‘What?’
‘Nothing,’ I replied. ‘I’m Lily.’
He held out his hand. ‘Jeff.’
16Murray
My trailer smelled like bacon and bad coffee.
I rubbed at my eyes. The sun had been rising when I finally collapsed on my bed. I must have fallen asleep at a terrible angle, because the crick in my neck was worse than usual.
‘Oh hey, you’re awake,’ Lily said. ‘Sit up. I got you breakfast.’
I rubbed at my eyes again. I felt strangely lightheaded, like I’d had too much champagne and too few canapes at a network party.
The bacon smell was coming from a cardboard container on my bedside table,B+E XXX pepperscrawled on the top. Beside it, Lily set down a cup of coffee, wisps of steam curling off the top. ‘I washed all your mugs,’ she said, gesturing to the kitchenette.
I pushed myself up on my elbows. ‘Is that decaf?’
‘Against my better judgement, no.’
She sat down on the end of my bed. ‘I figured I owed you an apology. I would have got you Viet coffee if there was any way to magically transport my mother into the bubble.’
‘What?’ I couldn’t seem to make my thoughts go in the right order.
‘I had a conversation with Suzette last night, after my ITM. I wanted to know why you didn’t follow through on my humiliation play.’
Things started to swim into focus. Heather tossing her hair. Romeo-Dylan’s jaw, tight with anger. His arms, even tighter around Cece. Heather weeping.
That glint in Lily’s eye.
‘Suzette told me about the promise you made to boy-Dylan when he signed on,’ she said. ‘How upset he was about how things with Heather went down, and… I’m sorry, Murray. Genuinely.’
I sat up and took a long sip of coffee. It was much too hot, burning the inside of my mouth, but I needed to make sure my brain was online again before I responded.
‘How is it,’ I said, after several long moments, ‘that of all the things for you to apologise to me about, you picked the only one you don’t need to be sorry for?’
‘Murray, if I looked like you do—’ Lily ran her thumbs under her eyes, where I had dark smears of tiredness, ‘—and someone did that to my show, I’d be livid.’
‘I went back last night and pulled the tapes. I heard what Heather said to you.’
I took another long swallow of my coffee. I didn’t know what she’d put in it, but now I’d fully transitioned from sleepto wakefulness, my brain felt like it was working better than it had in weeks.
‘I should be apologising to you,’ I said. ‘If I’d seen that footage earlier – if I’d done my job properly—’
‘If you finish that sentence, I’m going to throw something at you.’
‘Lily—’
‘I went behind your back, and it made a huge mess,’ she said. ‘I wanted to help, but I’m so used to pulling the strings that it didn’t even occur to me that there might be information I didn’t have.’
She stood, pacing the length of the trailer. ‘I did the same thing with girl-Dylan. I decided on what the best move was, and then I went barrelling ahead without any context. Kept doing it, too, when I did have the context, even though you asked me not to. These—’ she ran both her thumbs under her eyes again, ‘—these are my fault.’
I wanted to put my coffee down. I wanted to reach out and close my fingers around her wrist and pull her to me.It’s all right,I wanted to say.Stop being such a drama queen about it.
I wanted to hug my best friend.
But there was a part of my brain that was always scheming, always calculating, always looking for vulnerabilities I could exploit.
