He blinked, a look of genuine confusion passing over his face. “I don’t. You’re right. Sorry.” He turned and walked off without another word, leaving Lilah perplexed in his wake.
8
“So, how long have you two been together?”
Shane and Lilah exchanged uncomfortable glances.
The two of them were sitting on either end of a couch that wasn’t nearly as big as Shane would’ve liked. Perched in a plush armchair opposite them was their network-assigned couples therapist, Dr. Deena, a slender sixtysomething South Asian woman with cropped white hair and oversized purple-framed glasses. The glasses seemed to be an anomaly, though, since everything else in her office, from the furniture to the décor to her outfit, was aggressively neutral, running the gamut of shades from cream to beige.
“We’re, um…we’re not together,” Lilah said. “We’re not acouple, I mean.” She said it with some hesitation, like she was unsure if it was a trick question.
Dr. Deena blinked a few times then glanced down at her notepad. “Oh, I’m sorry. There must have been some kind of miscommunication with my intake coordinator. So, whatisyour relationship, exactly?”
“Co-workers,” Shane said tersely. Dr. Deena looked even more confused.
“We’re actors. On a TV show,” Lilah supplied. “The network wanted us to see you. We’ve been having some…issues.”
Dr. Deena’s eyes crinkled warmly at the edges. “I see. I don’t watch much television, so you’ll have to forgive me for not recognizing you.” She sighed, leaning back in her seat. “Okay. Got it. Just bring me up to speed, then—what’s your relationship status outside of each other? Are either of you married?”
They both shook their heads. Dr. Deena made a note on her pad.
“Dating?”
They eyed each other briefly before returning their gazes straight ahead.
Shane hadn’t been in a relationship longer than three months since he and Serena had broken up, but not for lack of trying. Despite his sporadic attempts at playing the field over the years, he’d always been a girlfriend guy. It was just hard to maintain a serious relationship with his schedule, especially if he was dating someone equally as busy as he was.
His last attempt, with a woman who worked in the art department on another UBS show, had petered out sometime around the end of last season. The two of them had stolen as many moments as they could during production, counting down the days until their summer hiatus and the promise of plenty of uninterrupted time to spend together—but when ithad finally rolled around, they’d realized that neither of them really wanted to.
“No,” he said at last, glancing over at Lilah again, who he was surprised to see was studying him intently. He didn’t want to admit how curious he was to hear her answer.
After she and Shane had stopped seeing each other, he knew she’d gotten back together with her ex-boyfriend from New York, a playwright who regularly spent months in L.A. on the writing staff of one short-lived prestige show or another. From what Shane could gather from passive thirdhand gossip, their relationship was fairly chaotic, with the two of them breaking up every time he left, then taking another crack at it whenever he returned.
But, he realized with a twinge, other than the tabloids briefly linking her to herWithout a Netcostar in a transparent attempt to drum up some positive buzz for the movie (which had backfired, since he was playing her adult son and everyone just thought it was creepy), Shane had no idea what her personal life had looked like since she’d left the show.
Lilah looked straight ahead again. “No. I’m not seeing anyone.”
“And have either of you been in therapy before? Couples or otherwise.”
Lilah answered first, without hesitation. “I have. By myself. On and off, since I was around…eleven, I guess? I have GAD.”
Shane kept his gaze resolutely forward, trying to camouflage his surprise. He wasn’t sure what that meant, but he knew the “A” in the middle probably stood for “anxiety.” She’d mentioned it in passing—and he’d borne the brunt of it firsthand before, of course—but he didn’t know it was bad enough that she’d been in therapy for it since she was a kid. He felt a pang of sympathy toward her, which he quickly suppressed.
Dr. Deena nodded. “And you’re able to manage it effectively now? I’m sure it’s not easy in your line of work.”
Shane thought he caught her glancing over at him before she responded.
“Mm-hmm. All good,” she said crisply.
Dr. Deena turned to him. “What about you, Shane?”
He shook his head. “No. Never.”
Lilah made a derisive noise under her breath. Either Dr. Deena didn’t notice or she chose to ignore it. “So, how long have you two been working together?”
“The show started eight years ago, I left after five seasons, and I just came back a few weeks ago,” Lilah rattled off.
“And that’s when the conflict started? When you came back?”
