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“Calm down. Anyone with eyes can see she’s yours,” Kip assures me, a wide grin etched across his face. “Does she feel the same way about you? Because to be honest, I have no idea what she’s thinking half the time. She’s so open, but so closed off. Unless she wants you to know something, it’s impossible to read her.”
“She’s quick to remind me that this is all fake, but I don’t think she really believes that anymore. I’ve told her I stopped pretending a while back, but I’m not sure she believes me. But she lets me touch her like she belongs to me, so that’s got to mean something, right?”
His burst of laughter is loud and full of unrestrained amusement. “Dude, you are so fucked.”
39
IZABELLA
Penelope vomits up everything she’s drunk and eaten into the toilet while I hold her hair back. Her usually flawless makeup is melting down her face as tears leak from her eyes. She looks awful.
“I think I’m done,” she groans, rolling back onto her butt, shuffling until her back hits the side of the bath and she sighs, slumping against it.
“How much did you have to drink?”
“Enough to make me sick,” she snaps, still bitchy despite the state she’s in.
“Wow, most people would be at least slightly grateful for someone holding their hair out of their puke, but I suppose I shouldn’t be shocked you’re not,” I grumble, lowering myself to the floor and sitting next to her.
“You look good,” she slurs, eyeing me with unfocused eyes.
“Thanks. It’s nice to wear clothes I actually like.” I laugh. “But it helps that Fitzy is delivering clothes to the house every night for me too.”
“How did you do it?” she asks, her expression serious even through the drunken haze.
“Do what?”
“How did you get him to like you?”
“Gulliver?” I ask, suddenly wondering where she’s going with this.
She nods, and her whole body moves with the motion, like she’s not in control of her movements.
Wrinkling my brow, I consider her question for a moment. “I’m not sure I did anything. Maybe it’s just that I don’t want anything from him, at least not in a permanent sense. I don’t want to control him or make him commit to a future at eighteen. We’re friends, and he’s nice. I mean, he’s an asshole, but he’s nice to me.” I shrug and watch as she drunkenly tries to process what I’ve said.
“But you’re having sex.”
She says this like a statement and not a question, so I don’t bother to deny it. “Yes, we’re having sex.”
“What’s it like?” she asks, her voice wistful and a little sad.
“Awesome.” The word slips from my lips before I can think better of it, and once it’s out, I can’t take it back, so I just smile.
Penelope’s laugh shocks me. This is such a surreal moment—us together talking about sex like normal sisters, normal teenagers.
“They want me to marry Geoffrey Bancroft,” she says on a half-sob.
“What?”
“Mom and Dad. Now that you and Gulliver have been plastered all over the society pages, they’ve decided that Geoffrey is the next best option.”
“I don’t know who Geoffrey is,” I say.
“Google him,” she sobs, letting her head drop back to rest against the lip of the bath and covering her face with her hands as she half laughs, half cries.
I feel my brow furrow as I pull my cell from where it’s wedged into my back pocket and quickly enter Geoffrey Bancroft into a Google search. The first picture that pops up is of a balding, overweight guy in what I’d guess is his thirties. He’s wearing a navy double-breasted jacket with gold buttons and a white shirt open at the neck to reveal a pink cravat pluming dramatically in an elaborate knot.
I move to the next image, then the next, but the only person I can find is this guy who’s far too old for my beautiful eighteen-year-old sister.
