CHAPTER 2

***

SEBASTIAN

In case you haven't noticed, my life is in fucking shambles.

I've had bad days, bad weeks, and even bad months, but these past three days has been the hardest time I've been through in a while. Barricading myself in my house isn't exactly my initial response to my closet's skeletons being let loose to the world, but per Sarah's orders, I've been stuck indoors for three days. Three goddamn days.

The week was going pretty well at first. I had dinner with Leslie on Monday night right before I fucked her brains out later that said evening, and from there I was actually starting to feel "whole" or something like that; as if a piece of me that I never knew was missing had finally been returned to me.

But then I found out that she lied to me...and leaked my journal...and disrespected Gloria and I's bond right in my face.

I guess I should have seen this shit coming. In truth, I am an asshole for having Felicity and Courtney (or Claire, right?) in the same bed. In my defense, though, the sex wasn't even that great; I snorted a bit too much and got carried away. But that doesn't give Leslie the right to leak my journal, for Christ's sake.

And Sarah's idea of trying to fix it was to invite Leslie and I to read some script for some interview I have to do about the journal. Who the fuck do they think I am; is this supposed to "mend my image" before I meet with the Board next week? Bullshit.

Leslie couldn't even look at me the entire time. She has this vacant look in her eyes, like a sad puppy dog. Was that supposed to make me feel bad? Probably so. Jesus, I don't even know what to feel anymore.

When I get home, I head straight to my room, ignoring Viv's concerned and agitated calls to me from my living room. These three days have been routine: drink, sleep, eat so I don't die, and sleep again. Viv hates going to the grocery store just to buy shit that will ruin my liver even more.

"You drink because you're sad? Life is sad, then you die. Get over it." She said to me before she left to the grocery store yesterday evening.

I know Claude feels the same way Viv does, but he's more reserved about it. All he's been doing was remind me that my meeting with the Board (fantastic that my father will be there) is dawning, and I need to be ready to make my case. I could care less; the Board can kiss my ass.

"Sebastian," Claude says to me as I walk up the staircase.

"I need to go over the script—"

"You're not gonna go over that script," he replies. He isn't wrong. "What you're doin' to yourself? Sulking over what happened between you and Leslie? It's doin' you no favors."

"Who gives a shit what I'm doing, Claude? I can't go outside, I can't use my phone, I don't even make my own decisions on what I want and don't want to do; I'm a prisoner in my own goddamn house! So if I want to lay in bed, let me!"

I've never snapped at Claude like that. Ever. We used to be closer in my earlier years after I finished college, and even then when I was a bit more reckless I never released my anger onto him. But it's different now.

I drink the rest of whatever is left in the bottle on my bedside table, paired with some painkillers. My room is dark and quiet. I love and hate it at the same time.

My eyes start closing, and just like yesterday, I start to drift off into an alcohol-induced sleep. I can hear my dad in my ear right now.

"Pathetic! This is what you do when a girl breaks your heart? How will you lead my company if this is how you deal with your shit?"

Screw him. When has his judgment done me any favors? When has anyone's judgment done me any favors? In truth, Leslie and him have more in common than she likes to admit. God, I don't even know what I'm saying right now.

"Get up."

I think I'm going crazy until I see Claude standing by my bed. He has his arms crossed against his chest; I can tell he's pissed off.

I ignore him, hoping he'll go away if I do, but he doesn't. He takes the covers of my bed and pulls them off me. Now I'm fully awake.

"What the hell, Claude—"

"I said get up. Right now."

He sounds as authoritative as my father, and I'm not gonna lie when I say that scares me.

I slowly push myself up. Claude's eyes flicker to the empty capsule of painkillers on the bedside table. His expression is even more angry.

Wordlessly, he grabs hold of my arm and drags me off the bed and into the bathroom. I'm practically deadweight, thanks to the drugs and alcohol coursing through my system. He sets me in front of the toilet, and there he makes me throw everything up. And that's what I do. Besides being a stubborn ass, I do what he says. I'm embarrassed once I realize what I've been doing to myself and who has been witness to it. Who knew throwing up your life could give you epiphanies?

After I can't throw up anymore, there's a cold silence between Claude and I. He leans against my bathroom counter, staring down at me like a disappointed parent.

"You're a mess, Sebastian." He finally says, oddly calm. "No one else has the balls to tell you upfront how fucked up you are, but that doesn't mean you aren't in the shittiest state you can be right now."

I avoid his eyes. "I'm...I'm sorry—"

"I'm not the one you need to be apologizing to."

This situation seems all too familiar—the night I was close to O.D'ing until Leslie came in and found me unable to form a coherent sentence. She was much more comforting and understanding than Claude is right now; Claude is more honest than I can accept. I shake the memory from my mind and the person that it comes along with.

I flush the toilet and wash my face with cold water. Then I lean my weight against the counter next to Claude, looking at my unrecognizable reflection in the mirror.

"I don't know what to do," I tell him. "My mind is telling me one thing but I feel this compulsion to do another."

"That's your pride. Your pride, your anger, your distrust. All of those feelings mashed up into one, dragging you around one way and another."

I hate when he's right. I fucking hate it.

"Look," he says, his tone not as demanding. "I'm not here to tell you right from wrong. But I am gonna try and guide you in the direction you need to go. You need to sit and decide where your priorities lie, and reflect on who you are as a man with commitments you need to live up to. You've got responsibilities to take care of, and I know you know what they are. But how you deal with them? That's on you."

"But what if I don't want these responsibilities? I mean I...I didn't ask for any of this."

"None of us ask for most of the shit that life gives us. But you deal with it anyway. That's what determines whether you're an adult or a child."

"So is me being upset at Leslie acting like a child?"

"What do you think?"

I laugh, "I think that you're giving her too much credit. You know how she is; you dug into her past."

"Only because you asked me to."

My first reaction is to roll my eyes. "That isn't fair."

"I already told you—she gave Ingrid the journal, and Ingrid or Garrett most likely leaked it. Coincidentally, Ingrid is M.I.A. You can't blame that on Leslie, Sebastian."

"But Leslie's the one who gave it to them. If she wouldn't have done that, none of this would have happened."

"But it did happen. So, what are you going to do about it? Because this," he gestures to my entire room likes it's an evil omen. "Isn't working for you. At all."

And then he leaves. Just like that. And after hearing his words, I try to see what I must do, but it just ends at me hitting a brick wall in my head. I may become CEO if the meeting with the Board ends well, and I may be the victim to societies eyes from what happened to me. But no matter what, I can't accept it. This is all her fault; she made me believe that I could unchain myself from this corporate leash, and she made me trust her. Now, I'm contractually bound to be a chief of my father's corporation, and my name and my past is out for everyone to remember until they die, only to be continuously shared from person to person. I should have never trusted her; this is all her fault.

And killing myself slowly over it isn't doing me any favors.

**

The day of the interview, Sarah preps me incessantly on what I'm to say. Again, she's ignoring the tension between Leslie and I as if it doesn't exist. But every time Leslie looks at me, and every time I catch her gaze, its more than a reminder; this is the quietest I've ever seen her.

"Five minutes," the producer of the network tells us, and immediately I'm ushered to a colonial-styled living room that meets the darkness of the set where the cameras and production crew wait.

I sit down. Makeup keeps powdering my face but I push them away. They scurry away from me once they see that I'm in no mood to have my nose powdered.

Sarah repeatedly tells me what I should say, as if I didn't hear her the first time. Leslie is still quiet, standing next to the camera crew with anxious eyes.

Deny, deny, deny, deny...

When the interview starts and the cameras begin rolling, the interviewer doesn't hesitate to immediately start talking about the journal.

"I know this must be hard for you," she says; she isn't my fucking therapist.

"It is," I answer. "It's hard having lies about me circulate like this."

"So you're saying that what was written in the journal isn't true?"

I nod, and almost laugh at how shocked the interviewer's face is. She stares at me, stares back down at her notepad, then back at me. Sarah's smirk of approval comes into my peripheral vision.

"If you don't mind me reading an excerpt..."

"No, not at all." She's really doing this shit.

She reads: "'Some days I feel like disappearing into a dark abyss, shrouding myself in nothingness until I eventually fade into non-existence. It's not as if my family would notice anyway.' You wrote this when you were eighteen."

"I didn't write that." I did write that. I remember the moment I wrote that—a year after Gloria's death. But of course, the sentence after—the sentence speaking about my father's cold-heartedness—is purposefully left out. Which makes me believe even more than my father was responsible for this; he leaked the parts he wanted to be leaked and left everything else about him out. Part of his plan to make me distance myself from Leslie, I suppose; keeping his trail clean as a whistle.

"So you believe that someone fabricated these entries?"

"Yes, I do. I had a pretty happy childhood." It hurts me even to say that. "I guess someone just wants to see my image...s-someone just...um..."

C'mon, Sebastian. Say it. Jesus, just say it!

But I can't say it. I can't finish the sentence, "someone just wants to see my image tainted." No matter how hard I try, I can't say it. I stare at the fabric of the interviewer's seat, tracing the intricate stitching with my eyes as the room is dead silent.

"Someone wants to see your image..." the interviewer repeats. I look to Sarah, who is mouthing "tainted" like I'm an idiot. And I want to say the words to get it over with, but Claude's words keep coursing through my head.

You need to sit and decide where your priorities lie, and reflect on who you are as a man with commitments you need to live up to.

"Actually, I did write it."

"Wh-what?" the interviewer says, more shocked than before.

"The journal. I did write it. Every word. Though some parts are left out, I wrote everything in there."

Sarah's face is beyond describable.

"You said you didn't write—"

"I know what I said. And I obviously lied. I wrote everything. And everything that happened in that journal is true."

The production crew exchange looks between each other. The camera man asks the producer if she wants to cut, but of course, she says no.

"So everything that was documented in the journal actually happened to you?"

I know if I say yes now, things will never be the same. I've worked my entire life trying to hide the events of my past from the world, but maybe this leak is a sign not to confine myself anymore.

"Yes," I answer confidently, suppressing flashbacks. "It actually happened to me."

"I'm so sorry." I don't understand why she's guilty; she had nothing to do with this. "Do you know who leaked it?"

"I don't know who leaked it, but I know who gave the journal away. The person who had it last."

My eyes land on Leslie, whose skin is paler than the white stage lights. There's a mixture of anger and anxiety on her face, and for a moment, I decide if exposing her would be worth it or not.

But then I make my decision.

"Who gave the journal away, Sebastian?"

"Someone very close to me. Someone who...someone who knows the most about me. More than anyone. Someone I actually loved at one point but then realized that...they aren't who I thought they were."

I don't know why my hands are shaking, but they are. The small fragment of hope I have that our relationship could ever be mended is draining. I look at Leslie one last time before turning back to the interviewer.

"My father, Garrett." I answer. "He gave it away."

**