Scandalized

“Georgia. Right.” He doesn’t exactly light up in recognition. It’s fine. These things are always one-sided. To a nineteen-year-old, I’d have been so uninteresting as to be practically invisible. But then his expression clears. “Wait. Gigi?”

I grin. “Yeah, Gigi.”

“Wow,” he says. “It’s been a while. I haven’t been called Alec in…” He thinks. “Fourteen years?”

“What do you go by now?”

He regards me with a beat of surprised hesitation and then, eyes twinkling, says, “Alexander. But Alec is just fine.”

I reach to shake his hand and he wraps long fingers all around mine, squeezing firmly. “It’s good to see you again.”

He doesn’t immediately pull away. My sleepy body reads it as foreplay and immediately gets hot all over. When he finally releases me, I curl my hand into a fist, shoving it into the pocket of my jeans. “How is Sunny?”

Alec’s face breaks into a heartbreakingly perfect smile. “She’s great. Living in London. Modeling. Maybe you—”

The hotel clerk leans forward to grab our attention. “I can help whoever’s next.”

Alec gives me a small nod, indicating that I can go first, but I’m still feeling the handshake sex. My wallet is in my backpack, my neck feels like it’s about to scorch from this blush, and I really just need someone to drop me in a bathtub and give me a scrubbing with a giant scouring pad.

“Go ahead.” I wave him on, pretending to need to find something. Which I guess I do. Namely, my composure, which must be somewhere in this bag with my wallet. But after only a few seconds, a woman steps out from behind the counter and approaches the remaining five of us in line.

“I’m so sorry to say that we are fully booked for the night,” she says, wincing. “Unless you have a reservation, we’re unable to accommodate you. I know there are a lot of groups in town, but our concierge might be able to offer some alternatives.”

Before I can even react, the other guests have jogged over to the concierge’s desk and formed a line in the reverse order from this one, all clamoring for attention. Great.

Looking down, I send an email through the work travel portal, letting the help desk know the hotel I went to is booked solid. But it’s almost ten now, and I have no idea how long it will take someone to see it. I try calling, too, and get a voicemail. The surfaces of my eyes burn with frustrated, exhausted tears and I squeeze my lids closed, thinking. What are the odds I could just nap on a couch in the lobby and no one would notice? Or even return to the airport and curl up on a row of seats there? I’ve been rebooked onto a flight tomorrow morning at eight; it’s not like I need anything elaborate.

I’m startled back into awareness when a hand comes around my elbow, gently guiding me away from where I stand alone in a line that now leads nowhere.

“Do you have somewhere to go?” Alec asks.

“No. I’m trying to figure it out.”

He gazes down at me. “Do you need me to make some calls?”

I shake my head. “I’m just… so tired and need a shower more than I need my next breath.”

Tilting his head, he studies me with disarming focus for a few quiet seconds. “If you’d like, you can do that up in my room.”

Surely he’s kidding. “I—no, really, it’s okay.”

“If you’re uncomfortable, I understand,” he says quickly, “but you’re a family friend. You look like you might drop where you’re standing. If you want to take a shower upstairs, it’s really okay with me.”

Two more seconds of eye contact and then I break it.

I’ve been whittled down to my barest self. Even my hands feel grimy.

I nod, totally defeated and lifting my chin for him to lead the way. “Thank you.”

Inside the elevator, we stand as far apart as we can and fall deeply, heavily quiet. The realization lands like a tarp thrown over my head: No matter how badly I need to shower, this is a terrible idea. I’m five-foot-four, heading upstairs with a guy who easily has eight inches on me, and I’ve just spent two weeks tracking down scum-of-the-earth men all over London. I know better.

I wonder if Alec is having the same thought, or if not the same—surely he doesn’t worry about me physically overpowering him—then wariness about who I might have become in the years since we knew each other. The quiet is so absolute that it feels like some cosmic force has put the world on mute. I stare at my sneakers, scuffed and dusty on the gleaming polished floor of the elevator.

I don’t realize he’s been watching me until he speaks. “You can text a friend if you’re feeling uncomfortable,” he says. “Or—God, sorry this is obvious—I can stay downstairs until you’re done.”

Making him stay out of his room until I’m done feels… unnecessary. He isn’t a stranger, not really, and he’s probably just as exhausted as I am. I knew his family for six years—spent at least half of my weeknights across the dinner table from him, eating his mother’s Korean home cooking. He was soft-spoken, playful, attentive. God, eighth-grade Georgia would have kissed him until she passed out if she’d had the chance.

Still, a text is a good idea. If I was better rested, fed, and clean, it might have occurred to me to do this before even getting into the elevator.