Chapter 22: Afterparty
There was a brief interval before Ed took to the stage to close the show with his performance, and we scored a few minutes of privacy as everyone milled about.
"You okay?" he asked me, wariness lining his words.
I pressed my lips together and nodded. It was just a stupid song. I'd dug my own grave by refusing to listen to it over the past few months. Maybe I could have desensitised myself through overexposure, then this wouldn't be so hard.
Ed lowered his voice and leaned closer until his shoulder knocked against mine. "You okay about the kiss?"
"We agreed, didn't we?"
"Yeah, but I mean... I didn't think the third win would be for that song. And when I realised, I thought it would be even worse if I didn't kiss you. Like you might think I'd changed my mind because the song reminded me of what happened."
I wanted to argue, to put up a wall of defences, as if that would stop any more hurt from filtering through. With Ed about to perform in front of millions of people, though, I couldn't risk upsetting him. It wasn't fair.
"It's all good." I slid my hand across to briefly squeeze his thigh.
With a strained smile, he turned to face forwards again. We could both insist we'd moved on since the shit show of spring, but with a song immortalising the pain we'd each suffered, we would never be able to pretend it hadn't happened.
*
So maybe I could understand a little bit why this song had proved so popular. With minimal backing music, Ed's beautiful voice captured your attention, drew you in, consumed you, until you could do nothing but absorb the words spilling from his mouth.
Too bad that I fucking hated the words.
"I gave you my heart, then you left me in the dark... I guess we never were really friends."
At least I didn't have to worry about cameras. Not that it would have mattered. As I sat there, eyes focused on the guy who'd broken my heart as he sang about the girl who'd broken his, my emotions numbed. I'd built this up so much in my head that it couldn't have been any worse than my imagination.
And yet the words were clever. I'd thought that the first time round, too. For most people listening, the lyrics would be taken at face value. For me, I knew that when he sang about being left in the dark, he wasn't just referring to my secrecy: he was referring to the first time we'd had sex, when I tried to sneak out in the middle of the night.
"We danced under the stars, with nothing around us but cars, but now all that's left between us is scars."
Dancing under the stars was our night on the rooftop bar, with traffic blaring beneath our feet. And yes, there were many emotional scars, but physical ones, too. During a particularly rough session between the sheets, my nails had marked him with scratches down his back, and his dominant grip on my wrists, hips, and waist had left mild bruises. We'd laughed about it at the time, saying it was a good job he'd already done his shoot earlier that day because otherwise the photographer would have had a shock.
That was some of the best sex I'd ever had. Hearing it referenced in this song didn't change that, but the way it was referenced—suggesting that the only good thing from our relationship had been the sex—stung.
When Ed told everyone that he'd used artistic licence, I had to believe it. The alternative—that these lyrics represented how he'd really felt—was too much to bear.
*
"You look thoroughly miserable." Camille dropped into the chair beside me, setting her sparkling purse down on the ivory tablecloth.
Once the show had wrapped up, we'd moved on to an afterparty. Whenever I'd imagined showbiz afterparties, they'd been raucous affairs with excessive drinking, scandalous dancing, and saucy hook-ups. That would have been more in my comfort zone. This was far too civilised.
A dancefloor dominated the middle of the room, but those brave enough to hit the wooden tiles only swayed politely to the beat of the music. Round tables filled the outer space, bottles of wine in the centre of each one, almost like a wedding venue. A few people had taken a seat, but most loitered around the bar, chatting, networking, or doing whatever else famous multimillionaires do.
"Not miserable. Just tired," I replied, the lie coming easily.
I had nothing against Camille. If Helen had introduced us, that meant she'd either been thoroughly vetted and deemed trustworthy, or there was an ulterior motive at play. Either option could be possible with Helen. Whichever it was, I exercised caution.
"Your man smashed it tonight," she then said, slinging one leg over the other as she leaned back in the chair, bright green eyes landing on Ed by the bar. "And so did you."
"Went as smoothly as it could have done."
"Mmhm... Very convincing, I must say. Don't know why you needed my help, although you do look hot."
"Thanks." I shot her a wry smile, not taking the carrot that she dangled in front of me.
And credit to her, she didn't pry. She did, however, lean a little closer, her jasmine perfume drifting over me.
"Let me know if you want to get out of here. Nobody will notice."
This time I did take the carrot. "And go where?"
She lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "Wherever you like. Personally, I always feel the need to go somewhere grounded and liberating after stuffy events like this. Let my hair down, blow off some steam... That kind of thing. After my first one especially... I needed a dose of dirty reality."
My interest was officially piqued, but I knew better than to instantly agree.
"Maybe. I need to stick this out for a bit longer first."
"Sure. And obviously we'll have to get changed before heading anywhere else. Remove the disguises and all that." She winked and knocked the toe of her shoe against mine. "No pressure either way. Just let me know."
Camille rose from her chair and strolled towards the bathrooms, stopping en route to wind her arm around Jamie's neck and plant a kiss on his cheek. His hand latched onto her arse and squeezed. Those two had to be fucking.
An outstretched hand with a leather bracelet dangling from its wrist interrupted my field of vision. I lifted my eyes to Ed's face.
"Want to dance?" he asked.
I huffed out a sigh. "I'd love to, but I've not seen anyone here I'd like to dance with yet."
"That's not a problem since I'm the only one here you're supposed to be dancing with." His face remained relaxed and pleasant, but his eyes darkened in warning.
With an innocent smile, I slipped my hand into his and pushed up from my chair. Several pairs of eyes followed us as Ed led me onto the dance floor. Finding a space, he spun me once then pulled me flush against his solid body, his palms sliding down my sides to settle on my hips. I resigned myself to a few minutes of not-so-unpleasant torture as my arms looped around his neck and my head dropped to his shoulder, drinking in his spicy cologne, trying not to think too hard about the warmth that spread from his hands to gather between my thighs.
"Everyone keeps looking at you." His mouth grazed my ear, the tips of his fingers digging into the flesh of my hips as he drew me closer.
"They're probably looking at you."
"Definitely you. They're used to me. This isn't the real world in here, remember."
Yeah, and didn't I just know it.
"It's because I'm new, then. Someone they've not seen before."
A dissatisfied grunt rumbled from his chest. "They wouldn't be staring at your arse if that was the case. Not sure whether to feel proud or threatened."
My lips quirked against the soft skin of his throat. "Threatened."
For a brief second, his grip tightened on my hips. "Of course you'd say that. I hope you realise you can't—"
"Oh, save it." I rolled my eyes even though he couldn't see my face. "I'm not going to do anything stupid."
"Good."
"And if I do, I'll make sure I'm extra subtle about it."
His jaw clenched, shoulders stiffening beneath my forearms. "Sophia..."
"Kidding. Obviously."
But then the music faded into a new track, and my sense of humour immediately vanished.
"You said we could only be friends...."
A chill rolled down my spine, freezing every muscle in my body.
"But I think we both know it was all for pretend..."
"Oh fuck no." I regained faculty of my limbs and attempted to disengage from Ed.
I'd rather sit on a busy Tube train than slow dance to this song.
To my fury, Ed's hands clutched onto my hips, arms locking as he crushed me closer to his tall frame. I snapped my eyes onto him and silently tried to convey that I was absolutely not okay with this.
"You can't walk away." He pinned me with a serious yet sympathetic stare. "It'll cause a scene and people will talk. Just block it out for the next couple of minutes."
I swallowed down my instinctive scoff. Three times in one night. As if this charade hadn't been difficult enough on my emotions.
"I don't know how it doesn't affect you in the same way it affects me." The vulnerable words tumbled from my mouth, like the song had been chipping away at every defence throughout the evening and was now down to the last barricade.
His gaze softened. "I'm immune to it by now. Sung it too many times to count. The words are just an assortment of letters with no meaning."
I wasn't sure how I felt about that—relieved that his grudge wasn't being renewed every time he sung it, or resentful that he wasn't suffering as much as me?
"Everyone will be looking at us, wondering if it's about me..." I mumbled.
"They won't. You only think that because you know the background. Nobody else does."
"It's an easy assumption. I'm your first girlfriend in years. First public girlfriend ever. And only earlier this year you wrote a song about someone who broke your heart. Hardly takes a detective to put the pieces together."
"The song also says that I'd never go back to her, so not such an easy assumption."
I stiffened in his arms as the cold words slammed into my chest and squeezed the air from my lungs. A thick lump lodged in my throat, stealing any potential response from me.
Ed's blue eyes flickered over my face and then widened in realisation.
"No, wait, I didn't mean it like that—"
"You did. That's exactly how you meant it."
"It's artistic licence, Soph..."
"You keep saying it's artistic licence, but I can connect every fucking line to something that happened between us. Nothing in there is fictional." I kept my voice hushed, desperate not to draw attention to us, but Ed hung on to every word.
"You're right," he conceded. "It's about us. But when I say artistic licence, I mean that I didn't necessarily feel all those things. I just used them as inspiration for a song. The words might be real, but the emotions behind them aren't. Not all of them, anyway."
"Even if they're not real to you, they're real to me. And every time I hear the song, I relive the pain I put you through."
"Come on, we both played a part in it."
I tightened my arms around his neck and moulded our bodies closer together, as if the physical proximity would overpower the emotional pain. One hand left my hip to sweep up my spine and back down again, before curving around my waist.
"I had no idea the song affected you this much, Soph. I knew you didn't like it, but this pain you feel whenever you listen to it... I'd never have wanted that."
"I don't listen to it," I said. "That's the point. Until tonight, I'd only heard it that first time at your charity concert."
A low groan passed his lips and his eyelids briefly fell shut. "Sorry. That was poor judgement on my part. A spur of the moment decision when I saw you. I had to channel my complicated feelings towards you, and I chose to do that via the song. Else I might have just broken down in front of everyone."
"You knew it would upset me."
His breath fanned my lips as he blew out a gentle sigh. "Yes. I was still angry. And at the end of the day, I'm a musician who makes a living through expressing feelings via songs. If I could go back and not perform it, I would."
Nodding, I accepted his justification. We'd both moved on a lot since then, and that was part of the reason the song still haunted me: it kept sending me back when I was trying to leave the past in the past.
I tipped my head to the side and forced a smile to lighten the mood. "If you hadn't performed it back then, you wouldn't have won three awards tonight."
Rather than take my comment the way I'd intended—as a reassuring reminder that I still supported his success—Ed's brow tangled, and his palm skidded up my arm to cup my cheek.
"I would sacrifice an award if it took away your hurt." His thumb smoothed over my jaw.
My stomach dipped, heat burning my cheek beneath his hand.
"Don't say things like that." My eyes flitted around the room to check for spectators.
"Why not?" he asked.
"Because I can't tell if it's real or not."
The final line of the song faded away. To avoid analysing his reaction to my confession, I leaned the side of my head against one of his broad shoulders and studied the room instead. This whole night had been an emotional trip down memory lane, and while a secret part of me enjoyed the pretence of being his girlfriend, a stronger part struggled with the history it dredged up and the complicated feelings that accompanied it.
If we could go back in time, both of us would do things differently. But we couldn't do that, so instead we'd committed hours, days, and weeks to mending our relationship, rebuilding the trust, and moving forwards. Meanwhile, that song had catapulted Ed to new heights in his career. However hypothetical, why sacrifice that when we'd already started to repair things ourselves? Of course his comment wasn't real. I would never come before his career. It was literally his life, and he had a team of people—me included—ensuring its success.
"You look so beautiful tonight." His warm breath floated across the back of my neck, and I shivered against the hard contours of his body.
Comments like that didn't help either. The romantic undertones fucked with my confused head. Why couldn't he just say hot or sexy or something else with a more physical insinuation?
"Talented hair and make-up artist," I replied. "I needed to look worthy of being Teddy Stone's girlfriend."
"You know I hate it when you refer to me as that."
And I hate it when you blur the lines between us.
"Have you forgotten where we are?" I asked him. "You're Teddy Stone here. Stop trying to turn this into something it's not."
I regretted the words as soon as they left my mouth, but I bit back my automatic apology. What I'd said was true. He was Teddy Stone here. We were working. As Teddy Stone and Teddy Stone's girlfriend. It wasn't fair to mess with my head, in public no less, by suggesting the comments were from Ed to Soph. That wasn't what we'd agreed. And my tattered heart couldn't take it any longer.
Ed didn't react to my cold dismissal. That didn't surprise me. His poker face was up there with his singing as one of his top talents.
I swallowed down my remaining hurt and straightened up, my palms drifting along the soft sleeves of his jacket as my eyes lifted up to his handsome face—the sharp angle of his jaw and the gentle wrinkles lining his forehead from where his brows knitted together.
"I need some air," I said. "I'll let you do some more networking. Shout if you need me."
After that, I was more than ready to leave, but I also knew I couldn't just take off so soon after the song, otherwise people really would talk.
I bumped into Hattie Steele, and we made polite conversation about a Christmas charity single that both she and Ed were singing on. Throughout the discussion, I kept wondering what she truly thought about me turning up here with him, after I'd dodged her question about the two of us being a couple. Nothing in her smile or words suggested suspicion, but the whole confrontation only added to my growing unease.
"I need to get out of here." I slipped into the seat next to Camille, keeping my voice low as I surveyed the room.
"Where to?"
"Somewhere grounded in reality. My reality. A club, a bar, a pub. Just with normal people living their normal lives. Bonus points if it's so loud that it drowns out the voices in my head."
Her piercing green eyes swept over my body, almost as if she was trying to find a clue that I'd lost my mind. I hadn't. If I had, I'd be making stupid decisions rather than thinking them through logically.
"Back to our hotels first," I continued when she didn't immediately reply, "so we can get changed. Then I'll meet you?"
"Sure." The bright easiness returned to her tone, her eyes lightening. "Sounds like a plan. You should let Teddy know first. I'm not smuggling you out of here."
Wonderful. Should have known it wouldn't be as easy as just walking out.
To my equal surprise and disappointment, though, Ed didn't only say it was fine, he also offered to come with me. Obviously he didn't know that I planned to continue my night elsewhere, so I scrambled for an excuse to leave alone.
My eyes swung across the room to find Camille. For someone so adamant that her private relationship with Jamie was purely platonic, they sure put on a convincing show of kissing each other goodbye.
"It's fine," I said to Ed. "You stay here and enjoy the rest of your night. You should be celebrating."
When I dragged my gaze back onto him, he was also watching Camille leave, and I saw the tell-tale signs of suspicion clouding his narrowed eyes.
"I've had enough," he said, smiling easily at me. He took my hand and squeezed. "Come on, let's get out of here."
***
Thank you for reading :) xx
***
I re-wrote this chapter so many times, and I'm still not 100% happy. But on the plus side, it turned out extra long! Anyway, looking ahead to the upcoming parts... I think fans of Mark will enjoy the next couple of chapters :)