Chapter 10

CHAPTER TEN : Alone

~Zella's POV~

The question sat in the middle of the table like something that had been placed there very deliberately and was waiting to see what everyone would do about it.

Brynn, predictably, did not wait.

"I think..." I started.

"She's staying as long as she needs to," Brynn said, at exactly the same time, in the tone she used when a decision had already been made and the discussion was a formality. She pointed her fork at her father. "I brought her here because she needed to get out of London before she became one of those people who just exists inside a flat with the curtains closed."

"I was not..." I started again.

"You had been in that flat for five days, Zella. With empty bottles on the floor." She looked at her father. "She just walked out of a six year relationship with an absolute idiot who cheated on her with her own cousin. Eight days before the wedding."

Evander looked up from his coffee. "What?"

"Right?" Brynn pointed the fork again, now using it for emphasis rather than eating, which was how you knew she was fully committed to a topic. "Eight days. The dress was already hanging up. The invitations had already gone out. And he chose the cousin. Her cousin, dad. Who she personally got the job for."

"That's..."

"Some men genuinely cannot think with anything above the waist, I have said this for years, most of them are just walking around with two brain cells and neither one is doing any actual work..."

"Brynn..."

"And the worst part." She set the fork down now, which meant the really important part was coming. "She had kept herself for him. Six years. She was saving that for the wedding and he was out there..." she made a gesture that communicated volumes without specifying anything, "...doing whatever he was doing, and she had no idea."

The table was quiet for a moment.

I was looking at my eggs with the focused attention of someone trying to disappear into their breakfast. My face was the temperature of a small fire.

"That's a sad story," Evander said. His voice was even. I did not look at him. "No wonder she seems..."

"Out of it, yes, exactly." Brynn picked the fork back up, satisfied to be agreed with. "So she is staying here until she is actually okay and I am not accepting any argument about it. I have also already decided that once she is ready I am going to introduce her to someone who will restore her faith in men, or at least in men who have functioning brains."

I looked up. "You're what?"

"Don't look at me like that. He's lovely. He's tall, he's well built, he's handsome, he has actual money..."

"Brynn."

"I showed him your picture and apparently you are, and I am quoting here, breathtaking." She looked extremely pleased with herself. "You're welcome."

"You showed someone my picture without asking me?"

"I showed him your picture because you would have said no if I asked you, which would have been the wrong decision, so I made the decision for you. You're welcome," she said again.

"That's not how decisions work."

"It's how my decisions work."

I looked at Evander, which was a mistake, because he was already looking at me with an expression that was doing several things at once and none of them were appropriate for the breakfast table.

"What if she doesn't want to be set up?" he said. He was talking to Brynn but he was looking at me. "What if she already likes someone?"

My face went from fire temperature to surface of the sun.

"She just got out of a relationship, dad, she doesn't like anyone yet." Brynn waved this away with the confidence of someone who had already solved the problem and was confused about why it was still being discussed. "And she is going to love him, I promise. He is genuinely my type, which means he is objectively excellent."

"He's your type," Evander said. "Not hers."

"Same thing."

"Those are very different things. I still think you should let her make the decision herself."

They both looked at me at exactly the same time, which was the precise moment my body chose to register Evander's direct attention by doing the full tomato situation with my face, which was spectacularly unhelpful timing.

Brynn frowned. "Hey. Are you alright?"

"Fine." The word came out slightly strangled. "I'm completely fine."

"You've gone red."

"It's warm in here."

"It's December in Paris, Zella, it is not warm anywhere."

"I'm fine."

"Are you thinking about Cole again?" Her voice dropped into the gentler register she used when she thought I was about to fall apart. "Because it's okay if you are, you don't have to pretend..."

"Just.... a little." The lie came out smoothly, which I felt briefly guilty about and then immediately practical about, because the alternative was 'actually I was thinking about your father and the specific memory of his hands, which is a sentence I will never say out loud for as long as I live.'

"Zella." Brynn reached across the table and put her hand over mine.

"I'm okay." I stood up, because sitting felt too exposed and standing felt like action. "I'm going to get some air. Excuse me."

---

Brynn followed me, obviously.

She appeared in the doorway of my room approximately ninety seconds after I had closed the door, which was either impressive or exhausting depending on how much sleep you'd had. I was going with exhausting.

"Talk to me," she said, sitting on the end of my bed like she had been invited.

"I told you, I'm fine."

"You've been saying that since London and it has not been true once."

"This time it's slightly more true."

"Slightly." She tilted her head. "That's progress." She was quiet for a moment, which for Brynn was a significant event. "Do you want to come out with me this afternoon? Fresh air, different scenery, I'll buy you something overpriced and completely unnecessary..."

"Where are you going?"

A pause. Slightly too long.

"Just.... out. Around."

I looked at her. "Brynn."

"What?"

"Where are you actually going?"

Another pause. She pressed her lips together in the expression she wore when she was deciding how much to tell me, which meant she had already decided to tell me everything and was just figuring out how to frame it.

"Okay." She lowered her voice, which was hilarious given that we were alone in my room with the door closed. "I'm going to see Theo."

"Who is Theo?"

"My boyfriend."

I stared at her. "You have a boyfriend."

"I have a boyfriend."

"Since when?"

"Since about four months ago." She held up a hand before I could say anything. "Before you start — my dad doesn't know. My dad doesn't approve of him, specifically, because they met once and it went badly and my dad has decided he's not suitable which is insane because he is completely lovely, and I have been seeing him in secret because I am a twenty-four year old adult woman who is also slightly terrified of my father, which I will never admit out loud, so." She looked at me. "I need you to not tell him."

"Brynn, you have been telling me to be more open and honest for three days straight."

"That advice was for you. My situation is different."

"How is it different?"

"Because my dad is..." she gestured vaguely, "...you know how he is. He has a face and a voice and a way of standing there silently that makes people want to confess things they haven't even done yet. You've seen it."

I had absolutely seen it. I had personally experienced it on multiple occasions in the last several days. I was not going to say this out loud.

"You're not going to tell him?" she pressed.

"I'm not going to tell him."

She exhaled. "Thank you. Okay. I'm going to go get ready."

She disappeared and I sat on the bed and stared at the wall and thought about Brynn having a secret boyfriend and Evander not knowing and the spectacular irony of that given my own current situation, which I was also not going to say out loud.

I sat in the quiet for a moment. The penthouse had a specific quality of silence when Brynn wasn't in the room, heavier somehow, more aware of itself. I noticed it and then told myself I wasn't noticing it and then noticed it again.

Twelve minutes later she was back in my doorway in a dress that made it extremely clear where she was going and what she was hoping the evening would involve.

"How do I look?" she asked.

I looked at her. "Brynn."

"Good answer." She smoothed the dress and checked her hair in the mirror on my wardrobe door. "Don't wait up. And don't tell my dad where I am, just say I went to see a friend."

"You want me to lie to your father."

"I want you to be selectively truthful. There's a difference."

"There really isn't."

"Zella."

"Fine. Go. Have fun. Be safe."

She pointed at me. "You are my favourite person." Then she was gone, her footsteps quick down the hall, her voice briefly audible saying something cheerful to her father about going to visit a friend and not being back until tomorrow, and then the front door, and then quiet.

I sat in my room for a moment.

Then it hit me.

Brynn was gone.

Gone for the night.

Which meant the penthouse currently contained exactly two people, one of whom was me and the other of whom was the man I had been trying to maintain an agreement with for the last twenty-four hours with a success rate of approximately zero.

I pressed both hands flat against my sternum.

My heart was doing something completely unnecessary.

'It's fine,' I told myself. 'It's a big penthouse. You can simply stay in your room. You can stay in your room all evening. You can order food to your room. You can sleep in your room. You can be an adult human person who is capable of existing in the same building as another adult human person without anything happening because you made an agreement and you are going to keep it this time.'

I believed approximately forty percent of that.

The penthouse was very quiet.

His footsteps moved somewhere down the hall, unhurried, just the ordinary sound of a man existing in his own home, and the sound of it alone was enough to make my face go red and my heart do the unnecessary thing again and my body start composing a strongly worded letter to my brain about the agreement and what it had thought of it.

I was in so much trouble.