Page 33 of The Grosvenor's Ghost
“You’re happy?”
I shake my head. “Je ne suis pas heureux depuis que tu es parti.”
He hangs his head. “Je suis désolé. Tu m'as manqué.”
“Je suis fier de toi.”
And then I walk away because the longer I stand there, the more liable I am to kiss him and kissing him isn’t what I should do. I need to give him his space, and myself space from him. We have almost three years worth of talking and remembering to do.
Digby or no Digby, I’m going to make up those lost years with him.
∗ ∗ ∗
The next morning, Digby rings me while I’m still in bed to come downstairs.
“What jumped up prick did this?!” He screams, storming around.
“Oh, yeah,” I mutter, take a sip of my coffee. “Real shame.”
All six windows of Digby’s car have been completely smashed in. The tires slashed, the steering wheel removed and most of the black paint scratched off.
“You can’t have anything nice in this city, can you?” Digby rages on, hands tugging his hair.
I lean against the wall behind me, yawn. “No, you can’t.”
He walks over to me, breathing heavy. I kiss him, take him upstairs and sleep with him so he stops threatening to call the police. And I think he orgasms to the vision of that god forsaken car.
But all I’m thinking about is how much I love my friends.
Chapter Eight
Prince Arthur
It’s that word. Recover. Pings around my head like a snooker ball, hitting every corner and making me flinch every time. How are you recovering? How’s recovery? He’s a recovering addict. Makes me sound like I’ve just been in a fucking car crash or something. It’s not recovery, it’s just living. I’m not getting over this. To recover is to imply you will eventually one day be better but I will never be all the way better because I’ll always be an addict. I’ll always have the urges and the thoughts and the feelings and the flashbacks of how I used to feel on it. I’m not recovering, I'm just alive.
And that’s exactly what I’m thinking when Astrid, Princess of Sweden asks me yet again, how recovery is.
“It’s alright, I suppose. Tricky, but I’m getting there.”
She smiles politely and I hate that I can’t deny the fact that she is actually very pretty. Long blonde hair, waist length, these diamond blue eyes that you sort of can’t believe aren’t contacts. She’s just all around perfect—not my kind of perfect because my kind of perfect is brown hair and mirror ball eyes but you know what I mean. Astrid’s got that foreign look, tanned, pink lips, natural.
But there is one thing I did pick up on that no one else around this god forsaken table has; she isn’t interested in me. Not for marriage. Not for dating. She’s got her own love that she can’t have.
“Do you speak to Phoebe?” She asks for the sake of keeping the conversation going because like me, she’s all too aware of her family’s glare.
I sip my water, glance away from her. “Yeah, yeah—saw her last night.”
“Oh,” she nods, eyebrows up. “And how is she?”
“Good,” I swallow. Cut up more of my slow roasted lamb for something to do. I can’t talk about her at this table. Not after what I told my nan. I doubt Astrid knows—doubt anyone knows, to be fair.
But I’m staying true to my word. I will marry her.
After seeing her at House last night, it hit me at full force. This morning, I woke up with a fucking elephant sitting on my chest. A weird type of anxiety that I haven’t been able to shake. No one else can see it, no one else can lift this weight off me. A strange mix of hope and nostalgia, I think?
I didn’t want to come to this lunch today but my grandparents insisted, a couple European royals are over in London for the week so they decided to set up a big thing for Astrid and I to get to know one another. It’s different when my grandparents tell me to do something, I automatically do it. They have more authority—in everything—than my parents.
“So,” I clear my throat. She turns back to me with a bright smile that I know is just plastered on. “What are your plans for the weekend?”
