Sorry for taking up your precious time. But thank you for the good wishes and for passing me on to your team. I’ve emailed them directly.
Excuse me for saying this, and perhaps it’s just in my imagination, but you sound…cold and distant.
But…whatever. I’m around from tomorrow until the launch date in a little over a month’s time.
I would like to see you again, Bryce, but I understand if your super-tight schedule doesn’t allow it. On the off-chance you haven’t turned into a robot and still like a good steak I’d love to buy you lunch.
Let me know.
Best wishes,
Savvie
PS Since you seem to need reminding, it’s been three years and four months since we last saw each other. Your memory used to be sharper than this. Guess some things do change!
I was torn between grinning at her sheer nerve and cussing at her unsubtle hints that my response was in any way defective. But even as I vacillated between anger and amusement, my gaze remained riveted on the eighth line:
I would like to see you again…
A pulse of resentment sizzled beneath my skin, laced with abrasive disappointment I hadn’t been able to let go in over three long years. That inability to let go, to consign her to my past where she belonged, where I’d successfully archived a lot of emotional crap, was what pissed me off the most.
Case in point: my parents.
Another case in point: my crappy relationship with my siblings, in particular. My extended family, in general.
But somehow, Savannah Knight remained a burr under my skin that wouldn’t be evicted.
Somehow, years ago she’d made it past the barricades I’d erected; somehow even set herself up in her own little bunker, immune from all the shit going on in my life. And every now and then…when I’d felt as if I were drowning, that bunker had been a godsend.
My safe place…until it and she wasn’t.
Maybe I hadn’t dug deep enough to evict her.
Maybe it was time to confront it…her…head-on. Thrash it out once and for all and put it behind me. It’d been festering for long enough and I knew that corrosive wound, coupled with my feelings towards my own family, had contributed to keeping people at arm’s length.
On the family front, I was more than okay with maintaining the status quo. Years of rebuffed advances and the eventual realisation that the Mortimers would never be a close-knit, happy unit like the ones I’d dreamed of had finally put paid to childish imaginings.
Even my brother Gideon’s out-of-the-blue phone call that he’d met the one a few months ago hadn’t dented my cynicism. As for my parents, they’d never wanted me, hadn’t hung around even long enough to see my first day of school before cutting me out of their lives.
But Savannah…
She’d let me believe that, despite hard-learnt lessons, there was a possibility for more…for joy…long after I’d sworn never to let anyone close. Long after a confused eight-year-old had been summoned into a cold study of one relative accompanied by a nanny and informed that the mother who didn’t want him was never coming back, having died when her car went off some cliff in Switzerland. That his hopes of a Disney-style reconciliation were turned to dust for ever.
That child had grown into a cynical teenager, fully steeped in the dysfunction that ruled his super-wealthy, super-emotionally-bankrupt family.
Somewhere along that journey as a fully-fledged teenage malcontent, one Savannah Knight had illuminated my dark soul with grace, humour and a megawatt smile.
And then taken it all away like a magician’s cruel trick.
If nothing else, she deserved a piece of my mind before I relegated her to the past for good. I’d done it with my siblings. I’d achieved it with my parents. With Savannah, all it needed was some good old-fashioned face-to-face.
My answer was shorter than the last. Straight to the point.
Lunch tomorrow. One p.m. My office.
Get your little birds to tell you where if you don’t know.
Bryce
She replied within seconds.
I’ll be there.
Savvie
I wanted to resent the shortened nickname that reminded me so much of our past. Of laughter and secret angst. Of beauty and betrayal. Of daring to stretch the limits of friendship and ending up with nothing but broken promises. And yes, for reminding me of giving in to uncontrollable urges in the privacy of my bedroom.
I wanted to remain steadfast on formal ground. What did it matter, though? Savannah or Savvie, she remained the same person.
The girl who’d been my best friend. My port in the storm. Who’d coaxed me with smiles and laughter to step onto the edge with her. Then left me there.
The woman she’d turned into had betrayed me, shown me in no uncertain terms that our friendship meant nothing.
The phone on my desk buzzed. I ignored it, my fingers creeping once more towards my mouse. The website I called up was one I was unwillingly familiar with, driven to all those years ago by that same crazy compulsion that fuelled everything to do with Savannah. That stuck onto my skin like an unwanted tattoo.
The page had been created before she’d become famous. Before she’d exploded onto the world stage and into the fantasy of every red-blooded male who set eyes upon her.
The Personal Fan Page of Savannah Knight: World’s Number One Plus-Size Lingerie Model.
Her pictures were plastered all over the page, each one more breathtaking than the last. Each shot showing a profusion of her signature dark gold corkscrew curls. Every single picture drove a hot spike of lust through my groin, and even before I was halfway down the page I was as hard as fuck, torn between frustration that she still had this effect on me, a hunger I couldn’t contain and a compulsion to keep going. Keep devouring. Keep salivating. Perhaps even unzip my fly, take out my cock and masturbate like a randy teenager right here in my damn office.
I resisted that last urge by pushing myself closer to my desk, as if shoving my lower half under my desk would kill the insane urge.
Mentally rolling my eyes at myself, I scrolled faster. An addict seeking his sweet spot.
Since launching her own lingerie brand, every runway show Savannah had staged had been a huge success. Every season had brought her more accolades until she now needed a couple of bodyguards for protection from sometimes overeager fans.
At one picture, I just stopped…stared.
Bloody hell, she was gorgeous.
Skin a dark sunset gold, so smooth and soft and warm, it’d been a challenge to keep from touching her when we were platonic teenage friends, when what we’d had between us had been too unique, too sacred to mess with. Adulthood had brought further challenges but, with more restraint, I’d had a better handle on it.
Or so I’d thought…
I shifted in my chair, forcefully reminding myself why Savvie Knight, the only person who’d made it onto a list of one labelled Friendship, no longer resided there. The memories kept tumbling through my mind as relentlessly as the pictures flowing up the screen.
She’d disparagingly called herself a mongrel. I’d thought her stunning beyond words.
Lucky enough to have the noble blood of African chiefs and the integrity of not one but two accomplished professors flowing through her veins. I’d listened with unbridled jealousy, sprawled at the foot of her teenage bed, as she’d offhandedly rattled off tales of her African heritage alongside vexed recounting