You Belong With Me

chapter032

Things are back on track with Elliot Owen and his British secretary GF. But sources tell us that his closeness with co-star Ines Herrera rocked their fledgling romance. The Blood Gold alum had some explaining to do when snaps of him cosying up to the stunning actress in NYC dropped. We hear he jumped on the first plane home to placate his furious significant other that they were ‘just friends’. It put HBO production Your Table is Ready on hold, leaving execs majorly pissed. Looks like it did the trick though: Owen and his civilian love Edie Thompson were all over each other at a London party last night. Maybe she needs to confiscate his passport.

‘British secretary?!’ Edie said. ‘Civilian love?! Fuck me.’

‘Hahahaha. It makes you sound like my wartime bride. Thinking about it, you’d look great in that style. Fancy role-play? I could be a soldier. Have you had some of the chickpea thing? It’s really good.’

They spoke in low voices, in low light. Having found a pub where Elliot could go unnoticed, Edie was emboldened that this unassuming Indian restaurant could work, too. Elliot kept his head down when being seated, and a clientele moved about less during dinner than drinks.

Edie had decided the details of the exposé could wait, but she finally broke and asked to see it during their meal. It was a two-part Instagram story on an account with two million followers. Edie felt as if someone had run on stage and yanked her trousers down.

‘Why isn’t it a full story in a newspaper, like the party?’ Edie said, putting her phone away.

‘No pictures, no proof. They can get away with it as a piece of trivia, but the way they got this is so clearly an invasion of privacy that they’d not want that much scrutiny, I bet.’

‘What if the party photos were a total stranger and nothing to do with this?’

‘My take on the party story, on reflection, is that it couldn’t have been a random chancer. To provide the material and have it run that fast means it was someone with a relationship with the press already. They had a contact, and they probably intended to get pictures of us beforehand, once they knew we were invited. The turnaround wasn’t an average drunk person thinking, hmm, I wonder how I earn from these sly shots on my camera roll. They knew a journalist who’d pay them for it.’

Edie absorbed this with a small shiver. ‘So, whoever sold those photos is the same person leaking about your Dales trip?’

‘I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. It feels likely, but my feelings are now running hot.’

Edie glanced around the room. ‘You know – about Fraser. What you could do is simply trust him. Tell him what’s going on, and that you know it’s not him. Ask for his help.’

‘Hmm, yeah,’ Elliot said. ‘Except it would be a delicate balancing act of making it clear I don’t think it’s him, without him quickly figuring out who I might like for it. I’ve already shown my hand on doubting the wedding. If he twigs I want him to investigate Molly, it could tip him over the edge. Don’t forget’ – Elliot dropped his volume further – ‘I have had to apologise for keeping something very important from him recently.’

Of course: Elliot’s adopted status had been known by all three of the immediate family, yet not by Fraser until it was about to make the news. Elliot had worried, when he found out from poking around documents in the loft aged eleven, that his brother would reject him if he knew that Elliot was adopted, Fraser was their biological son. Then, twenty years on, he was forced into telling Fraser the truth before the tabloids did instead – far scarier. Luckily, Fraser was astonished, emotional, but not angry. He wasn’t the ragey type.

Edie nodded. ‘Consider that if gets back to Molly that you’re on to her, she might stop anyway. Problem solved,’ she said, tearing a piece of naan bread in a decorous fashion and dunking it in the chickpea thing. It was good.

‘Except, if I know it’s Molly and he doesn’t, why would I sit back and celebrate Fraser signing up for a lifetime of her and her clan? That sort of behaviour is a big character note. Other vices would follow. To say nothing of how little I’d want to be around her. Trust is like virginity and all that – you can’t lose it twice.’

Edie thought about what Elliot’s mum said: he was like a tiny adult, checking I’d remembered my house keys. His conscientiousness was making it hard to let go. Edie felt loyalty to Fraser – loyalty he deserved.

‘I know it’s tough, but whether or not it is her and whether you catch her, I think you have to step back on the whole Molly not being your taste issue. You want to protect him and guide him, but Fraser’s a grown-up making his own decisions. If he trusts her and it turns out it was misplaced, that’s a matter for him. She’s his choice. Fraser could’ve said: oh, don’t bother with Edie, she’s not from your world, I want an intro to Margot Robbie. I must’ve been a bit of a curveball, but he accepted me completely. You have to do the same with Molly. I think you owe Fraser that.’

Edie pushed away again the thought of what Elliot had said about falling in love.

‘You know, you’re clever, and you’re kind. It’s a very good combination,’ Elliot said, gazing at her.

Edie tried to banish doubt and accept the compliment. She sensed their drawing a line under the hunt for the mole, for the time being.

‘You’re serious about RoboCop?’ Elliot said, as Edie took her shoes off and jumped onto the bed. ‘I wondered if that was a cute joke.’

‘I’m not a Cute Girl.’ She patted the space next to her.

Elliot took his shoes off and joined her, and Edie settled in under his arm.

‘Does being in films make you like films more or less?’ she said, during the title sequence.

‘Ones I’m not in are pretty much as they always were to me. Sometimes I find myself wondering what the director’s instructions were or how they got a certain camera shot.’

They watched the steady escalation of violence in a peaceable silence, Edie putting an arm over Elliot’s stomach. This was so nice.

‘This bit where they shoot all his limbs off disturbed the hell out of me when I saw it aged fourteen, even though you know they’ll turn him into crime-fighter Metal Mickey,’ she said.

‘I should think it did, it’s an eighteen certificate. Fourteen? What kind of two-bit peep show in Rio de Janeiro was your dad operating?’

‘Dad would never have let me see it – I was watching it round Joel Winship’s!’

‘Who was Joel Winship?’

‘The contraband DVD dealer in my form. I used to go to his disturbing film parties.’ Edie interpreted Elliot’s disapproving frown. ‘He wasn’t a boyfriend – a gang of us were there.’

‘My mistake, you were committing other underage crimes. The BBFC is just a joke to people like you, I suppose?’

Edie started giggling helplessly, and Elliot used the moment of weakness to lean in and start kissing her. It had been a bit ambitious to think they could be entwined on a bed without getting distracted. Soon zips were being pulled down, and it was a game of mentally tracking where his hands were roaming. Edie accepted they weren’t going to see the middle, let alone the end, of RoboCop.

Falling in love is a temporary insanity.

‘You know, it won’t always be like this,’ Edie said, drawing away from him, aware as she did so that breathing had become shallow. ‘I hope we’re all right when it’s not like this.’

Lager was her sodium pentothal – lager, and the stupidity of listening at doors to things you shouldn’t.

Elliot pulled back and started laughing, practically wheezing. ‘Fucking HELL, Edie. You can’t be for real.’

‘What?!’

‘This is your best yet. We’re going to fail because we have jobs – we’re going to fail because my brother knows some dicks. Now we’re going to fall apart because we’re too attracted to each other.’

‘I didn’t mean that!’

Was he going to work out the connection? How to paraphrase him without him realising he was being paraphrased?

‘… I meant, I know the beginning is super intense, and I don’t want to think it’s significant if it calms down a little. That’s all.’

Elliot propped himself up on his elbow and surveyed her with curiosity. ‘Are you subconsciously willing our demise so you can quit the ultra-high-maintenance, travelling salesman boyfriend who’s never here?’

His question was forthright, but his tone wasn’t combative.

‘I’m willing the exact opposite by trying to swerve any bumps in the road. Also, I like the way you’re away a lot. It’s restful and gives me time to recuperate from your brutal physical pummellings. I didn’t do superhero body training in the gym.’

‘Here I am trying to work out how offended I am at you effectively saying I won’t always want to jump you, you know,and then you’re even more outrageous while I’m catching my breath from the first insult.’

‘Before you twist this any further, I’m not saying that. And I love how it is.’

‘Then why the coitus interruptus gloom-mongering?’

‘Because I know the early days are a bit of a … fugue state, and I wanted to be honest about that. If there’s a stage after, when it’s less like this – I already know that I want that, too. I want grouchy Wednesdays as well as Saturday nights.’

Elliot said nothing for a moment. ‘What have I done to make you think I don’t?’

Well, this is awkward.

Edie felt sure that disclosing that she heard this would ruin the night. Elliot was taking her mysterious flash of insecurity with good humour. But confronting him – armed with a weapon she’d stolen – would very likely turn play-fight into fight.

‘Nothing. I’m being nervy.’

A beat of silence passed.

‘Tonight, I told you that in a hypothetical it’s-me-or-her war with my brother, who I’ve known all my life and love beyond all words, I’d pick you. I don’t know how to embarrass myself by being more explicit than I already am with you, Edie. I spend quite a lot of time thinking did I scare her off by being too much? Stop being so tragically needy with her. Then you bark I KNOW THIS IS UNSUSTAINABLE while I’m trying to undo your bra. It’s quite a ride, you and me, eh?’

Elliot gave her a penetrating look, lit by the flickering blueish glow of crime-ridden science-fiction Detroit.

‘I have no complaints about the way you are with me, Elliot Owen. None,’ Edie said.

‘If you look for problems all the time, you’ll start to create them. I’m wondering why you do.’

Edie opened her mouth to reply.

‘How do you even know the frantic lust will wear off, anyway?’ Elliot said, returning to a lighter tone. ‘It’s not following that pattern. I want you even more now than I did the first time. And I wanted you the first time an indecent and frankly, creepily obsessive amount.’

Edie’s face grew hot. ‘Same here. On both points. You’ve turned me into a deviant.’

‘Oh really?’

‘Yes,’ Edie said.

‘Not seeing much evidence of that tonight. Seem more interested in Peter Weller, to be honest,’ Elliot said.

Edie laughed and took the clear cue to lunge.