Somehow the building seemed even taller and more imposing than usual, a black slash against the sky, ready to crush me beneath the weight of my inadequacies.
I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders, and went inside.
A sudden silence descended on the lobby as I entered, people openly staring at me as if I were the Loch Ness Monster. I stared straight ahead, not deigning to acknowledge their rudeness, trying not to hear the furious whispering that began the second my back was to them, little snippets of words just reaching my ears:
“—how she can show her face—”
“—five thousand on the reception alone, I read—”