I wander downstairs one afternoon a few days later and into the kitchen to start prepping for dinner. Julian’s flying off the handle. Fucking for gold at the sexual Olympics. I haven’t really seen him and I feel like he needs a hug but he won’t let me near him. It’s nothing fancy, just his favourites; roast chicken, roasties and veg. I do make sensational gravy from the drippings though, mixed with my own homemade bone broth.1
When I walk into the kitchen, all the boys freeze.
TK, Booker, Declan and Carmelo.
“Hey.” Declan nods mostly with his chin.
“Hi?” I give him a confused look, walking further in and they all sort of shuffle in unison.
I glance around at them. “What’s going on…?” I sing song.
“Nothing—” They all shake their heads.
“Is Julian doing something disgusting and you don’t want me to see?”
“Yeah.” TK nods. “Yep, that’s it.”
I try to peer past him. “Is he behind you?”
“No—” Carmelo shakes his head. “You look great today though—”
“What?” I frown.
“Doesn’t she?” Carms looks at the boys for back up.
“Yes.” Book nods emphatically. “So great.”
I cross my arms over my chest. They’re being weird. I eye them all suspiciously. “Tell me what’s going on.”
Declan’s face scrunches up. “Nah.”
“Declan.” I stare over at him. “What the fuck is going on?”
“Have you been on the internet today?” Teeks asks carefully and Books elbows him to shut up.
“No—?” I shake my head.
“Good.” Carms shrugs. “Keep it that way.”
I reach for my phone from my pocket and then realise I left my phone upstairs.
“Just tell me—” I look between them.
“There’s a sex tape of Christian and Vanna Ripley on the internet,” TK says quickly.
“What the fuck, man!” Declan stares at him. “That is not what we practiced—”
I blink twice. “What!”
My face goes blank and still. I’m just a giant pair of eyes.
Carmelo and Decks move towards me.
“It’s old,” Carms says. “You can tell it’s old—”
“How can you tell?” I frown.
I think my breathing’s starting to go a bit funny.
“I mean, I’ve seen him with you—” Carmelo shrugs. “He wouldn’t do that—”
“How do you know!” I yell louder, clearer.
Carmelo starts shaking his head. “I didn’t do it, don’t yell at me!”
“His hair looks different?” TK offers quickly.
“You’ve seen it?” I stare over at him.
“Oh—” He shrugs. “Yeah, but, like— it’s everywhere.”
I press my hands into my cheeks. “Everywhere everywhere?”
He shrugs but it’s a passive nod. “Not like, everywhere, just like — Instagram, Facebook, BBC, Loose Lips, TMZ, Tell Me Lore…”2
My jaw drops and I glance between the others. “Have you seen it?”
The all nod a bit apologetically.
“Give me your phone,” I tell Declan, holding my hand out to him.
“Oh—” He shakes his head with an uncomfortable smile. “I had a feeling you’d say that and that I’d find it hard not to give it to you, so I left mine in my car—”
“Why?” I glare.
“Oi, Dais—” He gives me a firm look. “Trust me on this. You don’t want to see it.”
“Why?” I ask, my heart racing, palms sweaty, definitely dizzy.
Early signs of an anxiety attack.3 “Is it very bad?” I press.
Declan nods cautiously at the same time that Booker cries out passionately, “Fuck no! He’s a master!”
“Get out—” Declan points to the door.
“No!” I yell at Books. “Come back! Give me your phone!”
Booker freezes like a deer in headlights.
“Booker—” Decks starts. “Walk away right now. Do not give her your phone, or I swear to God I’ll beat y—”
“Books!” I talk over Declan. “Give me your phone—”
Booker glances back and forth between us, unsure. His head like a ping pong ball.
“Don’t,” Declan warns.
“Give it to me—” Me, through clenched teeth.
Declan shakes his head. “Do. Not.”
“Give me the fucking phone—” I growl.
Declan turns back to me. “You cannot look at this.”
“Says who?” I yell.
“Me!” He says, eyes wide. “Consider me Julian’s stand in.”
I shake my head. “I will not—”4
Declan gives me the most serious face he’s ever given me in my life.
“Trust me?”
I stare at him for a few seconds, blinking as I say slowly, “Give me a phone.”
And then Romeo walks in and wordlessly hands me his.
Declan and Carmelo stare over at him like he’s fucking insane but all I have is a surge of affection for him as he glares over at his brother and the boys.
“It’s her boyfriend.” He gives them all a filthy look. “She’s the only one here who has a right to see it and she’s the only one who hasn’t.” He shrugs.
I open Google as quickly as I can and frown at the search bar. “What do I type?”
“‘Vanna Christian Sextape’ should do it…” Booker tells me with a smile and I glare over at him.
Decks wasn’t exaggerating. It’s literally everywhere.
About a thousand hits come up immediately.
Everything from The Daily Mail to Just Jared to Cosmopolitan to People to — genuinely — fucking BBC.
I navigate over to some porn website that says FULL VIDEO!!!!5
“Are you sure?” asks Rome with a frown. I stare over at him for a few seconds and then I press play on the video.
I wring my hands together as it starts streaming.
It’s a bedroom I don’t recognise — thank God.
Vanna sets up the camera. I think it’s an iPhone. Who records with anything but an iPhone these days? And if they recorded it on an iPhone, that stupid cloud gets broken into all the time.
She walks away from the camera and Christian walks into the room,6 sitting down on the bed. He’s already shirtless.
His Calvins are popping out the top of his black track pants and I feel a punch in my gut because those same pants are laying on my bedroom floor at the moment — there’s some chit chat between them, I can’t hear — she points to the camera, smiling coyly. He glances over, sees it, snorts a laugh, then takes her hand, pulling her in towards him, takes her wrist up to his mouth and kisses up.
Up her wrist, up her arm, she arches back, lengthening herself, and one of the straps from the little silky slip she’s wearing slips from her shoulders and Christian smiles up at her in a way that never in my life, as long as I live, will I be able to clear from my memory.
I press my fingertips into my lips to steady myself, and Rome puts his hand on my lower back to help.
Vanna climbs on top of Christian, stays there like that for a while, kissing. The silk dress is soon a puddle on the floor7 and she’s naked now8, sitting on my boyfriend who, if we’re to be counting small mercies, is still in his sweats. He’s kissing the same parts of her body that he kisses on my body9, and a terrible realisation dawns on me: what he likes in sex is not me-specific. It’s female specific.
Something happens — I don’t know what exactly, my eyes are a little blurry with tears I don’t even realise I’m crying — and he flips it. Her on the bottom, him on top.
She kicks his track pants off him as fast as she can, pulling down his briefs, and there’s my boyfriend — standing extremely tall for all the world to see.
I’m pinching my lip between my nails so hard I start to bleed a bit.10
Have you ever watched the person you love having sex with someone else?
Watched it?
I don’t mean thought about it — we’ve all thought about it.
Most people have more than one sexual partner over the course of their lives so at one point or another it has to cross your mind, the person you love with someone else, but that’s not what I mean.
Have you seen it?
Have you seen their body move in sync with someone else’s?
Have you seen them pin someone else’s wrists down in the corner of a bed? Have you seen them lick up the body of someone else? Bury their face in their neck, move up to their ear and watch the person you love make someone else cry out in a pained pleasure?
I watch his tongue go places on her I don’t think I’ll let it go on me again. I watch her claw at his back. I watch him make her toes curl. I watch him eyes-closed, craning his neck back with deep gratification before winding up for what I can only assume (and from personal experience would imply) is the grand finale — and then it goes to black.
I grab the nearby bin and throw up into it.
Rome walks over to me, pulls my hair away from my face, frowning.
“I told you not to watch it—” Declan says from the other side of the room.
I throw up again.
“You should talk to him, Daisy,” Romeo tells me once I stop.
I shake my head quickly, looking at him like he’s crazy. “I can’t—”
“Face—” Rome starts. “This isn’t his fault. He didn’t—”
“I don’t care.” I shake my head quickly, looking past him to the boy. “Where’s my brother?”
Carmelo shrugs like he’s a stray dog. “MIA.”
“He’s fucked, Dais.” Declan grimaces.13
I cover my eyes with my hands and feel another wave of nausea coming on.
“Come on.” Rome nudges me. “I’ll take you to Christian’s.”
“No, Rome — I can’t see him.” I shake my head.
“I’ll take you to him—” my brother says from behind us both.
I turn around and as soon as I see him, my bottom lip starts to shake, and I run over to him.
Julian’s face is a bag of liquorice all-sorts. Angry, sad, annoyed, worried—
He hugs me in a way that blocks out the whole world for a second and for one tiny moment, I feel a bit better. Isn’t it funny how pain and sadness can be forgotten for fleeting moments? Your brain gets a tiny bit distracted and it offers you the briefest moment of reprieve. The problem with those reprieves is that they aren’t real, and reality comes hurtling back. And then you have to remember all over again that your dad is dead or your childhood sweetheart had sex in your bed or the love of your life has a sex tape with his ex-girlfriend.
The walls my brother has spent his whole life building around me can’t protect me from this one. It blasts right through in four seconds flat.
I pull back, looking up at Jules. “I don’t want to see him.”
“Sorry, Face.” He shakes his head, giving me a gentle look. “You have to see him anyway.”
I don’t mean to look as pathetic as I know do when I ring Christian’s doorbell. I begged Julian to take me home.
I cried the whole drive here — and I mean cried — deep sobs.
I honestly can’t believe Julian didn’t give in and drive me home and through a McDonald’s on the way to placate me.
In a way, it makes me feel better.
I don’t think my brother would bring me here if he thought being here would hurt me. But maybe my brother is batshit insane after his break-up because as I stand on the front door step of Christian Hemmes’ home, waiting for him to answer the door, my whole self is hurting. My body from crying so much, my heart from seeing so much and my brain from replaying so much.
Christian opens the door with a sheepish smile.
A smile? I purse my lips, confused.
“Hey—” He cringes as he surveys the damage but he can only see surface level.
The main damage is underground. A bunch of burst pipes erupting and flooding and drowning me alive.
He pulls me in towards him, holding me tightly against him. I thought it would feel weird, touching him after seeing that. But it doesn’t — as soon as he’s touching me it feels like pressure on a wound.
He pulls me upstairs to his room and he closes the door, tilting his head.
“Are you okay?” I ask him softly.
He must be so embarrassed.
“Yeah—” He gives a funny chuckle. “Yeah, I’m fine—” He shrugs his shoulders.
My brows pinch together.
“You’re fine?” I give him a confused look. “There’s a video of you on the internet having sex with your ex-girlfr—”
“Not my ex-girlfriend,” he reminds me. “We were never, you know, like—”
I look at him, a weird feeling settling in my stomach because it doesn’t make sense to me that he’s being so casual. “That was your takeaway from what I just—?”
He looks at me, quizzically. “It’s just sex, Baby!” he says with a laugh. “I mean — obviously she and I had sex, you know that—”
“Yeah! But I never wanted to see it!”
“Then why would you watch it!” he shoots back.
I stare over at him for a few seconds, assessing. “Is it old?”
He scoffs, face looking like I just slapped him. “Really?”
“Is it?” I repeat, arching my brows.
To be completely honest, this conversation isn’t going how I imagined—
I thought he’d be sad and I’d be sad, and I’d cry and maybe he would too and we’d present this brilliant united front and it’d prove to the whole world but especially to us that come what may — sex scandals and family shit aplenty — we can make it through whatever is thrown at us if we’re together, but now I don’t know.
He shakes his head the tiniest bit, looking offended and defensive. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”
“No, of course not—” I shake my head sarcastically. “You’d just make a sex tape of you and another girl, never mention it and then act like it’s no big deal when it comes out—”
“It’s not a big deal!” He gives me a look.
“Well, it is to me!”
He eyes me a little carefully. “Don’t you think you’re overreacting a bit, Dais?”
I let out a dry laugh, but he shakes his head at me.
“You’re acting like I cheated on you! But was like four or five months ago! You were still fucking Tiller—”
I squeeze my fists together. “And would you want that on the internet?”
“No — of course not.” He breathes out. “But I wouldn’t be angry at you if it was.”
“I’m not angry at you because it’s on the internet, Christian! I’m angry at you because you don’t give a fuck that it is!”
“You’d rather me be upset, then?” he quips, raising his eyebrows. “Healthy, Dais—” He shakes his head, looking away, and I just stare over at him in disbelief.
“Daisy, I’m sorry — I just don’t give a shit about this sort of thing. It was something I did before, while we were broken up. I was trying to get over you, for fuck’s sake—”
I pull out my phone and start scrolling upward, furiously. “What are you doing?” He rolls his eyes.
His phone pings and he looks down at it.
A photo of me sitting on a sunbed with Romeo wrapped around me from behind. We’re somewhere in Europe. I’m in swimmers, so is Romeo.
Christian glares up at me. “Why?”
His phone pings again. He eyes me, warningly, then looks down.
It’s a photo Jack took of me and Tiller when we weren’t looking. We’re in a doorway. I’m in tiny pyjamas and he’s in just his boxers, his arms are draped around my arms lazily, thoughtlessly, even, and in my guts something pangs like I miss that policeman who I used to love who’d never be cavalier about making a sex tape with someone else, and here I am, fully in love with someone who’s made one and doesn’t give a fucking shit about it.
The photo I sent to Christian’s phone, I’m gazing up at Tiller in it and I love it even now, because somehow Jack caught the most intimate moment. It’s so human.
Christian glares over at me, teeth gritted. “Why do you still have these?”
I breathe in and out of my nose.
“Do you still have a copy of your sex tape?” I ask, calmly.
His jaw juts out.
“Fuck yourself,” I tell him and then I leave.
1 Don’t buy it, just make it, it’s so easy.
2 So actually, literally everywhere.
3 I don’t usually have those. Not my style.
4 “Gross, man.” TK scrunches his face up.
“Didn’t they naff?” Carmelo whispers to Booker.
5 Worth noting, the capital letters and exclamation points are not my own personal embellishments.
6 I feel sick.
7 I hate silk now.
8 I hate naked now.
9 This is a big unmercy.
10 Rome glances at me, nervous.
11 Her?
12 Our?
13 It’s been a handful of days since he and Magnolia ended and it’s just been one big string of drugs and girls with him.
