Page 75 of The Refusal

His gaze roams my face for a bit, then he shrugs. “Walk out with me?” he says.

40

Janus

From my balcony, the lights of Manhattan resemble fireflies dancing across a dark field, the rumble and shrill of traffic a distant chaos. Cubes of ice are slowly melting in my whiskey, and the oily liquid slides as I roll the glass side to side in my hand. There’s an ache just below my breastbone every time I think about Hong Kong, and now Jo and I have fallen down some damn rabbit hole. How much damage can a silly little article do? The way Jo denied we were in any kind of relationship today has left a bruise under my skin. I don’t think she would have done that if the trip to Asia had meant to her what it meant to me. Am I imagining how intense it was in bed night after night? I could see the panic on her face today, hear the tremor in her voice, so I backed off. I didn’t want either of us to say things we couldn’t take back.

The last red-carpet event I went to, there was a huge bank of cameras and never-ending shouts of “Over here!” Did I even look at the papers the next day? If Jo’s company grows like she wants it to, then they’re going to be interested in her, and she’ll be on the end of those camera lenses whether she likes it or not. This article is a tiny wrinkle in the pages and pages written about me, and perhaps it wasn’t that complimentary about her, but newspapers always publish nonsense, so this all feels like a massive overreaction.

On my way to see Jo, I called my publicist, Julie, to fix the meeting for tomorrow morning, and she agreed with me that, if we wade in on it, the press will become more suspicious that something is up. We haven’t responded to things which were much worse than this in the past—and why would we? The women involved have often wanted the publicity; that was the reason they wanted me there.

I fling the ice from my glass into the nearest planter, missing it and it bounces off the ceramic and skids across the tiles. When she said she wanted to issue a denial, I wasn’t sure what she was saying. If this carries on, we’ll have to be seen in public togethersometime, so does this mean we can’t ever have a relationship? My stomach drops with the thought. The wail of a siren reaches up from the street and sets my teeth on edge. She’s doesn’t seem to want to push past problems with me at all.

I pour myself some more whiskey from the bottle on the side table, and the alcohol burns my lips and all the way down my throat. How much will it take to tip me into oblivion?

My phone starts an insistence buzz on the low table in front of me and my chest expands.Jo. But when I turn it over, a picture of me and my brother appears on the screen and I slump back into the chair. The pair of us are standing on top of a snowy mountain next to a ski lift with the broadest smiles on our faces.

“Bryn. What are you doing up this late?”

“Well, hello to you too, little brother. I know you don’t get home until godforsaken o’clock and I’ve just finished my marking. So I thought I’d catch you after a random and unusual early-morning call from Hong Kong. How the hell are you?”

“I’m good. Good. Yeah.” I hesitate. “Good.”

How many times can I repeat good here? “Well … someone’s messing with our system, and we’re not sure who yet, but we’re trying to sort it.”

“You must be keeping it quiet; I haven’t seen anything in the papers.”

Thank God Bryn doesn’t read the gossip pages. And here’s another thing: the press focusing on a relationship between Jo and I might be distracting them from the other problems the company’s having. Ugh. I’m silent too long for my uber-observant brother.

“Stressful, huh?”

“Yeah, nothing unusual—you?” Luckily for me, he isn’t one to push.

“Crazy kids, crazy lives, adults who are AWOL, the whole gamut. Rescued some kid from a playground in the dark the other night—he’s only six—parents nowhere to be found, probably out doing drugs. Had to take him to emergency care. The poor guy was acting out like shit.”

God, what am I doing in my ivory tower apartment when people’s lives are falling apart like this? Not for the first time, what my brother has chosen to do with his life gives me a warm thrill.

“You get him sorted?”

“Yeah.” He lets out a long, controlled breath. “As much as you can in this situation.”

He fills me in on the kid’s background, and listening to his problems makes the tension in my shoulders start to ease off.

Eventually he says, “You’re quiet tonight, not talking my ear off like you usually do. Where’s my impatient brother gone?”

“Oh, you know. Just mulling over stuff.”

“Personal or business?”

Do I want to talk to him about this?

“Personal.”

“Woah, really? I thought you had a drama-free situation there. Lots of compliant women falling all over you. Beautiful girls, premieres …”

I chuckle. He has such a distorted view of my life. “Yeah, I met a less amenable one.”

Bryn will understand this—his wife is a firecracker. He gives me a hollow sound somewhere between a laugh and a cough.

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