Chapter 466 | You Are So Unbelievably Screwed

Chapter 466: 466 | You Are So Unbelievably Screwed

Alexis picked Dior back up and walked out of the kitchen. She took the back stairs so she would not have to pass the portrait gallery, where her great-grandfather stared down from above the landing looking disappointed in oil paint.

Her bedroom door had a lock. She turned it and leaned her back against the wood, and Dior squirmed out of her arms and trotted to her bed in the corner.

The room was white and gold and huge. Her mother’s decorator had chosen everything in it except the stack of trashy reality TV DVDs hidden in the ottoman. The windows faced the ocean, and the last orange light from the sunset lay across the carpet in long bars.

Alexis pulled the cashmere sweater over her head and dropped it on the floor. Her maid would have a stroke. She did not care.

The grey henley was underneath. It hung loose on her, the sleeves long enough to cover her knuckles, the shoulders sitting halfway down her arms. The cuff on the left side had a hole in it now. She had pulled on that thread so many times the whole seam had started to give.

She walked into the bathroom and turned on the shower. The rainfall head spilled hot water onto the marble, and steam fogged the glass within a minute.

She pulled the henley off last. She folded it and set it on the counter, away from the steam.

The mirror showed her everything before the fog took it. Five foot seven, long legs, the waist her mother paid a trainer four hundred dollars a week to maintain. Her breasts sat high and full in the black lace bra she had picked this morning for no reason she would admit out loud. Her stomach was flat, and the line of muscle down the center caught the vanity light. Her skin looked pink across her shoulders where his hands had pressed through the sweater.

She touched the spot on the right side of her neck. The skin felt warm. It had been almost two hours, and it still felt warm.

She unhooked the bra and stepped into the water.

The heat hit her shoulders, and her whole body shuddered. She braced one hand on the tile and closed her eyes. Her brain went straight back to the bench, the ocean noise, the jogger who had stared. His thumb pressing into the knot under her shoulder blade in a slow circle. The heat that had poured out of his palm, far hotter than any human hand should be.

She had made a noise. She had made an actual noise, in public, in Laguna, on a Thursday.

Her face burned under the water. She scrubbed shampoo into her hair too hard and rinsed it out too fast. The conditioner smelled like jasmine and cost more than Jordan’s rent, and she stood under the spray with her palms flat against the marble and tried to think about Harrison.

Harrison in his Brioni suit, explaining foam. Harrison’s cold hand on the small of her back at the yacht club gala. Harrison’s mouth by the infinity pool at La Valencia, wet and polite and forgettable.

Nothing happened in her body. Absolutely nothing. It was like trying to feel something about tax forms.

Then Jordan’s voice came back into her head uninvited. That low register on the phone last Saturday, when he had said her name and she had dropped the phone into her pillow. "Tuesday at two, princess."

Her knees went weak. She grabbed the towel bar.

"Oh my god, stop it, you are literally so pathetic right now."

Her voice bounced off the tile. It sounded shaky and high and nothing like the yacht club. She pressed her forehead to the cool marble and breathed until the flutter in her stomach calmed down.

It did not calm down. It moved lower.

She shut off the water and grabbed the towel. She dried off fast, rough, the terry cloth scraping her skin. She reached for the silk pajamas hanging on the hook, the champagne ones her mother had bought her in Paris.

Her hand stopped on the silk. She pulled the henley off the counter instead.

It went over her head and fell to the middle of her thighs, and cedar filled her nose. It was faint now after three weeks. She had to press the collar to her face to find it, under her own jasmine and the lotion she used at night. But it was still there.

She crossed the bedroom in bare feet and climbed onto the bed. The duvet was white Frette and cool against her legs. Dior jumped up and curled against her hip and sighed.

"Don’t look at me like that. I’m a grown woman, and I can wear whatever I want to bed."

Dior blinked at her and went to sleep.

Alexis lay back against the pillows and stared at the ceiling. The chandelier caught the last of the sunset and threw little rainbows across the plaster. Her phone sat on the nightstand, dark and silent. She did not reach for it.

Her hand rested on her stomach over the grey cotton. It felt heavy there, warm, and she could feel her own pulse through her palm.

She thought about his hand on her jaw. The way he had stopped her, firm and gentle, his thumb on her chin, his eyes on her mouth. He had wanted to kiss her back. She had seen it. She had been close enough to count his eyelashes, and she had seen his pupils go dark, and he had still said no.

Nobody said no to her. Boys had lined up since eighth grade to say yes to anything she wanted.

Her hand slid lower. She told herself it was just to smooth the hem of the shirt. The cotton bunched under her fingers, and the air hit her bare thighs, and she did not stop.

She pictured him behind the bench again, his big hands on her shoulders, and this time he did not stop at ten minutes. This time his thumbs slid down her spine instead of across. This time he pulled her back against his chest and said her name into her ear in that voice.

Her back arched off the pillow. She bit her lip hard and turned her face into the henley collar.

It was fast and embarrassing. Her thighs clamped around her own hand, and she breathed his name into the cotton so her voice would not carry through the door. Her toes curled in the Frette. Dior lifted her head and huffed.

Alexis lay there afterward with her heart slamming and her face on fire. The rainbows had faded off the ceiling. The room had gone blue with dusk.

"You are so screwed, Alexis Van Der Berg, you are so unbelievably screwed."

Her phone lit up on the nightstand.

She rolled over and grabbed it. Three notifications stacked on the lock screen. The first one was from a group chat she had never seen before, called "NOVA DINNER CLUB ???."

Kumiko had added her. Of course Kumiko had added her.

"ALEXIS-CHAN WELCOME!!!!! ?????? I’m making a pajama mood board for Sunday!!!! do you prefer silk or cotton or matching sets or ANIMALS??? I have a cat onesie in your size I measured you with my eyes in October!!!"

A second message sat below it, sent eleven seconds later.

"Sorry that was a lot. Chloe says I have to breathe. I’m breathing. Silk or cotton though????"

Alexis read it three times. Something tight in her chest loosened another notch. She typed with one hand, the other still pressed flat against her stomach.

"Silk obviously, I’m not an animal, Kumiko."

Kumiko replied in under four seconds with a crying cat sticker. Then a picture of a pink onesie with ears, draped over a sewing mannequin. Then a single line of text.

"You’ll wear the cat eventually. I believe in you."