Damn. Kat is good. “Of course. I assumed as much. What about the thing with Alessandra? Can you forgive me for talking to her about her demo?”
“Yes. I was actually about to text you about that, right before my dad called me about the student loans. She’s back in Boston now, and she called me earlier today with some fantastic news. She got hired for a weekly gig at a popular coffee place near campus. And she said it was all thanks to you.”
“To me?”
“She said she almost didn’t go through with her audition, she was so nervous. But then, she heard your voice in her ear—telling her the same stuff you said at the party—and she realized you were right about all of it. So, she marched onto that stage, the way she wished she’d done at the party, and wound up giving the performance of her life.”
My heart is soaring. For Alessandra, of course. For Georgie, who’s so obviously elated for her stepsister’s victory. But, mostly, selfishly, for myself. The way Georgina is talking to me right now, the joy she’s expressing to me, without holding back—it’s like she’s my Georgie again. We might as well be sitting at my kitchen table, talking while eating a delicious meal Amalia left for us. This, right now, we’re us again. And Georgie’s trying to convince me we’re going to be nothing more than friends and business colleagues? I take a deep breath to gather myself. “Tell Alessandra I’m ecstatic for her.”
“I will. The Man with the Midas Touch strikes again. Whatever you said to her, it really helped her out. Thank you so much for breaking your promise not to talk to her about her demo. If you hadn’t done that, she never would have gotten this gig.”
Oh, my heart. It’s physically straining to fuse with hers across the phone line. I swallow hard. “Please, Georgina, come home to me. I’m wrecked without you. I swear, I’ve learned my lesson.”
She exhales audibly. “What would be the point? If we got back together, I’d always feel paranoid and mistrustful. I’d never be able to let go completely with you, like I used to do. I’d always be holding back. And what fun would that be, for either of us, when the thing that was so amazing about us was the way neither of us was ever holding back?”
I’m hurtling toward despair. Feeling like my heart is being wrung out like a sponge. Only, it’s my crimson blood, my very happiness, that’s oozing from its twisted wreckage. “I don’t want Isabel. I only want you. And that’s exactly what I told Isabel in the garage.”
“Oh, yeah? Did you tell her that before or after you had sex with her?”
I close my eyes. I can’t believe I had heaven in the palm of my hand and threw it away. “I didn’t have sex with her. Hate me. Wish me dead. As long as you believe me when I say I only kissed Isabel goodbye, and it meant nothing.” I know Kat told me not to say this next thing, but I don’t care. It has to be said. “Georgina, I swear, kissing Isabel only made me realize, without a doubt, I only want you.”
Georgina snorts with disdain. And now I know, for certain, Kat was exactly right. Georgina thinks I’m only saying what every cheater says when he gets caught. And can I blame her, really? If the situation were reversed, and Georgina had gone into that garage with her ex and “kissed him goodbye,” how would I be feeling right now? Decimated. Betrayed. Rejected, beyond repair. That’s how. And nothing, no words from Georgina, not even swinging a golf club against one of Georgina’s prized sports cars, if sports cars were her thing, would have lessened the pain of that dagger to my heart.
As if reading my mind, Georgina sighs and says, “I wish so badly smashing your car could have made us even. Or maybe given me amnesia, or rewound time. But, unfortunately, it turns out it doesn’t work that way.”
“I know. I’m so sorry.”
“I wish swinging that golf club could have solved every problem I have.” She pauses. “I wish it could have made my nightmares about Mr. Gates go away.” She sniffles. “I wish it could have brought my mother back to me.”
My heart pangs. “Oh, sweetheart. I’d let you smash every one of my cars, including my Bugatti, and then I’d buy another fifty Bugattis for you to smash, if it would bring back your mother to you.”
She sniffles again.
“I mean that, sincerely.”
“I know you do. Thank you.” Another sniffle. “You’re really not mad at me at all for totaling your Ferrari?”
“No. I’m grateful you spared my Bugatti.”
I can hear her smile over the phone line. “The punishment has to fit the crime. I’m psycho but not crazy. You didn’t murder anyone, for crying out loud.”
I clutch my heart, feeling physical pain. I love this woman. I do. I know it as well as I know my own name. I love her, and I betrayed her, and, now, I’m rightly suffering for it. Seriously now, what the fuck is wrong with me?
“I have to go,” Georgina says softly. “Thanks again for paying off my loans. But I’m warning you: don’t spend another dime on my father or me, or I’m going to come over and smash your Bugatti.”
“As long as you come over,” I whisper.
“Bye, Reed.”
“Wait. Georgie, come on. Can’t you feel what’s happening between us? We’re still us. I know I’ve got to prove myself to you, but I will. The most important thing is that our chemistry, our electricity, it’s the same as it ever was. Come home and let’s talk until sunrise and figure this out.”
“I can’t come over.”
I look at the clock on my phone. 10:56. “Yeah, okay, that’s probably a good call. I don’t want you driving late at night. I’ll come to your hotel.” Without waiting for her reply, I march out of my gym and race toward my bedroom, planning to take a lightning-quick shower and then drive like a bat out of hell to her hotel.
“Don’t go to my hotel, Reed. I’m not there.”
I freeze in the middle of my bathroom, already half naked. “Where are you?”
She sighs. But doesn’t answer me.
The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. “Where are you?”
“I wasn’t planning to tell you this, but, since you’re asking, I’m sitting in my rental car, outside a bar, about to head inside.”
My heart stops. “It’s almost eleven.”
“Yeah, that’s the time of night when bars have people inside them.”
I can barely breathe. I feel sick. “Are you meeting someone? A friend from school? One of my artists?”
“No, none of the above. I’m flying solo tonight.”
An odd cocktail of relief and panic swirls inside me. I’m thrilled Georgina doesn’t have a date... that she’s not, for instance, meeting Savage or Endo for a drink. But if she’s truly going to walk into a bar alone at eleven at night, then she won’t be alone for long. Is she going to a bar, alone, on a Tuesday night, because she’s looking for a casual hook-up? Does she intend to have revenge sex tonight, with some random stranger, in retaliation for the sex she thinks I had with Isabel?
“To be clear, if I were meeting up with someone at the bar tonight, it wouldn’t be any of your business,” she says. “When you hooked up with Isabel, you released me from my obligation not to hook up with ‘anyone on Planet Earth.’”