Home > The Gentleman’s Guide to Getting Lucky(8)

The Gentleman’s Guide to Getting Lucky(8)
Author: Mackenzi Lee

“Because you had to make it out to be some sort of life-changing event, and it’s not!” I burst out. It’s not fair that I’m doing this to him, making it seem like it’s his shortcomings keeping us apart when it is so obviously not. I know I’m being cruel and selfish, the two things I had very recently promised him I would try to be less of, but either old habits die with as much collateral damage as possible, or maybe this is just who I am. Maybe I can’t separate myself from the spite that sent me ducking before my father’s hand for years—it’s sewn into my blood like choking weeds. “Maybe this isn’t a good idea. I don’t think you’re ready.”

“Fine.” He looks away from me. “Maybe we’re not.”

“It’s not me.”

“It sort of feels like it is.”

“Well, you’re wrong, and it’s not.” I stand up, get halfway through my storm-out, then realize this is my room that I’m storming out of. My steps stutter, and I consider barreling on just 30

 

because I’m already neck deep in this, might as well go under. I could kip up in his room and still give myself a good mental shaming, but the sheets will smell of him and his clothes will be on the floor and the mattress will be caved to the shape of his body and somehow that will make it all so much worse.

So instead I stop, and I turn on him—both literally and figuratively. “Could you just leave?

Please?”

And he does. It’s a slow, mournful, tail-tucked, kicked-puppy retreat. He doesn’t touch me, or even look at me, or stop in the doorway and look back. He leaves. And I lie down on my own bed, alone and marinating in shame, what should have been our first night sleeping together another night of me sleeping alone.

When the crew comes back to the flat for one last round in the courtyard, I’m still awake.

They’re rowdy with drinking, telling some sort of story about a mermaid that wasn’t with so much oblivious joy it makes me sick with jealousy. I had thought about going down to clean up the flotsam of our failed night, but I didn’t have the strength. Either Percy must have faced it for me, or it’s all still there and the crew is simply too up in their altitudes to make sense of it.

Felicity will notice. I hear her light steps on the stairs, then they pause outside my door. She’s likely expecting to hear if not the sounds of active sodomy, at least two sets of exhausted snores after a great deal of physical activity. She stands there for so long I think she might knock, which would be literally the only thing that could make this night worse. But instead, I hear her retreat, the door to her room shutting very quietly, and we all sleep alone.

 

When I wake the next morning, the first thing I think of is how badly I want a finger of whiskey.

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The second is whether I can go this whole day in this tiny house on this tiny island without having to see Percy.

The third thing I think of is whiskey again, but more than a finger. And then scotch. And gin.

And literally any goddamn thing I can pour down my throat that will numb me enough to focus on something other than how badly I’ve mucked everything up between us. I think about waking Felicity to ask for her advice, then realize there’s no advice she can give me because I’ve already done the stupid thing. I’ve already trampled it all into dust. I want a drink so bad, and since I’ve ruined things with Percy, what’s the point of sobriety and being a changed man? I get up, yank on my trousers, and go downstairs to find spirits.

The house is hot and quiet—and after a night of wild revelry among some parties and intense self-loathing among others, I’m not certain who ended up kipping up here or, more importantly, who might be awake and prowling. The kitchen is blessedly empty when I arrive and start rooting around for some sort of libations—any and all varieties welcome, preferably in large quantities. I would have even settled for the sort of toxic gin served in Covent Garden theaters that will melt through the soles of your shoes. My head is pounding.

A door opens upstairs, and my desperation for a drink is trumped by my fear of that door belonging to Percy’s room. I’m not sure which I want to do less—make awkward breakfast talk with him like nothing happened, or have an actual discussion about it, so I choose neither and instead flee the kitchen empty-handed. I let myself out the back door, then take the path behind the flat that leads to the cliffs where the crew likes to dive. The rocky outcropping overlooks the ocean, rippling green and silver in turn as the sunlight catches the seaweed below the surface, then the break of the waves. I sit down on a shaggy rock near the edge and press the toes of my slippers into the soft sand. The morning is already stupidly hot and the water aggravatingly 32

 

pretty, and I don’t have any idea how long I can hide here before I face the fact that Percy wants things to start, and I am just not stable enough for that, and may never be. Though perhaps that whole point of starting something together is moot because I was such an embarrassing mess last night that he’s never going to want to be near me again.

My hiding works for approximately five minutes. Maybe less. Primarily because, I realize as I hear the path behind me crunching underfoot, this cliffside perch is incredibly visible from most windows of the flat.

“Oh no.” I pull my knees up to my chest and bury my face in my arms when he sits down next to me, his breath coming out in a huff. “Don’t look at me. I’m hideous.”

I hear the scratch of him rubbing his fingers through his hair then he lets out another heavy sigh. “So. Last night.”

I keep my forehead pressed into my arms. “Please don’t make me talk about it. I hate talking about my feelings.”

“Oh, please. You have more feelings more vocally than any human on this earth.” His

shoulder knocks into mine once, then he presses it there until I consent to look up at him. He’s wound his hair back into a messy knot, and the morning sun streaks it with liquid gold. He looks tired. I’m sure I do as well. We might not have been together, but at least we were sleepless together.

“So what is it?” he asks. “Because perhaps I was imagining things, but you seemed

aggressively less interested in me last night than usual. Or . . . ever.”

“Lies. I am incredibly interested in you always.”

“Do you have any physical evidence for that?” Fantastic, so he did notice. I drop my head again with a moan. “Will you please tell me what I did wrong?”

33

 

“Nothing!” My head shoots up. “God, no, not at all, it’s not you.”

“You seemed to think it was last night.”

“Yes, well. I was not my best self last night.”

“Then what is it? Because if something changed, and you don’t want this anymore . . . tell me now.” I can hear the fray in his voice, the rough edge of panic that I’m about to go back on everything I promised. Strangely, it calms me to know we both have something to lose.

“It’s not that.”

“Then what is it?”

“Can we talk about this later?”

“No.”

“I’m so tired.”

“So am I. Tell me what’s wrong.”

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