Page 82 of No One But Us

She sits heavily on her bed, facing me, and starts to cry. “I fucked up, Elle. I seriously fucked up.”

“Paul?”

She nods. “I mean, last time was bad enough but this… It’s too much. How could I do this to Alex?”

“This was going to happen eventually. You and Alex just met too young.”

“No,” she wails. “I don’t even like Paul, and Alex is perfect for me.”

I sit beside her, rubbing her back and waiting for her to calm down. I suspect anything I say right now will make things worse.

She raises her tear-stained face. “Why did I do it? Alex is everything I want in a husband.”

“Just because he’s everything you want doesn’t necessarily mean you want him,” I tell her. “Honestly, Ginny, I think maybe you’ve been bored for a long time. I mean, were you really going to marry the first guy you slept with?”

This makes her cry harder. I shouldn’t have brought it up. I never had any great sentiment attached to losing my virginity—which is a good thing, given how I lost it—but she did.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I know it was a big deal to you.”

She begins crying and laughing simultaneously. “No, you’re totally right. Paul was so much better at it than Alex. I had no idea it could be that good. It wasn’t even like the same activity.” She laughs again and then begins sobbing. “I have to break up with him, don’t I? God, this has been the most fucked-up summer.”

I really can’t argue with her on that one.

Chapter 48

ELLE

James and I don’t discuss our fight. Things continue just as they have, superficially. But instead of a quiet joy I have to struggle to conceal, it’s now a sharp pain in my center, a constant sadness and the exhaustion that accompanies pretending it’s not there. The truth is that I have lost. I thought I could sway him, and I did not. He’s going to leave, and this will end.

We still do the same things. We walk into town for coffee. We go to the beach. We have sex. But a part of me is closing off to him, and probably should have closed off long before now.

We’re just walking in the door when I get a call from my father. We haven’t spoken since the credit card incident.

“I need to discuss something important with you,” he says.

“That you’re getting married?” I sigh. If that’s why he’s calling, it feels a little late to make amends.

“Well, yes, that’s important too, but that’s not it.”

“Were you planning to tell me?”

“Of course I was,” he says, as if I’m being tiresome. “But this is about my job.”

Of course it is. Someone ought to warn Holly that his upcoming wedding falls such a distant second to his job status.

“The network thinks they can rehab my image, and they’re offering me a correspondent’s position.”

“Cool.” I pull from the part of me that should celebrate this fact, but find nothing there.

“Yes, it’s beyond cool. But look, Edward’s got a story coming out next week, and they need to make sure you don’t comment. No matter what anyone asks you.”

“Why would they be asking me anything?” I demand.

He sighs. “I don’t know the details. I think he’s going to confess that he was infatuated with you.”

“Why confess anything at all?” I cry. “Why bring my name into it?”

“I assume because something has gotten to the press. Have you been talking about it?”