Grand Lies by JC Hawke

3

Nina

I sitin the back of the taxi with my legs pulled up under me, my head lolling to the side as it thuds against the window in regret. I’ve never felt so dirty—the need to scrub at every inch of my body is overwhelming.

Is this how she felt?

My eyes grow heavy, and I blink them closed before they can fill with tears. I refuse to feel sorry for my mother. It’s the last thing she deserves.

Rain falls fiercely on the windshield, the pelting so savage and unrelenting it demands my focus, but does nothing to deter my thoughts from the internal storm that’s raging inside me. I stare straight ahead, feeling completely lost.

I’m not angry at Mason (lie). I’m angry at myself. Mad that I put myself in such a degrading situation. I’ve had one-night stands before, most of them whilst in university, but I have never been left feeling so cheap in my life. Puffing out a breath, I pull out my phone and call Lucy.

“Nina, where the hell are you? You’re missing pancakes,” she whines.

“Luce, I—” My voice cracks and I try to swallow the lump that’s lodged in my throat.

“Where are you? Are you okay?” she asks, her words laced with concern.

A tear rolls down my cheek and I swipe it away quickly, hoping the driver doesn’t notice. “I’m in a taxi on my way home.”

“I’m on my way babe. I will get Dad to drop me home. Give me half an hour, okay?”

The line goes dead, leaving me alone with my thoughts again and shame gutting me from the inside out.

I notice I have a new voicemail and two missed calls from my mum. How ironic. I hit play, my scalp prickling as her voice drifts into my ears.

“Nina! For goodness sake, call me back. I am your mother! You should show me more respect. You move to the big city, get your fancy studio and think you can snub me. Never forget where you came from, little girl.”

Any other day I would fight her words; it’s what she wants. If we had a functional mother-daughter relationship, she’d be forced to acknowledge the guilt that I pray festers inside of her. And she is guilty. Guilty of destroying my childhood.

The taxi rolls to a stop outside my building, and I lean in to pay the driver. I catch my reflection in the mirror, instantly cringing. Dark circles surround my eyes from last night’s makeup. I look pale, like I’ve not had enough sleep, and my hair is a matted mess.

I walk up the stairs of my building unhurried, glad to be home and away from the outside world. My tiny apartment sits on the fourth floor, and its open-plan living makes it seem bigger than it actually is. I have a small U-shaped kitchen along the far wall with a wraparound island. My little kidney-shaped sofa sits against it. The coffee table is currently littered with paperwork, and yesterday’s coffee—only half finished—sits cold beside it.

My gaze scans the corner to my left. Where most would have a place to dine, I have a place to dance. A huge free-standing mirror decorates the back wall, with cushioned mats lining the floor beneath it. Fairy lights drape from the ceiling above, illuminating the small nook. It’s where I find myself when the world demands more than I’m willing to give.

I throw my bag down on the sofa on the way to my room, digging out a pair of pyjamas from my chest of drawers before heading for the shower.

I stand under the spray for what feels like forever, washing my body repeatedly until I start to feel more like myself again. The devastation I felt only hours ago washed down the drain along with all thoughts of Mason Lowell.

* * *

Lucy is layingon my bed by the time I finish showering. She pulls back the duvet for me to slide in, spooning me from behind as she throws an arm around my waist. “We dropped Megan at The Elm. She’s getting you breakfast,” she tells me.

We lie in silence for a while until Megan arrives fifteen minutes later. She drops down onto the bed, lying sprawled out at our feet.

“Fucking hell, girls, I’m never drinking again,” she groans.

I smile into my fist. I can always rely on my girls to be here when I need them, even hungover to shit they show up.

“Nina took me home to my parents. I was sick until four a.m.,” Lucy whines at the back of my head.

“Exactly why I took you to your parents, stupid.” I hesitate before adding, “I got a lift home with Elliot and Charlie’s friend, Mason. I ended up going back to his place.”

Megan sits up in a rush, instantly turning pale from the movement. “You did what?”

“I didn’t sleep with him. He told me he wouldn’t touch me because I’d been drinking.” Megan’s features relax a little. “But we kissed. A lot.” Lucy giggles at my back. “And then this morning, I woke up in his bed, and he was laying there looking all incredible and hot and I… I started to touch him.”

I think I’ve rendered them speechless, neither of them uttering a word.

“He woke up, so I kept going. I ended up giving him head.”

“Nina!” Lucy proclaims, clearly not expecting it.

“That’s not the worst of it.” I close my eyes, memories of the look on his face too much to bear as it plays out in my mind.

“Oh god, you weren’t sick, were you? I’ve totally choked on dick before.”

Both me and Lucy lift our heads, grim expressions on both our faces. “What the fuck, Megs?!” I ask as we all fall into silent chuckles.

My face grows solemn as I admit, “He thought Elliot paid me to take him home.” I pause. “He thought I was a prostitute.”

“Oh, Nina, what an ass!” Lucy croons, pulling me tighter to her.

“Oh, as if! He actually thinks he could afford you!” Megan snaps.

“Megan!” Lucy scolds.

“Shit, sorry, Nina. I didn’t think,” she says apologetically.

I give her a small smile, letting her know it’s okay. “I’ve never felt more like my mother in my life,” I mutter.

Lucy sits up, looking down at me as she rests on her arm. “Well, we all know that’s a load of rubbish. You couldn’t be any more the opposite of that woman. Come on, dry your hair. We are going out.”

“Out? Where?” I protest.

“Shopping. And the salon.” She smiles.

“Can you drop me home on the way?” Megan asks, looking moments away from sleep.

Lucy gets up, pulling the towel off my body and whipping Megan with it as she heads in the direction of the kitchen. “Nope! Get up. Both of you! It’s girls’ day.”

“Yay, girls’ day.” Megan quips, lifting her head and observing my state of nakedness, then flopping back to the bed.

* * *

It has gonefour when we arrive back at my apartment, our arms full of shopping. We laugh our way up the stairs until we reach my door.

Lucy bends, picking something up from the floor, then spins around, her lips rolling and her eyes popping wide as she stands with a massive bouquet of flowers grasped in her already overfilled hands.

I roll my eyes as I unlock my door, yearning to lean in and smell them.

Inside I stare down at my nails, now a beautiful pale pink—my toes matching. I can tell Lucy is waiting for me to turn around, so I go to the kitchen and flick on the kettle.

“You can chuck those in the bin.” I wave the teaspoon at the flowers.

She dips her head to her shoulder, looking all cute as she holds up the arrangement. “Come on, Nina. Maybe you should see what he has to say.” She waves an envelope at me. “There’s a note.”

“I’m going to put all this shopping away, and when I come back, I want them gone. Keep them for yourself for all I care. I want nothing to do with the man or the way he makes me feel.” I stomp off to my room, slamming the door like a brat as I go.

I lie on my bed, feeling stupid. I shouldn’t be feeling like this over a man I have only known for only a matter of hours. Seeing the flowers only makes me feel weak, and I don’t want to know that he’s sorry.

I don’t want to have to explain myself to him.

A few minutes later, there’s a knock at the door, and Megan’s head pops around the threshold. “Come on, drama queen, Luce is ordering in Chinese.” She winks at me, then disappears again.

We lounge on my sofa, eating takeout from the containers. Greys Anatomy reruns playing on the television, reminding me of our uni days.

“I need a McDreamy,” Lucy sighs as she stares longingly at the TV.

“You don’t go from Hugh straight to a McDreamy, Luce.” I shake my head at her, chuckling under my breath.

“I’ll just take a night with McSteamy,” Megan says, making us all laugh out loud.

I look to Megan, wondering what she would share if I asked. “Megs, how was Sam last night?” I pop my brow at her.

“Fine. We went back to his.” She shrugs her shoulders. “Messed around.”

This is all we ever get from her. She doesn’t share the dirty escapades of her sex life with us. Sometimes we may get snippets, but rarely any details. We don’t care, but it’s odd. She’s one of the most open people we know—especially with us. Nothing comes out filtered. It’s why we love her.

I drop it, not wanting to make her uncomfortable.

“So… I ran into Joey again last night,” I say into my food container.

“When?” Lucy looks confused as if trying to work it out.

“When Mason dropped me home—or tried to. I didn’t get out of the car right away, and Joey was waiting for me outside.”

“Fucking creeper,” Megan states.

“He hit Mason, but then Mason pinned him to the car and made him apologise for almost hitting me.”

The girls’ mouths drop open.

“No flipping way,” Lucy says, astonished, a slight smile pulling at the corner of her lip.

“I think he broke his nose.” I wince, remembering the awful sound.

“Who, Mason’s?” Megan asks.

“No, Joey’s. Mason punched him back.” The girls look at one another, smirking in unison. “I need to check that Joey is okay on Monday. It was bad, girls.”

“Nina, screw him! Go check on Mason!” Lucy gets up on her knees excitedly and I frown.

“What? No! Did you forget about the part when he called me a prostitute?” I retort.

“Well, did he actually use the word prostitute?” she argues back.

I glower at her as she checks her phone that’s just pinged with a text.

“Uber’s about to arrive.” She jumps up, the two of them going to the kitchen to clear up before saying goodbye.

“Thanks, girls, I needed this today.” I hug them both close.

“Always,” Megan says with a smile.

They are halfway out the door when Luce turns. “Don’t forget lunch at Mum’s tomorrow. It’s your turn to make dessert.”

I wrap my arms around myself, feeling grateful to have them both as my best friends. “Bye, girls.”

* * *

It’s aroundnine when I hear my phone ringing in my bedroom. I rush to grab it, pulling it from the charger and answering it without looking.

“Nina?!” My mother’s shrill voice comes through the line. “Nice of you to finally answer. I’ve been trying to reach you all week. I need some help this month, I can’t manage this place financially on my own.”

I close my eyes as she gives me the same old bullshit excuses. “Hi, Mum. I’m fine, thanks for asking,” I mutter.

“Oh please, if you’d had answered my call before now, I wouldn’t be so stressed out. You can be so selfish sometimes.” Ah, there we go with the blame game. It’s my fault she is stressed. It’s my fault the power got cut off. It’s my fault she had to sell her body to pay for new school shoes.

I was just eight when she first started bringing men into our home, sleeping with them for money. She never hid it from me, never apologised or wiped my tears after a night spent hiding in my room, trying to block out the noises.

I puff out a breath, scrubbing a hand down my face and not wanting to remember. “How much this time?”

I shouldn’t give it to her. It only gets spent on cigarettes, drugs and alcohol. But I know once I do, I won’t hear from her for a while. It’s bittersweet, really. How you can long to be held by someone just as fiercely as you fight to keep them at bay; how you can crave a person who has never given you a reason to love them.

And I love her, despite it all.

“Five hundred. I need to cover the electric. I’m two months behind.” She tries to justify it, but I’ve heard it a thousand times before.

I think about my savings account—or the bank of Nina to my mum. I just want her gone; it’s been a long week. “I’ll transfer it now. Please stop calling me constantly, Mum. Text me, and I will call when I am free. I teach all day.”

“Thank you,” she tells me, her voice lacking all sincerity before she quickly hangs up. And as always after speaking to her I’m left feeling disappointed. What I would give to be able to speak to my mum, open up about my crappy night and have her tell me I’m being silly and it’s just a boy.

I log into my banking app and transfer the money before she starts hounding me as to where it is.

Throwing my phone down on the coffee table, I round the kitchen island to get a much-needed glass of wine. I’m just about to pour it when I spot an envelope on the worktop.

Those damn girls don’t listen.

I pick it up and contemplate opening it. Thoughts of Mason as he lay sprawled out on his bed flash through my mind. The feel of his hands as they roamed my torso. The way his scent engulfed me as he buried his face into my neck.

I tear open the envelope, not being able to ignore the nagging feeling in my gut.

Nina, I’m so sorry about last night.

Call me. Joey

Joey?

Pain splinters through me. I toss the card into the bin and ram my hand down on top of the flowers, crushing them the best I can. The disappointment I feel at the realisation that Mason hasn’t bothered to contact me is more than I care to admit, which is stupid. Why would he contact me? It was one night—who am I kidding? It wasn’t even that. It was a couple hours of drunken stupidity on my part.

I ditch the wine glass and take the bottle back to the sofa instead, feeling foolish to think he would care.

* * *

Mase

I pacemy living area for the one hundredth time today, trying to work out what went wrong this morning and how I can fix it. I completely screwed things up with her, but I wish she’d given me a chance to explain.

She thought I was serious about the Elliot paying her thing. I wasn’t, and I shouldn’t fucking care this much.

Whydo I care this much?

Whydid I let her leave?

I run my hands through my hair as the elevator doors ping. Elliot strolls into my penthouse without a care in the world. “Where have you been all day, dickhead? I called you earlier.”

“Mase.” He smiles, walking to me and clasping my back. “It was a late one. I was sleeping when you called. You ready?” His eyes drop down my body, taking in my T-shirt and sweats. “Charlie will be here in a minute.”

“I’m not coming out. I’ve been calling you. Do you have Nina’s number? The woman from the bar. She was here last night and—”

“The Pixie? Pixie was here?” he interrupts me in shock.

“She’s not called fucking Pixie,” I say, pissed off that he’s carrying this on.

He breaks out into a stupid, wide grin. “Look at you. You have yourself all worked up over this chick. This is totally like your Pixie,” he teases.

My fists clench at my sides as I fight the urge to punch my best friend in the face.

I continue to pace. “I was going to drop her home, but some asshole was waiting outside her building. He almost hit her. I wasn’t going to leave her with him lurking around, you know.”

“So, you thought you’d bring her here to show off your tower.” He laughs, clearly enjoying this.

“I didn’t touch her. She was drunk. But she made me promise that I would when she was sober.” I shake my head at the memory, knowing it sounds stupid even to my own ears. I’ve been over this in my head all day. “I woke up to my cock in her mouth.”

His eyes pop wide and he jolts his head back. He wasn’t expecting that. “Okay, tell me again the reason she isn’t your Pixie?”

I ignore his question, rolling my lip before telling him, “I asked her if you paid her.”

“You fucking idiot,” Charlie snaps as he walks into the foyer. “For a smart bloke, you really are a stupid son of a bitch sometimes.” He walks towards us with Lance Sullivan, our head of finance and close friend.

“Fuck off, Charles. I don’t want your opinion on this,” I tell him, knowing his advice will be the most valuable to me. Charlie is the most headstrong of the group. He knows how to handle the shit life throws at him—and the women. But I refuse to be made vulnerable to this woman.

“Sure, take that dickhead’s advice,” he snaps.

“Hey, what have I done?” Elliot throws his arms out at his sides smiling.

Sullivan steps forward, a bored look on his face. “If you girls are finished? Maybe we could grab a drink.”

My gaze flicks between them all as I contemplate whether I should sit here all night worrying about her, or if I should go get pissed with the lads.

I head upstairs to change.

* * *

We endup in the nearest bar to my building and a favourite of ours, The Rensley Arms. I didn’t even want to come out tonight, so there was no way I was going to a club.

Elliot sits back in his seat as he sets four beers down in front of us. “Cheer up, mate,” he jibes.

I run my hands through my hair in frustration. “Do you guys think I should reach out to her? She was nearly crying when she left.”

I get the image of her in my foyer with her shoes clutched in her hands. God, she was so upset. That look on her face. It’s all I’m able to think about.

“Why don’t you go to her building and apologise?” Charlie suggests.

“I don’t know what number her flat is. We didn’t even make it inside.” I shake my head, thinking about the way I reacted to her dickhead friend. He deserved the broken nose. He would’ve hit Nina if I hadn’t moved her out of the way.

“Hasn’t ever stopped you before.” Elliot raises his brow suggestively. “Just get Vinny on it.”

I’ve already thought about this. Vinny is my driver and is ex-special forces. He knows the right people and would get me everything I need on her within the hour.

It just doesn’t feel right.

“I don’t want to invade her privacy. It’s not how I want to do this.”

Charlie makes a point of looking at me, nodding his head as if he is impressed. I roll my eyes, taking a sip of beer.

“Shit, Mase, you really have it bad for this girl?” Sullivan’s staring at me like I have grown two heads. They aren’t used to me giving a shit.

Why do I give a shit?

“I barely know her! These pair of idiots wanted to play matchmaker, I all but called her a prostitute, and now I’ve managed to get on her shit list.”

Elliot raises his glass in a toast. “To Pixies, Prostitutes and getting on their shit lists.”

I glare at him. I might kill him.

Feeling defeated—knowing I have to speak with her and see that she is okay—I look to Charlie, seeking his approval. “I can’t look her up, can I?” I ask.

He shrugs, a grim expression on his face as he squeezes my shoulder. “I don’t know what other option you’ve got, mate.”

I scrub my hands over my face before pulling out my phone, and then I send Vinny a text with all the details I have.

My phone rings instantly.

“I’m out,” I tell him.

“You haven’t given me a lot to go on here, Mase. How much do you want to know?”

I look to the boys, all of them watching me with intense looks on their faces, and I know I shouldn’t ask for it, I know it’s wrong, but a mixture of relief and excitement settles in my gut as I say, “Everything.”