“What?” Vivian’s question was a lash unfurling out of reflex, snapping just to break the unsteady silence.
“Nothing,” Bryn replied with her mouth, but her eyes telegraphed the lie. A pause. A spike in heat, like the night held its breath and stopped the breeze. “I guess I just can’t imagine you all dressed up and eating processed food from a paper bag.”
She said it not in judgment, but in awe. Like Vivian had turned mortal right in front of her and she only wanted to see more.
Vivian swallowed, attention cutting to the bottle of champagne. She was tempted to reach for it. To guzzle the bubbly and remedy her suddenly parched mouth. But she didn’t want to dull the sensations she hadn’t felt for so long. She wanted to feel curious and real. She could let go for just one night. To exhale for a few hours.
After they’d picked through the basket, Bryn suggested sitting by the pool. Vivian’s consciousness didn’t afford her the benefit of plausible deniability. Of begrudging agreement. When Vivian grabbed two glass bottles of water and sat at the edge of a lounger by the pool, she did it because she wanted to. When Bryn sat next to her rather than in the nearest deck chair, Vivian didn’t move away.
Bryn drank half her water before she set it next to Vivian’s empty bottle on the slate floor between them. She looked out at the pool, the moon’s silver reflection unbroken over the still surface.
“Does it always feel like this?” Bryn's question was soft, quiet. She leaned back, hands splayed out behind her like she might just lie down. Like she might reach for Vivian and pull her down next to her. Like she might part her lips?—
“Feel like what?” Vivian asked, even though she could guess what Bryn meant.
Bryn scrunched up her face but it didn’t dissipate the flush that flared over her cheeks. “I know I don’t have eleventy billion books under my belt, but I have some, and recording has never felt like that.”
Bryn’s expression was so soft, so open. She didn’t look away from Vivian, but she didn’t gawk at her either. She just looked without taking. Observed without leaving Vivian covered in smudged fingerprints.
Quiet, Vivian couldn’t look away from her. She wanted her to keep talking. Wanted her enthusiasm to paint the gray of Vivian’s life with fireworks. Beautifully bright and temporary.
“Recording this book with you…” Bryn inhaled like she was fighting for the right words. “It felt… alive. Like we were building this trust with our listeners.” She shook her head, still dissatisfied with her words. “And maybe that’s the duet thing. Maybe it’s because you’re right there and I can feel you in my body—” Her eyes widened. “Like professionally, I mean.” She swallowed, throat bright red, and Vivian’s entire body ignited from the epicenter of her chest. “It just felt like a stranger would put us in their ears and know we weren’t manipulating them into feeling something. And I know how that sounds. ‘Art.’ ‘Connection.’ Blah blah. But it’s… I don’t know… a little bit of magic.”
Bryn looked at Vivian like she was desperate for rescue but Vivian was already dipping below the waves. Was already drowning herself.
“No,” Vivian confessed in the softest whisper. “It doesn’t always feel like this.” She wanted to elaborate, but she couldn’t make her mouth move.
Surprise tugged at the corner of Bryn’s full lips. “Even after all the performances you’ve recorded, it was different for you too?” She grinned. “Because let me tell you, the second I walked into the booth with you, my imposter syndrome found a case of steroids.” She cringed and started again. “Vivian, you’re incredible,” she said with a pained earnestness Vivian wanted to believe. “It’s like you’re inhabiting a character rather than acting. I’ve never seen anyone do what you do.”
Vivian didn’t move. She couldn’t. If she moved at all, her body would betray her. Lean. Reach. Beg.
“When Jo told Maggie she loved her, you said the line like it was a fact you’d been carrying around in your teeth.”
Vivian’s stomach dropped. She remembered the sound of her own voice in her headphones. The way it had hurt. The way it had almost felt good to look someone in the eyes when she said it.
Bryn’s hands flexed against the lounger, like she was holding herself in place. Like if she let go she’d drift somewhere she couldn’t come back from. “I felt it in my body,” she said, a little hoarse. “Like my lungs forgot what they were doing. Like my skin… woke up.”
“You’re very generous, thank you.” Vivian’s brain found a rehearsed response while Bryn effortlessly held the rest of her captive. “You are talented?—”
“We’re not talking about me,” Bryn interrupted with more nerve than Vivian expected.
She sprang up, and the movement stole the air. Bryn leaned forward in a way that almost made Vivian move back. Almost, but she stayed. Stayed even when her brain blared with alarm. She stayed there with Bryn’s ocean eyes too close, her knees touching Vivian’s without pretense, her breath nearly close enough to feel warm against Vivian’s waiting mouth.
Bryn inhaled as if she were going to say something else.Dosomething else. Something Vivian hadn’t done in so long that she ached to remember the weight of someone’s body on hers.
Bryn’s lips parted and Vivian’s heart soared. It raced with anticipation that triggered a tremble in her hands. That made her teeth want to chatter despite the heat. Bryn stopped herself so abruptly Vivian saw it happen in her throat, a hard swallow, a reset.
“When you held your breath right before you said it.” Bryn’s muttered words boomed like a mortar through stone. “Your lips did this quiver and I didn’t know how I was going to speak my next line. How I could ever answer something like that.” Bryn dropped her gaze to Vivian’s mouth. It was gentle. Almost reverent. Beholding again, not dissecting. Giving, not taking.
Her hand lifted an inch off the lounger—hovered, undecided—then curled back into her palm like she didn’t trust herself with touch.
Vivian’s pulse vibrated in her dry throat. Bryn didn’t close the distance. She just held it. Held Vivian there, trapped in the small, unbearable space between wanting and having.
Vivian’s chest was tight with it. With wanting. With terror.
In a frantic heartbeat, Vivian acknowledged that for once she didn’t want to be safe and alone. That she wanted to know what Bryn’s lips tasted like when they weren’t reciting someone else’s lines.
The question slipped out of her before she could stop it. Small. Bare. A knife held by the blade and pointed at her own carotid.
