Feeling a little smug, Vivian shrugged like it hadn’t been a big deal. Like having become the highest paid person to ever grace the cover of a magazine, albeit topless, hadn’t actually been a terrifyingly stressful game of chicken.
Bryn’s expression turned pensive. “And you didn’t feel exploited?”
“By letting the world see me naked?” She swirled her wine, hazy gaze drifting over the pool and through time. “No,” she confessed quietly. “It was the first time the choice about my body had been mine. That I was the one telling the joke.” Her chest burned like a warning. Like alarms and flashing lights telling her to shut up. That she was saying too much. That she was sounding pathetic.
Too close to fifty for comfort, Vivian wished she hadn’t resented her body then. But it was hard to love something when it felt like a prison, even when it turned into salvation.
“And anyway, more women should memorialize their bodies when they are at their best.”
Bryn’s face flushed from forehead to throat before she replied, “I don’t know about that at your best part.” She swallowed visibly. “I, uh, can’t imagine you ever looked better than this.”
Vivian opened her mouth to argue. To tell Bryn that she was young and naive. But the words died on her tongue. Because Bryn wasn’t looking at her chest, or her lips, or scanning her body like she was a real life sex toy. She was looking right into Vivian’s eyes with a terrifying amount of sincerity.
It was awful. It was intoxicating. It was unacceptable.
“Yes, well, I made enough to buy a restaurant franchise and make some investments. And here we are,” she said with a flourish. When she almost disclosed that she’d never mended her relationship with her mother before she died, Vivian got to her feet.
“Well, goodnight,” Vivian said so abruptly that Bryn slammed her knee on the table when she got up too fast.
“Wait, I?—”
The sound of Bryn’s phone again. She grabbed it as if to turn it over, but was distracted by a text.
“Oh you’ve got to be kidding me,” Bryn groaned.
Vivian’s fuzzy mind sharpened at the concern on Bryn’s illuminated face.
“What?” Vivian stepped closer, tempted to read the text so there would be no wasting time. “Is it your friend again?”
“No.” Bryn flared her nostrils. “One of my roommates asking where I am.” She looked up at Vivian, surprisingly and visibly annoyed. “The work on the house is done.” She shook her head. “I could’ve gone home last night but no one thought to tell me,” she huffed.
The disappointment hit Vivian with the force of a physical blow, sobering her up for exactly one second. She didn’t want the night to end. A night where she’d made dinner she hadn’t hated with a person she… also hadn’t hated.
Panic flared, hot and embarrassing, but her brain scrambled for rationalization and found it in the dregs of the wine glasses. They were drunk. Or, at least, they certainly weren’t sober.
“Well it’s too late to leave tonight and you’ve been drinking,” Vivian said, handing down a decree. “I’m not getting sued for letting you drive away like this.” She stood firm. “I’m not being held liable for you running over a mailbox.”
Inexplicably, Bryn smiled. The brightness of it, like she was genuinely happy to be ordered to stay, hit Vivian in the chest like a blast of pure oxygen. It made her feel too seen. Made her want to lean in.
She moved back. “Clean this up,” she said, gesturing vaguely at the remnants of their dinner as she turned on her heel. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
There was no waiting for a response. No way to outrun the icy panic in her gut even with the door locked behind her.
ChapterThirteen
It was earlywhen Bryn got off the phone with Gloria, but not so early that she had time to waste. She glanced at the duffel bag and the clothes half spilling out. She’d only been staying at Vivian’s place for a few days, but already she’d developed a routine. Her throat was sandpaper when she swallowed.
Was it weird that she’d kind of miss being there? With only the third act left to record, she’d be leaving today. Leaving with a slim chance of crossing paths with Vivian again. It’s not like they moved in intersecting social circles.
After the intensity of having created something together, something good, it was weird to just suddenly part. To move on to the next project as if they hadn’t lived in Maggie and Jo’s skin. Hadn’t clawed their way through doubt and grief and fear of failure to find the most incredible love. As if they hadn’t just spent the week falling in love with borrowed hearts.
Bryn’s stomach lost at a solo game of Twister, turning her mouth sour. She got up to brush her teeth.
While she showered, she gave herself a stern talking-to. She’d been performing intimacy and connection with Vivian. Getting her wires crossed between fact and fiction was normal. It happened to actors all the time. Her reptile brain didn’t know the difference between Jo whispering against Maggie’s parted lips and Vivian looking right at her when she muttered, “I want you.”
An overactive imagination was to blame for the goosebumps on Bryn’s arms when Jo ran her fingertips over Maggie’s skin. It was a testament to Vivian’s incredible acting skills.
She’d almost convinced herself that she was being unprofessional about the whole thing when she thought about the night before. About Vivian waiting up for her. She had to have been waiting up. Why else would she have bolted out of her house and scared the shit out of Bryn?
