“I do,” Elise said, unfazed by her tone, which Vivian had tried to make as icy as possible. “I’ve been in a position just likethis once. Fell for someone I had absolutely no business falling for.”
This was a surprise. Did Vivian dare ask? Of course, she was going to. There wasn’t a universe in which she’d let Elise get away without giving her a detailed explanation.
“Who?” Vivian asked, as if she personally knew who Elise was referring to. Why not? Any one of these people on set could’ve fallen prey to her at some point in their lives.
“Her name was Harper.”
“Her?!”
Elise smirked into her bourbon. “Don’t look so shocked,” she said, her cheeks flushing slightly. Or maybe Vivian was just imagining it. The light was dim after all. “It’s perfectly normal for a straight woman to have a lesbian crush at some point in her life.” She cleared her throat before Vivian could point out that no, that wasn’t true at all. “Anyway, it was years ago. I was a production assistant on a travel series. We were filming in Namibia on some ridiculous show for honeymooners. Harper was the wildlife photographer they hired for promotional shots. She was this sunburnt, sarcastic Brit with hair the color of sand and a camera that cost more than three months’ stay at this lodge.”
This time Vivian didn’t interrupt again. She wasn’t sure she could.
“She was engaged to some finance guy back in London,” Elise went on, staring at a large stone vase near the edge of the balcony overflowing with dried proteas. “I told myself that meant she was off-limits. But sometimes she’d lean over my monitor to check shots, and my entire body would just shut down.”
Vivian couldn’t believe this. Elise—the Elise she knew—wasn’t someone whose body shut down foranyone.The ideaof her going weak over some engaged woman was almost too impossible to picture. But picture it, she did.
“I’d find excuses to be near her,” Elise went on, picking Vivian’s head out of the gutter. “Like get her coffee when I thought she looked tired. Or offer to help carry her gear. Once I even called her up asking for her schedule even though it had nothing to do with me.” She laughed under her breath, and Vivian felt the air in her lungs hitch. Was this actually happening? Was Elise really telling her this?
“One night, after too many Windhoek Lagers, we ended up sitting by a fire pit outside the crew tent. We talked about everything: life, jobs, whether either of us believed in marriage. And then she kissed me.”
Vivian’s heart thudded before she could stop it. “What happened?” she asked. She leaned so far forward in her seat that her backside was nearly off the chair. “After the kiss?”
“She left for London two days after that,” Elise said. “She sent me a postcard six months later to say that she got married but still thinks about me often.”
“Really?” Vivian said. “What a bitch.”
“No,” Elise said, shaking her head. “She wasn’t.” Then she inhaled deeply and, for a second, she just stared down at the glass before catching Vivian’s eye. “I know it hurts. I know what it feels like to want to be with someone, but there’s something standing in the way. In my case, it was Harry the accountant. In yours—”
Vivian interrupted. “It’s you.”
“I guess that’s true. I should probably thank you for not fighting me on it. But I’m not going to. Not until the show is done.” Then she pushed her glass across the table. “Here. You look like you need this more than I do.”
Vivian did. She really did.
She nodded her thanks, wrapped her fingers around the heavy glass, and took a long sip that burned straight through her chest into her bloodstream. It took a moment before the alcohol shocked her weary brain into what could only be called clarity. The decision formed so quickly that it startled her. “Well,” she said, setting the glass down. “You probably won’t get a chance to thank me.”
Elise looked up, frowning hard. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m not going to make the same mistake as you,” she said, shooting up from the chair. “I don’t want a postcard from Sienna in six months’ time announcing her marriage.”
“Where are you—”
But Vivian was already halfway to the door. She didn’t bother to answer Elise’s question because she assumed Elise already knew where Vivian was going.
She was going to crash a date.
A romantic villa date.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Sienna had promised herself to make the best of the villa date. The place was insane. No detail was overlooked. The mahogany ceiling was shaped like oversized leaves. Polished stone sculptures of springbok mid-leap stood lifelike against a wall. There were hand-carved wooden plates filled with snacks of smoked salami sticks, dried apples, sea-salted crackers and a circle of Camembert cheese. Woven baskets were tucked into every corner. Then there were the sunken sofas, piled with tasseled cushions and curved around the fire pit that offered the most perfect view of the bushveld Sienna had ever seen.
She could easily have stared out at the watering hole all evening if she didn’t have to pretend she wasn’t being kneaded like focaccia dough.
Nisha’s thumbs dug into her shoulders again. “You hold a lot of tension here,” she murmured, her lips far too close to Sienna’s ear, close enough to tickle her skin.
Sienna had picked Nisha for the villa date because it had seemed like the safest option. Nisha was sweet. Grounded. She was the type of contestant who said things like holding space. But now Sienna was realizing, with the growing panic of someone locked in a room without a door, that she might have made a terrible mistake.
