“All right then, no shagging. I didn’t think the idea would upset you quite so much…” He scratches his head, trying to make light of things. “I did give my willy curls a good trim, if that’s the reason you’re distraught.”

I try to laugh to make him feel better, but the truth is, we don’t have time right now to have the conversation we obviously need to have. I slip into the shower and turn the water to sizzling hot, staring ahead at the powder blue tiles with their tiny cracks of old age, wondering when it all went so wrong.

I know exactly when. The minute I took this job.

Because being around Mal and not wanting him is impossible.

I can deny myself of a lot of things, but he’s never been one of them.

Mal makes me burn. Crackle. Melt. My love for him is thick and sturdy. Metallic and alive. A beating organ, co-existing with my heart.

I get out of the shower and face Callum, who is choosing cufflinks from a little velvet box he takes with him everywhere.

“When we get back, we really need to talk,” I mutter.

He answers without turning to look at me, his voice surprisingly dead.

“You’re the boss.”

Spin the bottle.

We are playing spin the bottle.

This party is a total shitshow.

And Alex Winslow never showed up.

“Winslow?” Richards puffed on a suspicious-looking cigarette and laughed when I asked him about it. “His idea of partying is curry night in front of the telly with the wifey. A total straightedge, that fucker,” he said with the worst impression of a cockney accent to ever be recorded on planet Earth.

Instead, the music is crappy (mostly Ashton’s stuff), the place is ninety-nine-percent semi-naked women in togas, and there’s a self-proclaimed tattoo artist taking spontaneous customers on Richards’ rotating bed while it’s rotating, which anyone with three brain cells can see is not the best idea of the century.

There are servants walking around the suite offering platters of grapes, cheese, crackers, champagne, and schnapps. New Year’s Eve balloons adorn the room in gold, silver, and black.

And as I mentioned, we are sitting in a circle, playing spin the bottle like the big, screwed-up, dysfunctional pile of random people we are.

“Rules.” An English chick with fake boobs and highlighted hair twirls like a fairy around the room, batting her eyelashes in every direction. “Since we have a proper couple here, we need to make sure they’re both all right with seeing other people snogging their significant other.”