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𝐄𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓

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FLASHBACK: SPRING 2017. CORA, AGE 28.

Cora could attest, both before and after, that truly nothing had ever gripped her as harshly the way that cocaine had.

Whereas the world seemed to slow to a comfortable rhythm whenever she was drunk, softening at the edges and sinking her body lower and lower into the earth, cocaine sped everything up. It wasn't necessarily that life became quicker, but rather that things made sense almost instantly, and she found herself not plagued with the thornier aspects of her existence, instead coursing forward, as if propelled by an invisible rudder.

She'd held out a couple of days before she threw in the towel and contacted Kendall.

When his driver had dropped her off at her apartment building, he'd slipped her a napkin with his number scrawled on it, almost sheepishly nodding towards her before the car had taken off into the growing light of the early morning. She'd been hesitant about the idea at first. Kendall's experience with substances had never been a mystery to her, Shiv had spoken about it more than once, though rather like it was an annoyance than a serious problem. But history told her that Shiv would probably not approve of hanging around one of her older brothers, certainly not to snort coke with, and so she managed to stave herself off the idea until one morning when she found herself wracked with tears for no apparent reason.

To say that Cora's partying was a crutch was the understatement of the century. She was not simply depressed but filled to the brim with despair that constantly threatened to spill over. She was like a can of soda that someone had violently shaken and left unopened. There hadn't been a day since her mother's funeral that she had spent sober, but with age nothing seemed to be getting easier, least of all her tolerance level.

She'd shot him a text after catatonically staring at her ceiling for a good half hour, and he replied almost instantly.

[ TEXT: Kendall ] does tonight work?

It did work, and if it hadn't, she would have made it. Luckily being a socialite didn't come with too much of a schedule.

What followed was an unlikely friendship, born of vice and shared refusal of introspection.

At first their nights were spent with Stewy, in a bar on the Upper West Side where both men knew the owner well enough that he kept out of their business. The booths in the bar had velvet seat cushions the colour of Chartreus and Stewy ordered bottles of Grey Goose and Patron while Kendall rolled a hundred dollar bill into a neat, thin tube. Whenever Cora finished with a line, she swiped the stray white powder from the table and rubbed it on her gums, wincing at the taste. Stewy often told her that she took it like a champ and she would grin, confused why she'd always resisted drugs, convinced she would never go back to such dismissive line of thinking again.

The trio would meet every weekend, though sometimes the definition of what weekend meant slipped to include Friday, Thursday and Wednesday. They would wrap up in the early hours of the morning, sometimes even later, watching the sun rise over the Hudson on a park bench in Riverside Park.

Stewy didn't seem to answer to anyone, but often Kendall would have to leave the booth to field calls from his wife. Whenever he would dart out quickly, Stewy would shoot Cora a knowing look, and make an off-handed remark about how troublesome married men could be.

"What do you mean by that?" She asked one time, Kendall having left after she'd become sufficiently drunk. Cora wasn't unused to spending time in the company of people who she probably shouldn't have, and with such people, asking questions tended to be out of bounds. Stewy's eyebrows raised, and he gave a raspy chuckle, placing down the rolled hundred on the table.

"I just mean that they're complicated, don't you think?"

"What's complicated if we're just friends?"

"Are you?"

She shut up after that, her cheeks searing bright red when Kendall returned, a look of annoyance on his features.

She'd often wonder what he told his wife, whether he said he was just out for drinks with friends, whether she knew about the drugs at all. She felt the question of whether his wife knew Cora existed was irrelevant, and thus she never pondered it. The answer was simple; of course not. She knew how things with married men worked, she'd been there more times than she had wanted to admit, and she had become especially skilled at turning off the part of her that considered the consequences of her actions. But Kendall was different, not least because the time spent with him was entirely platonic, and so she found these questions on the tip of her tongue whenever they spent the evening together, dissuaded from voicing them in front of Stewy.

This changed one evening when, after a very animated phone call, Stewy left early, rushing out into the humid evening air and leaving Cordelia and Kendall alone. A strange silence settled between the two suddenly. They hadn't been properly alone since the night at the club, and Stewy's sudden absence seemed to accentuate the unspoken fact that they shouldn't be hanging out with one another nearly as much as they were.

Finally, Kendall raised his drink to his lips, placing the glass down with a small clink.

"So, do I ever get to find out what happened between you and my brother?"

Cora let out a nervous giggle, shifting in her seat. "Uh, ok, we're going right to that."

Kendall chuckled under his breath. "Do you expect me not to be curious?" He glanced up at her, an expectant look in his eyes. "It's one of those things that makes you wonder."

She shrugged softly. "Well I guess if you're asking me, then Roman never said anything about it, so I kinda think maybe I shouldn't either." As she said the words, she felt something in her chest deflate. She reached for her drink quickly, taking a big gulp of vodka and soda.

"Rome doesn't talk about that kind of shit." Kendall said carefully. "So I wouldn't really read into that."

"There would be nothing to read into regardless." Cora replied, a little too quickly. "It's been, what, a good decade since I saw him last?"

"Ok, I get it." Kendall replied. "Can't blame me for being curious. Honestly Connor and I kinda took bets on it when you guys were younger. I was just looking to collect."

Cora felt herself blushing, glancing down at the table. Bets? Had her stupid teenage crush been so obvious? "What did you bet? Like, what were you for or against or whatever?" She said, before she could stop herself.

From the corner of her eyes, she caught him smirking to himself. "Honestly? I always thought he had a little crush on you. He followed you around like a lost puppy." Kendall shrugged, beginning to empty more powder onto the table top. He pulled out his credit card, tapping it against the cocaine. "And he wasn't weird with you. He's always been a little fucking freak. That's why it was noticeable."

"Oh." Cora replied, biting down on her bottom lip. "Cool."

"But maybe we should just leave the past as just that." Kendall murmured, waving his hand. "Let's just talk about the now."

Things changed after that. Either Kendall stopped inviting Stewy or maybe he'd been asked to no longer be the buffer between the two, Cora didn't know, but she never bothered questioning.

She liked it when it was just her and Kendall, it was one of the first times in her adult life that she could have conversations that weren't just about clothes or bags or gossip about this promoter or that. She and Kendall could talk about anything, politics or music or movies or food, and he would listen to her opinion attentively, like it mattered, like she mattered. Ever since leaving Yale for the life she had chosen for herself, she'd felt less like a person and more like an object, split into bite-sized pieces and assigned a purpose without any of her input. When she spent time with Kendall, she could simply be without having to perform a role that someone had tacked to her.

It was obvious, though, that there were certain things that had a line drawn before them. Aside from the past, neither were keen to talk about family or anything related to romantic partners, even discussions about friends, including Stewy, felt too intimate. There were times where Cora almost asked if Shiv knew that the two of them were hanging out, but she always stopped herself, unsure if she wanted to know the answer. Of course, Shiv had never explicitly told her that a friendship with Kendall was off-limits, but it didn't take a genius to figure she wouldn't have been keen on it. Besides, Cora and Shiv's relationship had been rocky ever since she'd dropped out of Yale, and the two had seen fewer and fewer of each other as the years had progressed. The last she had heard of Shiv was that she'd started seriously dating someone, and that had been months ago.

This fact had made it all the more jolting when her phone had rung early on a Saturday morning. Cora had rolled over in bed, her body aching in protest, feeling a stab of pain from the inside of her nose, which felt raw and stung with each inhalation. Blindly, she pawed at her bedside table, eyes still closed, and raising her phone to her ear.

"What the fuck am I looking at?" The sound of Shiv's voice, laced with anger, hit her like a freight train. Cora sat up immediately, the suddenness of her movements causing a wave of throbbing pain to hammer against her skull.

"Huh?" She muttered, though the sound was obscured by the croaking of her throat. From the other end of the line, Shiv scoffed.

"What do you mean, huh? Jesus, how wasted were you last night, Cora?" She paused, a sigh of exasperation filling the phone speaker. "You can't really pretend like you don't remember what happened last night?"

Last night? Cora wracked her brain.

She and Kendall had had dinner at The Leopold at des Artistes on West 67th Street, Cora had gotten the scallops and Kendall the braised lamb. They'd let the waiter talk them into ordering all of the side dishes and a 750 dollar bottle of Dom Perignon. Cora had been wearing a black Valentino minidress, made from silk and embroidered at the bodice, with a pair of Prada heels. Both had been embarrassed when, at the front door while reading their reservation, the usher had mistakenly called Cora "Mrs Roy".

"A lot happened last night Shiv, can you just spit it out?" She didn't have the mental fortitude to be patient and polite. Her head felt like a steel drum that someone was beating the shit out of, and all she wanted was water and a paracetamol and maybe a Valium. Shiv let out a harsh string of laughter.

"I guess I'm just wondering why a paparazzi sold pictures of you and my brother to the NY Globe?"

The blood drained from Cora's face as she realised what Shiv had said, her stomach turning over. Paparazzi? She couldn't remember having seen any the night before, but the evening had been a blur. She'd been so drunk, and so inexplicably giddy. They'd laughed over a serving of tiramisu and when the side of his hand had accidentally brushed against her own, she'd felt the sensation like a jolt of electricity. She had remembered, though, that when they were piling into his company car to spend the rest of the evening drinking at her apartment, there had been a male voice calling out her name. On instinct, she had ignored it, but now she was beginning to deeply regret that decision.

"Y-yeah, I mean we're friends. Not really newsworthy bu-"

"You know Kendall is married, right? He has kids. He has a family." Shiv's voice was laced with annoyance, with anger. "Do you really never think of anyone but yourself?"

"I don't know what you're even implying, Shiv, but there is nothing going on between us."

"Uh huh, and how am I meant to think that when both of you never bothered mentioning your little friendship to me? To anyone? This is just bullshit, Cora." She paused, to take in an audible breath. "I didn't think things were over between us but this has made it abundantly clear. You and I haven't been friends for a while, and this is just the cherry on top."

Cora could feel tears pricking at her eyes, her mouth growing dry. Despite the fact Shiv couldn't see her, she gave her head a shake, her bottom lip quivering as she began to speak.

"No Shiv, look I'm sorry, I'll do whatever to make it up to you. I'll stop talking to hi-"

"Don't bother Cora. Enjoy your spot on Page Six."

"Wait, are you serious?"

Cora almost couldn't believe what she was hearing. It had been her assumption that, even despite the anger that Shiv felt towards her, the idea of publicly allowing the photos to go to press would be unthinkable. The paparazzi weren't unknown to Cora, she'd been featured in many tabloids since her mother's public death, and even more so after she'd entered the New York social scene. But this was different, this wasn't just about her anymore. Like Shiv had said, Kendall was married, he had a family, a family that would no doubt be bombarded with the image of the two fleeing from The Leopold, both probably wearing drunken grins.

"You two were careless, what else do you expect?"

"Shiv, your dad owns that fucking tabloid." She said, her voice quivering. "Kendall's his son, Kendall's the one who has something to lose if it gets published."

"Do you honestly expect me to feel bad for either of you?" Shiv's voice was more exasperated than anything now, as though she were resentful of Cora for continuing the conversation. "You've both made your bed."

"I'll stop speaking to him." Cora said, desperation leeching through the tone of her voice. "Seriously. Never again. I promise. Just don't do this. Please, Shiv."

There was silence, a pause that felt like a millennia. Cora thought that maybe Shiv had hung up, but just as she moved to check her phone, a sigh rung through the speaker.

"Whatever." Shiv muttered. "Just never contact me again, Cora. I mean it."

Shiv had hung up then, Cora's phone growing suddenly silent. It was the piercing kind that made one suddenly aware of their own breathing, of the blood pulsing through their veins and the subtle but never-ending high pitched whine in their ears. For a while, all Cora could do was lie there, taking in shuddering breath after shuddering breath. It wasn't until a half hour had passed that she realised she'd received two text messages, her heart sinking as her eyes flashed across the screen.

[ TEXT: Kendall ] i need to see you.

[ TEXT: Kendall ] tonight.