Page 91 of The Grosvenor's Ghost
Raise my eyebrows. “I know right.”
It takes her a minute but eventually she puts her hands in mine. I drag her full weight up, take her down the hallway and into my bedroom.
She collapses on my bed and it’s something about seeing her like this—just so not her—that makes me feel a bit sick. I know she’s going to wake up tomorrow and be embarrassed and not talk to me. She doesn’t drink, she hates being sick more than anything so I don’t understand why she did it which rivets me back to why I think this is on me.
And then my mind starts reeling because how many times has she seen me like this? More than I count, I bet. And I often ask myself why I did that to her when I loved her so much. And often I come back with the same answer; I don’t know. But us humans have a tendency to do that—ruin perfectly good things. It’s like putting makeup on; you don’t know what’sin the foundation you’re painting your face in, yet you use it anyway. You look better without it, even if you don’t think so. You’re ruining something perfectly good with something that is undoubtedly toxic.
“Arthur,” Phoebe drawls from my bed, sprawled out on her back. “Did you mean it?”
I frown, slip her heels off and throw them on the floor.
“Did I mean what?”
“When you said I wasn’t a difficult person to be around or something?”
She turns over, rests her hands under her head, stares at me.
“Of course I did.”
“Is it true?”
“Yeah,” I nod. “It is.”
“Okay,” she sighs, closes her eyes. “Good.”
I go to leave but she grabs my wrist.
“Can you stay in case I’m sick?”
I look at the bed she’s lying across. There’d be no space for me on there so I nod and sit on the floor, rest against my bedside table.
She pats my head like a dog. “You can get in the bed.”
“I really can’t.”
She scoffs. “Because of Digby?”
“No, because there’s no space for me on there.”
“Oh,” she laughs, tucks her legs up to her chest, curls up in a ball. “There you go.”
I think about it—bit intimate, ain’t it? Sharing a bed? But then again, who’s Digby? Who’s the one she wanted? Who’s the one she came running to? All that shit she spouted about Digby proposing? Bullshit. I know it was, she knows it too. I know she only said it to push me out but just like in school when she didn’t leave, I climb up onto the bed and lay next to her.
She’d let Digby put a ring on her finger and a baby in her belly all to prove a point to me but I’m like a fucking boulder; I’m not going anywhere this time around.
∗ ∗ ∗
When I open my eyes the following morning, Phoebe’s on her back, staring blankly at the ceiling beside me.
Shocked she stayed, to be honest.
All night I was thinking she was going to pull a ‘me’ and book it in the middle of the night.
“You alright?” I ask, sitting up, clearing my throat.
She shakes her head stiffly. “I feel terrible.”
Raise my eyebrows, reach over to my bedside, slip my watch on. “Not surprised.”
