by Becker Gray
I looked at my nails. “I’m not that bad, am I?”
My friends nodded. “Um, yeah, you’re very much a planner. We dig it though. Team Iris all the way.”
The four of us picked up our shot glasses, clinked them, and tossed them back. I coughed at the burn at the back of my throat. Jesus fucking Christ. But the liquid did go down smooth after the initial shock of it. And it warmed everything on the way down.
The other three didn’t even seem to notice. Sera peered at her glass. “Ooh, that’s nice. I never thought I could rob Keaton blind with a rum drink. I thought he was one of those pompous assholes who swirls their scotch like they were important. But he has taste. And a rum, no less. If he wasn’t such a douche asshole, I might like him.”
Aurora peered at her glass too. “You know what, fuck this, let me find a chaser.”
She walked over to Sera’s mini fridge, yanked it open, and saw a bottle of Pom juice. She got a pitcher on top of the fridge and then poured some of the Pom juice she found into it, added the rum, swirled it around, and then poured little shots of it. That went down much smoother. A little too smooth, if you ask me.
As we were on our third shots, I glanced around the room at the girls sitting around me. I hadn’t thought this year would yield anything normal. But despite Keaton lying to me, using me, and breaking my heart, completely degrading it, I’d made some good friends here. The kind of friends that I probably needed in my life. Ones that wouldn’t let me get away with being boring old Iris. Ones that pushed me to be different, to try different things, to experience life.
I smiled at them. “So who’s going to join me in Paris next summer?”
All three of them raised their glasses, downed them, then slammed the glasses back down onto Sera’s dark wood coffee table. Sera clapped. “Me, for sure. Whether you decide to go now, or you leave at the end of June, best know that come July, I will be with you. And there will be shopping to be had.”
I grinned. “All that Parisian shopping will need a bigger, fancier place. You realize I’m going to live in a shoebox, right?”
She scoffed. “No, no, no. When I come visit, we’re going to rent a giant fucking Airbnb, and it’s going to be fabulous. Then we’re going to get rid of all the boring things that you took with you because you were being frugal about money. We’re going to sell all those things and buy something fun and exciting.”
“Hear, hear,” Sloane said.
“I second that. Actually, make that ‘third that.’”
I laughed. “Guys, shopping isn’t really my thing.”
Sera bumped her shoulder into mine. “That’s because you’ve never done it right. Now, if you did wait, I would just come with you. I’d go see my mom for plans, and we’d set up a place and meet cute French boys.”
Aurora butted in. “Oh, you are not doing that without me.”
“Me neither. We’re here for that.”
I laughed. “But Sera, you guys—what about your parents?”
Sera waved her hand. “If I come see you and wait around for two weeks, then I join them in St. Kitts, it’s the same thing. They go for a month every year. I was going to go with them for two weeks and then I’d come and see you. No big deal. I’ll just pop in.”
“Either way, you’re coming to Paris?”
“You better believe it.”
“Who needs Keaton Constantine anyway, right?”
She nodded. “Absolutely. Because remember, you are the hot girl, and he is a pencil-dick-ass face.”
I bit my bottom lip, my body clenching as I remembered his dick. “Yeah, except it wasn’t exactly a pencil dick.”
All three of them stared at me. But then Sera howled. “Oh my god, you have been withholding. Tell us everything.”
I snorted a laugh. Even though my belly knotted, a little girl talk was what the doctor ordered.
A little girl talk was healing. It didn’t matter that I’d fallen for Keaton’s bullshit. It didn’t matter that he’d broken my heart. What mattered was, I didn’t need him. What mattered was, I was strong all on my own. As Sera and the others said, I was the it girl. He was just someone who’d been lucky enough to bask in my presence for a short time, not the other way around.
As far as I was concerned, Keaton Constantine didn’t exist.
And right as I decided that, I heard a chime from my still-open laptop.
An email.
Curious, I woke up the screen and looked—and then promptly forgot how to breathe.
It was from the program coordinator at the Sorbonne.
I’ve been accepted to the pre-degree program.
I still couldn’t breathe.
The director also wanted me to know that starting this week, all the program students would have access to the student housing near the campus, in order to give them plenty of time to get adjusted to the city before the seminars and work started in earnest.
I stared at the screen for a long time, wondering if the rum had gotten to me. But no—this wasn’t the rum. This was real life.
And I was in.
I was going to Paris.
19
Keaton
I was a colossal fuckup.
I could hear Clara behind me as I tore away from her and stalked up the stairs. “Keaton, what are you doing? Keaton?”
I wanted to run after Iris. But she was gone, and anyway, what would I say if I caught her? It’s exactly what it looked like? Don’t worry, baby, I thought about my mom the entire time?
Jesus Christ. It sounded pathetic and creepy even in my head.
Clara caught up to me, touching my elbow. “Hey, what’s wrong with you? That kiss, what was that for?”
I ran my hands through my hair. My gut churned, and I felt like I was going to vomit.
I felt ill.
You are a colossal fuckup.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have kissed you.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Yeah, clearly. But that’s not what I’m talking about. Why did you kiss me in front of everyone else? What’s gotten into you?”
I mean, what the hell was I supposed to say? “You know the deal. I was faking it for the cameras, basically.”
Her sigh said it all. She was exhausted. Just like I was. Tired of the lies. Tired of the bullshit. “We’ve been faking it for so long. Some of it is automatic . . . but that was not an automatic kiss. We have never put on that good of a show.”
I couldn’t breathe. It almost felt like I was going to pass out. Back and forth, back and forth, I paced.
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”
Clara put up her hands and approached me warily like you would a wounded animal. “Okay. Okay, calm down. Relax. What’s going on?”
“My mother, she said she needed me, she wanted me to make our relationship look good. She wants your father to invest in Winston’s new company eventually and—”
I couldn’t fucking breathe. The words wouldn’t come out. I had hurt Iris to please my mother. Iris—the one person who had always been there for me. The one person who told me the truth, the person I would rather see smile than anything else. I had hurt her deliberately. I was the worst kind of human being.
Clara’s voice went low. “Okay. Okay, relax. This has gone on too long.”
I frowned at her. “What?”
“This. You. Me. It’s gone on too long. It served a purpose for a while, but it doesn’t serve that purpose anymore. I’m going to tell my parents that we’re done. And I’m going to tell them it’s my fault. And that I have a boyfriend who does not have a penny to his name, but a scholarship to Duke, and I want to be with him.”
My jaw unhinged. “Why would you do that?”
“Well, for starters, so none of this blows back on you and your family, since they do, in fact, want my parents for something.”
“I’ve never really known you to be altruistic, Clara.”
She shrugged. “I’m sick of it—the lies. And I can see the way you look at her. I might not like Little Miss
Perfect, but I do like you. You’re like family. And if I can help, I will.” She turned to leave, but my mother rounded the corner and found us just in time.
“Keaton, what is going on?”
Clara’s parents came around too. Oh, fantastic. Everyone was here to witness the show.
Clara cleared her throat. “Mom, Dad, listen, there’s something you need to know. Keaton and I aren’t—” She faltered, as if suddenly realizing the storm she was about to cause.
She looked at me with wide eyes, and I picked up where she left off, touching my hand to her elbow to let her know she had my support. “Actually, Mr. and Mrs. Blair, the truth is, Clara and I haven’t been truly dating for a long time.”
My mother’s hand went to her throat, but she didn’t speak.
Clara, however, was not going to let me go down alone. She patted her mother on the arm. “Mom, what Keaton is trying to say is, we were thrown together so often, and the expectation seemed to be that we were going to be together. So we pretended we were. And since both of you were quite happy, it gave us some freedom to do what we wanted on our own. You never seemed to question anything I did if I said I was with Keaton.”
The furrowed brow and lines around my mother’s mouth said it all. She turned to Clara’s parents with an apologetic smile. “I think this is some kind of misunderstanding. Young people these days, their relationships always go up and down, you know how it is.”
She kept talking, but Clara’s words were the only ones her parents were listening to. “Look, I thought you wouldn’t approve,” she was saying, “but I have an actual boyfriend. And he doesn’t have a dime to his name.”
It was her mother’s turn to touch her pearls in shock. “Clara, what are you saying?”
“What I’m saying is that I’m completely in love with someone else. His name is Charlie Jones. A completely common name for a completely common guy. Except to me, he’s not common at all. He’s extraordinary. And he treats me exactly how I should be treated. I love him. And he loves me. I’m not going to Harvard next year. I’m going to Duke.”
Her father raised a hand. “Now, wait just a minute young lady, you are not—”
She shook her head. “We lied, Dad. Don’t you see? It was never real, and it can never be real because we’re both in love with different people. Keaton too.”
The parents all swiveled their heads to me in tandem.
“It’s true, I’m in love with someone else,” I admitted. “Her name is Iris Briggs. Her father is the headmaster. I really care about her, and I want to be with her. I’m not going to fake this anymore.”
Clara’s father and mother looked back to their daughter. Her mother whispered softly, “So you’ve been pretending to date Keaton?”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
Her mother shook her head. “But why?”
“Because I knew you wouldn’t approve of Charlie.”
Her mother pursed her lips. “Clara Blair, I’ll have you know that despite your father’s fancy old-money name, he was penniless when I married him. And I didn’t give a fuck back then. I’m horrified you thought we would be like that.”
Clara opened her mouth then closed it again, and then tried one more time to get words out, but to no avail. Her father shook his head. “Your mother is right. I had been living on the generosity of family and scholarships, but her parents accepted me without any conditions. There is no reason for us to not like anyone you date. Especially if they’re actually a good person. We’d like to meet your actual boyfriend—Charlie. Not that Keaton isn’t a fine boy. But if you don’t love each other, what’s the point?”
My mother made one last attempt to salvage this. “Listen, they’re young, they’re impulsive . . . maybe we should talk about—”
Mr. Blair shook his head. “Caro, if the kids don’t want to date, what’s the purpose?”
My mother pinked, but when she spoke, she had steel in her voice. “And who is this Iris Briggs girl?”
“I told you, she’s the headmaster’s daughter.”
Clara’s father frowned. “Yes, I met her. Smart girl.”
I grinned at that. “Yeah, she is.”
I could tell that just the fact that Clara’s parents even knew of Iris upped her status in my mother’s eyes immediately. “Yes, you know, Keaton, I’d love to meet her.”
I couldn’t be sure if she was saying that to save face or not. I decided to take it as a genuine offer. “I’d like that too . . . but I have to be able to trust that you can accept her for who she is, and not condemn her for who she isn’t. I love you, Mom, but I can’t be what you need anymore, and I won’t make Iris be either. I’m done. And I need to go and find her and tell her exactly that.”
Clara stepped up to me and gave me a big hug. “I’m not in love with you, but I do love you very much.” She planted a kiss on my cheek and then gently let me go. “Go get your girlfriend back.”
The heat spread through me at the uncomfortable emotional display. “Thanks, Clara.”
“Anytime.”
I left them all behind to find my girlfriend.
That is if she is, in fact, still your girlfriend.
One problem at a time.
She wasn’t answering my calls. She wasn’t answering my texts.
After checking the Giant Oak to make sure she hadn’t doubled back, I swung by my room, even though I knew the chances of her waiting for me there were extremely slim.
That only left one place—her house—and I didn’t want to crash in unannounced, so I’d tried calling and texting, but to no avail. I debated waiting, waiting until she responded . . . but what if she never responded? What if she never gave me a chance to apologize and make it right?
What if I’ve really lost her forever?
Panic choked me, and I knew I had to see her, I had to see those sweet blue eyes and hold her warm, slender hand while I told her everything, while I explained to her that Clara and I were done and I’d never hurt Iris like that again—ever.
When I reached the headmaster’s residence, I was panting and out of breath. My hands were shaking, not from exhaustion, but from worry. I banged at the door, but nobody answered.
God, she could be anywhere. I banged again. “Iris. Please God, Iris, open the door.”
When the door did open, it wasn’t Iris, it was her mother. “Oh, Mrs. Briggs, I’m so sorry to disturb you. I didn’t mean to barge in, but I’m looking for Iris. I need to talk to her. There was a complete misunderstanding and—” I dragged in my breath, trying to calm myself down. “I’m so sorry. I, um, if I can only talk to her, if you can tell me where she is, I would really appreciate it.”
Mrs. Briggs didn’t seem unsympathetic to my desperation, but neither did she move out of the doorway to let me in. “I’m afraid Iris isn’t in. She’s gone to visit her friends in the dormitory.”
Shit.
I knew my chances of getting Iris back probably diminished with every minute she spent with Sera and them. They weren’t exactly the biggest fans of the Hellfire Club—or me.
“Do you know when she’ll be back?” I asked, past caring how reckless and despondent I sounded.
Iris’s mother gave me a kind look. “I’m not sure when, but I will certainly tell her you stopped by . . .?”
And I realized that Iris’s mother didn’t even know my name. Because I’d never introduced myself—I’d never even tried. Because instead of being the kind of boyfriend that met his girlfriend’s mom, I’d been the kind to make her hide while he pretended to date someone else.
Jesus, no wonder she wasn’t answering my calls or texts. No wonder she wanted nothing to do with me.
“Thank you, Mrs. Briggs,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “I’d appreciate that.” And then I turned and left.
As much as I wanted to go to the girls’ dormitory and haul Iris back to my room like a caveman, I knew there was no way I’d get past Sera or Aurora—or God help me, Sloane, who seemed like the kind of person who knew h
ow to kill a man as painfully as possible.
So waiting it was, three impatient hours of it, checking my phone obsessively and drinking straight from a bottle of gin since I couldn’t find my good rum. When enough time had passed that I thought I could reasonably go back to the headmaster’s residence to check if she was home, I left my dorm and stepped out into the path that led to the headmaster’s house.
Where I slammed straight into Serafina. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
When I saw who it was, I righted myself and then helped her up. “Were you with Iris? Do you know where she is now?”
Serafina pursed her lips, and then narrowed her gaze to slits. Her eyes slid over me with nothing but venom. “You mean that poor girl that you humiliated in front of the whole school? She’s around here somewhere, wishing to god that she had never met you.”
I swallowed hard. “I fucked up. I know that.”
“Do you? Because I’m pretty sure guys like you think the world owes you something. You thought that you didn’t have to play by the rules, and you hurt her. But she deserved better than that.”
“I know. I know I fucked up. And I need to fix it. Tell me, where can I find her?”
She shrugged. “I’m not sure. She was with us, but then she left, maybe to find her parents or something. I really don’t know.”
“I’m not a complete douchebag, Serafina.”
“Then how about you prove it? Show me, don’t tell me. Better yet, show Iris.”
“You’re right,” I said, and Sera squinted up at me from behind her big, trendy glasses.
“Are you fucking with me right now, Constantine?” she demanded.
“No, I—” I sighed down at the tiny van Doren heiress. “I need to show her I’ll never hurt her again, and I plan to. I will.”
Something in my voice must have softened her, because she let out a sigh of her own. “You won’t be able to see her tonight anyway. She’s packing.”
I thought I was done feeling panic; I thought there was no way I could feel any more misery. I was wrong.
“Packing?” I repeated hoarsely.