Mara and I both nodded in agreement and parted ways.
I hadn’t thought about it that way.
I hadn’t realized just how predatory Mara’s actions had been until Laurel pointed them out. Just thinking about what could’ve happened if no one else were there makes my skin crawl.
I close the gap between Mara and I, forcing a smile across my face, and her eyes look everywhere but me while we wait for our marks.
She knows how badly she fucked up, and being around me makes her uncomfortable.
Good.
“I have no choice,” I respond quietly to her, now that no one else can hear us, and she nods awkwardly.
My eyes rake around the room, landing on Jenna, and I watch as she tidies up the space around her, sweeping up hair clippings off the floor from the trim she’d given me earlier.
Without a single word between the two of us.
I watch as Mara walks away from me, plops herself down into the vacant seat at Jenna’s station, and I rise from mine instinctively.
Ready for what, I’m not sure.
“My turn,” Mara says to her, flipping her long, blonde hair over her shoulders while Jenna clips the black cape over her shoulders, and straightens her back.
“Of course,” she replies sweetly, with the fakest smile I’ve ever seen.
I watch as she works in silence with Mara’s eyes burning a hole in the vanity mirror. “I can’t concentrate with you wishing death upon me,” Jenna says to her, placing the scissors back down onto the table, picking up her curling iron.
“What’s been your excuse every other time you’ve done my hair or make-up,Snow?” she mocks, using the nickname that only I call her, flashing a knowing grin in my direction.
Even after the conversation Laurel had with us earlier, she’s still trying to stir up trouble.
Mara doesn’t wantme,so I can’t fucking understand why she’s doing everything in her power to come between Jenna and I.
Our movie has the numbers and all the publicity it needs.
What more does she want?
“I guess they wouldn’t mind if I held this curling iron a little longer than necessary, then.” Jenna shrugs, while Mara pulls her hair free of Jenna’s clasp.
“You seem to forget who you’re talking to, Jennifer. I make one phone call, and you’re off this job.” Mara shifts in her chair to create some much needed space between the two of them.
“You’re right. I am the wrong person for the job. If doingthismeans I have to bow down to people likeyouevery day, count me out. Besides, I don’t think I have enough foundation left in your shade to cover the words ‘I’m a fucking cunt’ tattooed across your forehead.” She says it so casually, as though she isn’t bothered by Mara’s narcissistic ways in the slightest. But then I realize she’s been around a narcissist her whole life, and I have to physically stop myself from screaming ‘that’s my fucking girl!’
Gently placing the curling iron back onto the vanity, she switches it off at the wall, and I cover my mouth with my hands to hide the chuckle that tries to escape. Mara’s face is now lobster red.
“I thinkyouseem to forget that you attempted to assault my very intoxicated boyfriend, who didn’t have the mental capacity to say no.”
“I was kidding, I didn’t mean—” Jenna raises her hand to quiet Mara, marches to the center of the room, and snatches a microphone out of Laurel’s hands on her way.
She taps the top of it, and the sound of feedback screeches through the speakers. It does the job of getting everyone’s attention, though. She doesn’t wait for them to be ready.
“Does anybody else want to comment on how I’m a home-wrecker, even though you all know it isn’t true? Or does that not fit the narrative that you’ve all created in your heads? Does anyone else want to whisper to the person beside them that someone like Cole Green would never go for a girl like me? Whatever the hell that even means.” She waits patiently for any response, but it seems the people who were once brave enough to comment obscene things on social media or whisper hurtful things behind her back, no longer have a backbone.
“Jenna—” I try to speak, but she cut me off with a glare, and a finger pointed in my direction. She drops the microphone to the floor, a loudthudechoing on the eerily quiet set.
“Notyou. Never you.” She seethes at me before storming out of the room, and all eyes go from her, to me.
“What the fuck are you all looking at?” I shout, voice vibrating against the empty walls in the giant room. “You all have a job to do. Do it.”
