2: The Gossip Girl Delusion
Griffin blinked. He blinked again. He blinked for a third time, and I wondered if he was so shocked that he had been stunned into mutism.
This was the 21st century - I didn't think this would be that much of a shock.
'You're joking.' Griffin said immediately. '...Aren't you?'
I gave him a look, raising my eyebrows. I wasn't too sure exactly how I had expected him to react, if I was going to be honest.
'Er, don't be a presumptuous prick, please,' I said, uncrossing one of my arms and jabbing him in the arm. I couldn't help myself in touching him somehow. 'Is that really something I would make up?'
Well okay, obviously it was something I had just made up, but he wasn't going to find out that small detail any time soon.
But in all seriousness: holy mother of shit at my quick thinking. I was way more deserving of an Oscar than Anne Hathaway for hacking off her hair. My quick thinking and acting was bloody convincing, even if I did say so myself.
Griffin looked a bit flabbergasted, and I didn't know whether to laugh or not at his bewildered expression, his eyebrows knitting together.
'But your friend with the toilet name clearly had a thing for you.'
'Toilet name?' I asked, eyes widening, before realising that he meant Lewis when Griffin elaborated, 'Yeah, Loo or something.'
I snorted in an unladylike way and looked away from Griffin, resisting the urge to roll my eyes by closing them briefly and letting out a slow, deep exhale. 'Nice, I'll tell Lewis you called him that. It's definitely a new one.'
I ran a slightly clammy hand along my bare arm, switching to fiddling with the lace appliqué on the spaghetti strap of my dress which had twisted up, in order to smooth it straight. The hairs on my arm had stuck up a little bit in reaction to the intense way Griffin was regarding me, grey eyes boring into my face in a way that made me feel a little like I was naked. It was almost as though he could see right through my clothes, somehow as if he could see right through me, straight through my lie.
I held his gaze unwaveringly, refusing to be the one to look away first.
'Are you telling me that nothing has ever happened between the two of you?' Griffin pushed, referring again to Lewis and me.
I couldn't resist rolling my eyes this time, teasingly asking, 'Why? Are you jealous?'
'Basically, yeah,' Griffin said bluntly, and my eyebrows instantaneously shot up.
This boy really was telling the truth when he said he didn't beat around the bush. It was refreshing actually, because most of the time it felt as though I was the only other person like that around.
'Well don't be. Nothing ever happened because - as I said before - I'm gay, a lesbian, as bent as a right angle,' I lied.
I would admit it myself: I had always been a supremely good liar. For some reason I had developed the uncanny knack for always managing to tell when people were lying to me, too, actually. Even the slightest waver in someone's voice or a furtive flicker of the eyes in the wrong direction would give them away to me, and I wasn't afraid to call them out on it.
But maybe it was because I was constantly looking for the lies, unlike everybody else, which made me so aware of them.
'Plus, I've got a girlfriend, you know,' I went on when I saw Griffin's expression, feeling the need to say something which would cement my "coming out" to him in his mind.
It made me uneasy that he was even a little bit dubious, that he maybe knew that I wasn't telling him the truth. No one had ever questioned or called me out on my occasional lies.
I was making it sound like I was a pathological, lying-obsessed liar myself, but I swear I was far from it.
'Oh yeah? What's your girlfriend's name, then?' Griffin shot out the question, smiling at me wryly with one eyebrow raised as he gestured towards the club with his head. 'Is she one of the girls back in there?'
'Nah, Nova isn't in there,' I said, inserting the first name I could think of, which just so happened to be the name of the person who had been my best friend since I was eleven.
Griffin's grin widened and he crossed his arms over his chest.
'What? Why are you smiling at me like that?' I said, narrowing my eyes and resisting the urge to extend my finger and jab him roughly in the chest at his slightly complacent stare.
'Can I meet her?' he inquired.
'Er, no? Why the fuck would you want to? That's creepy, buddy,' I said, narrowing my eyes and mirroring his body language by folding my own arms. 'Like I said, we've only just met.'
'Ouch,' Griffin said, clamping a hand to his chest on the left side where his heart was. '"Buddy". I think I just got friend-zoned.'
Just as I was about to sassily retort, a couple stumbled out of the club then, the sudden opening of the doors practically making me jump out of my skin, causing Griffin to let out a laugh. He had dimples, I noted, feeling my insides flood with warmth at his smile, both corners of his mouth hitching up.
His grin slowly dropped into an expression of disgust, which was still tinged with a hint of amusement however, when the clearly intoxicated couple who had just burst out of the club started making out fiercely against the brick wall a few feet away. The girl's legs were clamped around her companion's waist and he pinned her to the wall with his body, all Griffin and I could see of her being her bare calves and strappy high heels, which must have hurt like a bitch every time they bumped into her... male friend's back. (I would have called him her boyfriend, but you really couldn't tell these days, especially considering the fact we were at a club.)
It looked pretty much as though they were having clothed sex, and I wondered as I glanced at them for a second, whether it was difficult to do the horizontal dance technically vertically, against a wall. Surely it must have gotten tiring quite quickly?
When I turned back to face Griffin, I found his amused gaze on me.
'Somebody likes to watch, then?' Griffin remarked with a laugh.
I was never one to blush, but something tonight (hell, let's blame it on the alcohol) had made me feel a bit giddy, as if everything was heightened. It was like being a teenager again, the feeling of finding yourself partnered with the best looking guy in school and trying not to give away just how gorgeous you thought he was as you tried to stammer out a coherent, intelligent-sounding conversation and involuntarily laughed at everything he said. It was like that feeling. Except maybe even more so, because I, Laina Carter, felt actual colour rise to my face.
'Piss off. Don't be a perv,' I said, with a roll of my eyes and turning away so he couldn't see my slightly flushed cheeks. 'Everyone knows that's my job.'
Griffin laughed again, throwing his head back like the laughter was bubbling over and out of him, and I found myself holding my breath. The sound really did something to me, a feeling poised between panic and exhilaration which made me feel as though my heart missed every other beat.
'In all seriousness though,' I said, looking at Griffin earnestly, 'I mean what I'm saying. We've only just met, buddy, and I think you just want what you can't have. I'm about as unavailable as it gets, I'm afraid.'
'Hey, don't be a presumptuous prick,' Griffin replied, repeating what I had called him barely two minutes ago, wrinkling his nose at me to let me know he was joking.
Slowly and deliberately, he reached a hand forward, the other arm hanging relaxed and by his side, sweeping a stray lock of hair back behind my ear. My lips parted in surprise, the sharp intake of breath I took audible.
'What the hell are you doing?' I asked him, planting a palm flat on his chest and pushing him away from me.
'I'm not too sure,' Griffin said with another easy, languid smile. 'But I think I'm going to be your friend, Laina.'
'Er, I don't think so,' I said, scrunching up my nose and turning on the defensiveness immediately, as much as I wanted to swoon over what he had said. I hadn't been aware people like him actually existed. 'I don't tend to form friendships with such dominating douchebags.' I paused before continuing, 'I'm going to head back in now, but it was nice meeting you. I would say hope to see you soon, but I'd be lying.'
Griffin laughed again, running a hand through his brown hair, coppery tones glinting as the lights reflected off it. 'We'll see.'
'No,' I replied instantly. 'I don't think we will.'
I strutted (or I hoped I did) back into Exult without even glancing back at Griffin, not knowing as I knocked back shots with my Light My Match gang, just quite how wrong I was.
*
The rest of that weekend passed quickly, although the morning which followed my leaving gathering found and greeted me with a diabolical hangover, and to Lewis crashed out on my bed next to me. His chest, which rose and fell evenly, was bare, but partially covered by the sheets in which we were both tangled.
My heart had started pounding as soon as I woke up and became aware of the fact someone was in my bed. Once the grogginess which clouded my brain lifted a little bit, however, the familiarity and trust which I associated with Lewis flooded into the space the sleepiness had occupied.
Peeking underneath the duvet to check my state of dress with my breath held when I woke up, I had seen that I was mercifully still wearing my dress from the night before, making me breathe a sigh of relief when I saw that Lewis was still wearing his jeans, too. It meant we had probably been too tired and wasted to go the whole way, though I did get flashes of remembering Lewis' hands pushing up my dress and dipping into my underwear, of my legs locking around his neck as he kissed a tipsy trail up my legs.
There had always been an attraction between Lewis and me, right from the very start when I had begun working with him. I could remember him sitting coolly on his desk in his office when I walked in on my very first day at work, talking with Benji, who I later found out was his cousin, and that their mums had initially started their matchmaking business up together. He had looked over and smiled warmly, abruptly turning my insides to mush.
While I had made sure to be careful never to mingle my personal life and my work life, eventually the two of us acted on our mutual attraction on my birthday, resulting in us hitching a cab back to my flat and sexing it up on the living room floor.
Surprisingly, it hadn't changed anything. We were still great friends, never mentioning that one admittedly amazing night we had had - incredible minus the fact we had to take turns to vomit down the toilet in my one bathroom for the latter part of the night post-birthday.
Sometimes though, when I caught myself looking at Lewis and his warm brown eyes would lock with mine too, I wondered if I had made a mistake by making him promise that we would always keep things casual and platonic. Although platonic was probably a bad word to use, considering it would make what we had now done on two occasions kind of incestuous.
That morning, after we had both blearily opened our eyes with our heads pounding, when I told Lewis that in order to get Griffin to back off I'd had to lie about being gay, Lewis had guffawed for about ten years as he tried to put on his shirt - unsuccessfully because he was laughing so hard, eventually giving up and collapsing back onto the bed with me.
'Laina, you utter legend,' Lewis had managed to choke out between laughter as we lay side by side, the bed quivering. He had eventually wished me luck and pecked me chastely on the forehead, and I smacked his rear-end affectionately in farewell, feeling a little bit heavy hearted.
When I considered the friendships I had built with my Light My Match gang over the years, I knew that I would always have them to fall back on.
Before I knew it, Monday had rolled round and I was ready to start my first day of work, nervous and praying that people there would like me. I had easily been myself at Light My Match; it was comfort and it was homeand I had found a family there, but I needed something new and exciting.
I had spent the evening on Sunday freaking out about what to wear. Eventually settling on my cream blazer over a black skater dress, paired with my cream lace pumps, I hoped that I looked chic but casual, since that was what I had seen glimpses of other people wearing from when I had gone in for my interview with Kate, the PR Manager.
It had taken a pathetic amount of time for me to get used to using the tube since I had moved to London a year and a half ago in order to be closer to my old job, one of the best and worst decisions of my life.
When my best friend Nova had moved abroad, I found that the city we used to live in had very little to offer me anymore, especially since my mum and stepdad had moved to live by the Swanage coast a month after Nova had left, living in Sydney with family for the last eleven months, travelling around Europe before that. Her huge family had spread across the globe and she stayed with them,which cut a ton of her costs, living in places like Italy, whereas my small family was very much concentrated completely in the UK.
We Skyped or FaceTimed every so often, but it wasn't the same, and it was ridiculously hard to catch each other a lot of the time, considering the time difference. London had always been calling to me, and I guess that had been my push to answer it.
Anxiety seemed to flow through every ember of my being that first day of my new job, my teeth clamped down on my lower lip for the most part of the morning. I had forgotten how unnerving starting a new job was, fearful excitement coursing through me.
The nearest tube station to the office building was still a five minute walk away from it, with a view of the whole of London, since we were on the twenty-third floor. It was in a gorgeous part of London, everything pristine and surprisingly green, considering we were in the centre of the huge city.
Getting the lift up to the right floor, I hesitantly walked through the glass doors, which made me wonder if I was too casually dressed in a place as sophisticated as this. I had to resist the sudden overwhelming urge to turn around and run away right back to my cluttered but cosy flat.
Fortunately though, standing by the front desk was Kate, firm and stern-looking but actually absolutely lovely.
'Hi Laina,' she called my name as soon as she saw me, a smile pulling up her face and making her look years younger than her actual age of thirty-eight. 'How are you, darling? I'll show you to your desk, yes? Staff briefing's going to be in around fifteen minutes, and Cara will bring us all round coffee then - it's going to be a bloody busy week considering the recall of all that makeup, that Drew Turner scandal, those idiot MPs and their affair-' Kate talked at a million miles an hour and walked almost that fast too.
'Wait, Drew Turner the actor?' I asked her a little breathlessly. I had to walk quickly to keep up with her fast and long strides. I was also glad though, that Kate had essentially thrown me into the action immediately - it made me feel so much more comfortable than I would have been if I was mooching around trying to make small talk with her and my other new colleagues.
'Yep, caught getting high on the set of his new film - off LSD, no less.' Kate's face was grim, whereas I was spluttering in disbelief, wondering whether to laugh.
'What?! That doesn't sound like Drew in the slightest,' I said, heart plummeting as I gaped at Kate, unable to fully register what she had just said. As Kate gestured to my new desk, she gave me a curious look, which prompted me to explain, 'Oh - er, he was my best friend's fiancé. Before you know, they split up a couple of years ago.'
Kate nodded in understanding, like it was the most ordinary thing in the world for my best friend to have been engaged to a Hollywood actor. 'Yes, I remember that actually. Poor guy I suppose, pretty much lost everything, didn't he? And he's only what? Twenty-seven? Twenty-eight?'
Pursing my lips, I felt myself frown.
'Anyway lovely,' Kate said, clapping her hands together forcefully in order to perk us both up from the increasingly depressing turn our conversation had taken, 'I'll leave you to set your things down and settle in and I'll see you in the meeting room in ten minutes.'
Nodding in reply, I tried to unclamp my pursed lips from each other, attempting to ignore the sadness swelling up in my chest which had begun to ache. Admittedly over the last couple of years, my thoughts had rarely turned to Drew.
I had always assumed that he would be okay after he and Nova had lost their baby, and Nova decided to quite literally move as far away as bloody possible. Since then, Drew had shied away from the spotlight and had stayed away from any film projects, which was probably why I hadn't seen or thought about him very much recently.
We had never been close enough to stay in contact after Nova stopped being the common factor in both of our lives. It just never occurred to me that things would get that bad for the guy.
Putting my things down at my desk, I was still distracted as I meandered into the meeting room and took a seat at one of the empty blue chairs which were along both sides of the huge wooden table.
So much so, that I didn't notice who I had just perched my arse beside.
'Well, well, well, look what the cat dragged in. Fancy meeting you here, GG.'
An amused voice floated into my ears, coming from a person who had leant their head intimately close to mine - close enough for me to have felt their minty breath graze against the sensitive skin of my neck, the hairs on the back of it standing on end like I'd just been electrocuted.
Eyes widening, my head spun around to face the person the voice belonged to so quickly that it made a cracking noise and grazed against the side of his head, the cringe-inducing sound making both me and him wince.
Mother-duck-fucker.
'What are you doing here?' I whisper-shouted at Griffin in alarm, sparing a furtive glance around the room. We still had a couple of minutes before staff briefing officially started, so everyone was still having their own conversations. I only saw one guy staring at Griffin and me curiously, but I was too distracted by the one beside me to take too much notice.
'Er, I think I work here, GG,' Griffin replied patronisingly, eyebrow raised.
'You... work here?'
Oh flipping fudge-fucker. This was just my luck.
Narrowing my eyes after Griffin nodded complacently, I demanded to know, 'And what the hell is this GG business?'
Griffin grinned. 'Ever since our twenty minute long relationship, I've been thinking of you as GG - as in Gay Girl. Almost like Gossip Girl except, you know...gay.'
There was a silence for a split second.
'I genuinely can't tell for the life of me whether that's homophobic or not,' I said, unable to repress a smile, but pressing the bridge of my nose with my thumb and forefinger to conceal it. 'And I'm touched that you've been thinking about me. Although I think GG should stand for something else, like Glorious Girl, for example. xoxo Gay Girl just doesn't have a ring to it,' I mumbled to Griffin out of the corner of my mouth as Kate stood up at the front of the room and everyone turned quiet, their attention diverting to her.
Griffin let out a short laugh before settling back in his seat, his hands clasped over his middle in a content, casual manner.
I could almost hear his thoughts echo mine.
This was certainly going to be interesting.