“You’re no fun,” he said, pouting, as we scurried back to ground level. “But may I just say, well played, Bea!”
We cracked up, although in my own laugh I could hear a manic fringe. Bea had known Gemma wasn’t a threat. What if she’d told me? What if, what if, what if.
I grabbed the Champagne and drank deeply all the way back to the house. Our delight—Freddie’s genuine, mine distracted—morphed into a tipsy mischief, and we decided it was our mission to ferret out as many other illicit lovebirds as we could find. We poked through everything from paisley-walled guest rooms to an impressive cathedral-ceilinged library, and managed to bust three more pairs—one of them being Clive and his brunette—before Freddie noticed a subtle knob in the large wooden wall under the staircase.
“Oh, hello,” he said, giving it a tweak. It obliged by leaping open, the way everything does when Freddie tweaks it, revealing a dimly lit box of a room that appeared to be upholstered in red velvet—the walls, the stubby bench, even the telephone table. We barreled inside, and then Freddie stopped short, and I careened smack into him. Apparently the red velvet room was big enough for exactly one occupant.
“I once slept with Bea,” he said, as the door clicked shut and left us in squished darkness. “What if I was the last man to sleep with Bea? What if I turned her off men forever?”
I burst into a rude guffaw. “You? The Commonwealth’s most notorious Lothario?”
“I can see the Mail now: FRED DEAD IN BED.”
“SEX IS CRAP WITH GINGER SNAP.”
We cracked up harder. “It doesn’t work like that, Freddie,” I managed to eke out, “so I think your reputation will survive.”
“Where are we? We need a light,” he said, still wheezy with mirth.
His hand searched futilely in the pitch black for a wall switch, and accidentally brushed my waist. We were giggling, in that heady way where the real laughter has subsided into a silly afterglow, and as we awkwardly squeezed around each other, our bodies smashed and collided. I felt a charge shoot through me and tipped up my head.
“Whoops, I didn’t—”
“Sorry, is that your—”
The rest was lost, because then we were kissing.
Chapter Six
That night taught me why exactly Freddie is, fundamentally, so hard to quit. Kissing him was pure, ravenous heat, a thousand gigawatts blowing my every fuse. It swallowed my consciousness, my judgment, even my senses. I couldn’t smell or taste or touch or contemplate anything that wasn’t him.
Until I instinctively wove my fingers into his hair, and thought to myself how much coarser and unrulier it was than Nick’s—
Nick.
Freddie and I sprang apart, gasping. I heard him stagger backward until he fell onto the bench, sitting with an inglorious plop as I felt wildly along the wall for a switch, finally finding one right about where we’d first fallen into each other. The dying bulb flickered on, casting a strange, jaundiced glow.
“What the hell just happened?” I panted, sliding to the floor. The room was so small that I was now basically next to his shins.
“Bex. I don’t know what I was thinking. I wasn’t thinking,” he said, clearly longing to pace but having no room in which to do it. “One minute I was looking for the light and then…”
“We just kind of…” I brought my hands together.
“Like a magnet,” he finished. “That sounds rubbish, but I can’t explain it. I never, ever meant for that to happen.”
“You’re like a brother to me—”
“I know. I know! I’d never—”
“And Lacey—”
“And Nick, I mean…God, this room.” Freddie flapped his hand in front of his face. “Is there no actual air in here?”
We stared at each other.
“My coping skills are for shit,” I said. “I’ve been off-kilter all night, and apparently I react to that by kissing the least appropriate person within range.”
“Bingo,” he said with a joyless laugh. “And we are never speaking of this again.” He tugged at his hair in exactly the worst moment for me to notice a Nick-like tic. “As soon as we open this door and go back to the party, it’ll be like it never happened.”
“Deal.” I clambered to my feet. “Give me a decent head start, though.”
“Wait.” Freddie tilted his head to the side. “Are we good?” he asked.
He was so handsome, even with his shirt wrinkled and slightly dirty from our tree house escapade, and looked so earnest and sad and guilty. That kiss was blazing, but it had also been missing something—a sense of completion, of bone-deep need, and above all, the quintessential Nickness that would be absent from every boy I kissed until I found one who made me forget that I wanted it. I was hit with a bodily wallop of yearning for Nick more potent than I’d felt in a year, and a strange sense of calm settled over me. I felt a lot of things for Freddie right then, but neither lust nor anger was among them.
“We’re good,” I said. “We’re the dumbest people alive, but we’re good.”
I swung the door open and left him there. And nearly crashed into Clive, who looked curiously behind me.
I pushed the door shut. “Just snooping,” I said, trying to steer him away without raising his hackles. “That’s some weird panic room. How’s your brunette?”
“Quite fun, and also, full of tidbits,” he said. “The Heath-Hedwig divorce is in a ghastly state over custody of their peafowl, and she said the most awkward thing about Rich—” He stopped as we reached the terrace, a strange look on his face. “Is that Lacey?”
“What’s wrong?” Freddie asked, appearing at my shoulder.
“Where did you come from?” Clive asked. “Weren’t you outside?”
But I ignored them. Everything had become fuzzy except the sight of my twin bolting frantically up the lawn. I could hear her calling my name, but it sounded distant, as if I were underwater. Her makeup was ruined. She was hyperventilating. A cold psychic misery gripped me; she didn’t have to say the words. As I felt a piece of me crack and fall away, I just knew.
*
The weeks following my father’s death were a devastating blur that, paradoxically, I can recall in the sharpest relief.