When she’d arrived in the greenroom, Shane was already there, standing with his hands in his pockets, looking idly at the pictures on the wall of previous guests spanning the past half century. When he glanced over at her, she’d felt a jolt that was certainly just nerves, and nothing to do with the way he looked in his suit: dark blue, no tie, crisp white shirt unbuttoned enough to see a hint of chest hair. He gave her an appreciative once-over in return, then planted himself in the middle of the couch and pulled out his phone, leaving her to spiral in relative peace.
Joey had stopped by soon after to shake hands and make small talk, briefly going over the topics for the interview one more time: the photo shoot, the season premiere, how great it was to be back together. Lilah nodded and smiled and didn’t say much, distracted by the soft buzz filling her head, thankful that Joey mostly ignored her in favor of bro-ing down with Shane. Her emergency Ativan called to her from her clutch, but she knew it would be a mistake to break into it. She needed to stay sharp.
After Joey left, she leaned against the long counter that lined the wall opposite the couch, drumming her fingers on it rhythmically.
“Man. I forgot how much you hate this.”
She glanced up to see Shane staring at her.
“I’m fine.” She cringed at the tremor in her voice, audible even in two terse syllables.
He slid his phone into his jacket pocket and settled against the couch, stretching his arms wide across the back. “I don’t think I’d last five minutes in there.”
“Where?”
“Your brain.”
To her surprise, there was nothing derisive in his tone—just quiet bemusement.
She closed her eyes, taking deep, deliberate breaths, forcing her lungs to do their job, despite what felt like a hundred pounds of wet sand sitting on top of them.
The show’s muffled theme music filtered through the walls, alerting her that the taping had started. When she opened her eyes again, she directed her gaze at the monitor next to Shane’s head, watching without really watching as Joey silently mugged his way through his monologue.
“Do you still have stress nightmares all the time?”
She glanced sharply back at Shane. She’d forgotten she’d ever told him.
She’d been plagued by them since she was a kid, vivid and disorienting, causing her to wake up with her heart racing or her pillow wet with tears. In the first recurring one she could remember, she was sitting in the back seat of a car in the dead of night, hurtling along a narrow forest road at breakneck speed, crawling up to the front seat in a panic only to find no one driving. As an adult, she was often on the run, a variety of relentless pursuers hot on her tail, the consequences once they caught her ominous but unclear.
The fact that he’d even remembered, let alone brought it up at all, had her on high alert.
“Are you trying to tell me I look tired?”
“Just curious.”
She considered ignoring him—but the alternative was going back to the interminable silence, drowning in her own thoughts.
“Not always full-on nightmares. But anxiety dreams, yeah. Most nights.”
“And you don’t have any way to manage it? After this long?”
“No, I do. Sort of.”
The caginess of her answer didn’t deter him. In fact, it seemed to do the opposite, his posture straightening. “What? What is it?”
She shook her head.
“Come on,” he said, breaking out his most charming grin. Lilah’s stomach did an involuntary flip, and she sighed.
“Sometimes it’s, like, lucid dreaming. Where I can control it. Especially if it’s one I have a lot. So if that’s the case, I just…do my best to turn it into a sex dream.”
Shane burst out laughing. She felt something flutter in her chest, distinct from her jitters. Something almost pleasant.
“And how does that work, exactly?”
She shrugged, doing her best to keep a straight face. “I try to have sex with whatever’s coming after me. Or, like, a random bystander, if I’m not being chased by anything. It kind of depends on the situation.”
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his gaze direct. “Anyone I’d know?”
