You Belong With Me

chapter009

‘Oh, I forgot to tell you, you got away with the Christmas Day selfie. The ruination of your maidenhood with me remains a dirty secret,’ Elliot said conversationally at the breakfast bar.

Edie leaned over the expanse of marble worktop separating them and kissed his two-day bestubbled cheek.

‘What was that for?’

‘Looking accidentally beautiful while eating a croissant.’

‘So do you. Though you’ve got some in your hair,’ Elliot said, brushing lightly above her ear.

Edie felt this was the likely outcome when she was trying to be accidentally beautiful plus pastry. The unexpected contact sent a tremor down her.

‘How do you know I got away with it?’

‘My publicist Lillian got a call from a bloke at the Mail and successfully convinced him that I was in America. And that it must be an old photo if it even was me, and that I was definitely single. It probably helped that she really believed what she was saying because obviously I’d yet to tell her any different.’

‘Oh right,’ Edie said. She was relieved the unscheduled announcement wasn’t being made. It was, however, a qualified relief, as the issue of how it was made remained. She was certainly glad Jessica didn’t get to be town crier.

‘Lillian wants a Zoom with you to say hi. Is the day after tomorrow OK? Is it all right if I pass your number on?’

Edie froze, mid-chewing, and frog-swallowed. ‘Say hi? To me? Why?’

Elliot started laughing and then couldn’t stop.

‘What?!’ Edie wailed.

‘Why do you always look like you’ve been caught wanking in a hedgerow by torchlight whenever anything comes up to do with this becoming public? Am I that big an embarrassment to you?!’

Edie reddened. ‘How dare you accuse me of hedge wanking!’

When Elliot had recovered, he said: ‘It’s absolutely by the numbers stuff, dos and don’ts about calling her if a reporter’s bothering you. I told her we were in a committed relationship – I hope that was allowed. Though I’m starting to wonder …’ He grinned at Edie. ‘I will be arriving at Carrington in a bed sheet with spectacles over the top, and if anyone asks, I’m Chris Pine.’

Edie snorted and muttered yes to Lillian, though she thought it was pretty weird to have a job interview about seeing someone. How had this happened? She could barely get a plausible match on Hinge for the rest of her thirties. From The Girl Nobody Chose (? Louis) to The Girl He Chose.

‘Actually, I need to talk to you about something else work-related before I go,’ Elliot said.

‘OK?’

They’d agreed Elliot’s dawn departure wasn’t a good fit with Edie staying over in a house with a high-tech burglar alarm system, so the plan was to part ways early evening. She was additionally dismayed they’d be having separate New Year’s Eves, despite having investigated the feasibility of Edie going over there. The stubborn timings made it two days in the air to be ships that passed in the night.

No point complaining. It was what it was. He was who he was.

‘It’s about a role I might take.’

‘Right.’

‘That involves a sex scene.’

‘A what?’ Edie said, adopting the stillness of a lizard. She remembered a howlingly discomfiting interview for the autobiography they’d done together when she’d asked Elliot about this subject. Then, it was agonising as she wasn’t meant to care. Now, it was agony because she did.

‘Not like X-rated filth!’ Elliot said, seeing she was mildly stunned.

But it was too late: Edie felt like an idiot potato.

She was continually thrown off balance by him: one minute it was trattoria carbonara and meet the folks, and she was lulled into the illusion of a standard boyfriend. The next, she was being ambushed by Ridiculous Things That Never Happened. Who did you go to for advice on this?

That Elliot was going to kiss other women (or men) as pretend was, as he’d put it, always implicit in the deal. Amid all the logistics, such frivolities had been overlooked. Edie felt a crushing pressure to be a Cool Girl about it, and she didn’t know if she was.

‘I won’t do it if you don’t want me to do it. I mean it,’ Elliot was saying. ‘You matter more than any part. There won’t be any bargaining or anything – if you aren’t feeling all right, it’s not worth it.’

‘I’m thinking if it needs this sort of build-up, it must be farmyard stuff,’ Edie said, interrupting to try to reclaim some ground.

Did she say no and sabotage his career? Or did she say yes and wreck her head?

‘There’s no nudity …’ Elliot paused. ‘Or at least, I’m not nude.’

‘Elliot,’ Edie said abruptly, as yet again she’d not considered this possibility. (How? Denial, that was how.) ‘Don’t wind me up. What exactly needs my permission?’

‘The show is a dramedy called Your Table is Ready, about this hectic restaurant in Manhattan in the 1990s that everyone who’s anyone wants to go to.’

‘This is what you’re going to New York for tomorrow?’

‘Yup. I play front of house, maitre d’ guy Matteo, and he and Gaby, the head waitress, have this Bruce Willis, Cybill Shepherd in Moonlighting bickering, love-hate, sexualtension dynamic. In the last episode of the first series, they’re fighting after service and end up, y’know, grappling with each other.’

‘Grappling?’

‘As in, the enemies to lovers thing abruptly explodes from the first to the second.’

Edie’s heart leapt at explodes, and she tried to banish the mental imagery of spurting.

‘You’ve already signed up for it?’

‘I’ve said yes in principle, but contracts aren’t signed yet. I can easily get my agent to haggle this scene. They won’t lose me over it, I feel sure.’

‘Who plays Gaby?’

Elliot replied, with incredible insouciance as far as Edie was concerned: ‘Ines Herrera.’

Edie stifled a YOU FUCKIN’ WHAT?! and substituted it for a deliberately unimpressed: ‘Ah.’

Ines Herrera, for God’s sake. When she told Nick and Hannah, it would be what Nick called a ‘marmalade dropping’ moment. Her name was synonymous with outrageously sexy.

Was there a Reddit thread to help Edie, here? My Boyfriend Will Be Enthusiastically Simulating Coitus Onscreen In Front of Millions With The Guatemalan Julia Roberts. Any Tips Or Hints On Retaining My Chill? PS It Will Probably Go Viral, Become A Cultural Touchstone For Frenzied Eroticism And A Meme Captioned With Things Like ‘Me Versus Jaffa Cakes’ So I Am Ambushed With It Three Times A Week.