Sometimes she’d catch him looking at her in a way that made her chest seize, because she could tell he wasn’t actually seeing her but whatever flawless, impossible fantasy woman he’d invented long ago and superimposed her face onto. He deserved to be with the woman he thought she was—someone soft, like him, whom he could hold as tightly as he wanted without finding himself sliced to ribbons when he pulled away.
There was a sick sense of relief in that, too. At least now he finally knew who he was dealing with. She wouldn’t have to spend the next few months pretending not to notice him slowly growing disenchanted with her the more she opened up to him.
No matter what, though, they needed to find a way to put all this behind them, for the sake of the show. The worst thing they could do was allow their breakup to affect their working relationship.
Tomorrow. She’d call him tomorrow and apologize, and they’d figure it out.
The next morning, she woke up to a notification in the Hags group chat.
ANNIE:Did something happen with you and Shane?
Lilah felt her stomach drop.
LILAH:Why?
PILAR:Just trying to figure out if we need to kill him or not
Pilar’s next message was a link to a gossip site. When Lilah clicked on it, she was greeted with a series of pictures of Shane out at a club with his friends: a group of other up-and-coming twentysomething actors he’d fallen in with afterIntangiblehad blown up, whom the press had semi-derogatorily nicknamed “The Poon Squad.”
The first time she’d met them, at a New Year’s party she and Shane had attended as “friends,” one of them had looked her up and down and then leaned over to ask Shane, without bothering to lower his voice, if the carpet matched the drapes. She hadn’t reacted, just turned on her heel and walked out. She’d heard it enough times that the unoriginality pissed her off more than the vulgarity.
Shane had run after her and coaxed her into staying, demanding an apology from his friend once they returned, which had been enough to placate her. By the time he pulled her into an empty bedroom just before midnight, she’d almost forgotten about it. Almost.
But now, it was all she could think about as she scrolled through the pictures of Shane wrapped around a Victoria’s Secret Angel so tightly it looked like they’d been welded together with a blowtorch. He was clearly trashed, sloppily making out with her as she stuck her hands up his shirt, the rest of the guys laughing, jeering, and raising their glasses in the background, their arms around modelesque women of their own.
Lilah felt her vision black out around the edges. She should’ve trusted her gut about them. Hating someone’s friends was never a good sign for the longevity of a relationship—birds of a feather, and all that. And it was no secret they fucking hated her, too.They’d likely been hounding him to dump her for months. Given what they felt comfortable saying to her face, she didn’t even want to think about how they talked about her behind her back.
But, of course, Shane was a grown man. No one was forcing him to stick his tongue down that woman’s throat. He was doing it because he wanted to.
He was doing it because now he could.
She stared at the picture for what felt like hours.
Finally, she willed her fingers into action, trying to compose a text that was much more chill than she felt.
LILAH:lol
Good start. She forced herself to continue.
You don’t have to kill him
We’re not a thing anymore
I might die of embarrassment from letting myself be associated with someone who would act that tacky, though
PILAR:omg wait what
ANNIE:Since when???
YVONNE:Are you okay?
LILAH:yesterday
I was the one who ended it
and no, I’m not really okay
But I will be
