Chapter Nineteen Sometimes Lies Are Better
Chapter Nineteen
Sometimes Lies Are Better
Nikki texts me as soon as her plane lands, before she’s even disembarked. Her enthusiasm is adorable and—whether I want it
to be or not—extremely contagious. Despite my reaffirmed plan to keep my heart under lock and key and be realistic about this
little reunion, I’m smiling nonstop while I spend the next hour that it will take her to drive from the airport stress cleaning
my apartment in an effort to run out the clock.
When the alarm on my phone dings to let me know it’s time to head over and meet her, I hop on my bike and pedal to her cabin
like some sort of lovesick teen. Not that I’m lovesick.
Not anymore. Not in nearly a decade.
I’ve been wrestling all week with how I feel and what I want.
Regan being able to see right through me didn’t help matters.
I know that Nikki and I are more than just friends with benefits—and definitely more than the crudely put “coworkers who bone” that I’ve been insisting we are.
I’m almost positive Nikki can tell how I feel too.
That doesn’t mean that’s right or that we should give in.
It also doesn’t mean that there’s any kind of future here beyond however long Nikki’s escape from LA lasts this time.
That doesn’t mean I want it to stop, which is probably why I’m peddling so hard.
It’s all so confusing. In the beginning, all I wanted was revenge, then it was free coffee and orgasms and to make sure she
wasn’t shit-talking me in the book. How that morphed into an actual friendship and companionship, I have no idea. But now
I’ve just spent an entire week missing someone I never wanted to need again.
I need to reestablish boundaries. I can do this. I can. I have to.
I take the last turn, finally bringing the tiny cottages into view. Most of them are dark—thanks, slow season—but cabin six
is lit up brightly like a lighthouse in the storm. Nikki beat me here.
I slow down, taking deep breaths as I pedal closer, until I finally come to a stop outside. I take my time leaning my bike
against the dingy clapboard—trying to be chill and rational and relaxed and generally the opposite of all the feelings that
are welling up inside of me right now.
But then Nikki is there, flinging open the front door, her hair wet from a hastily done shower—no makeup, no pretense, just
pure her—and every thought I have goes out the window. It doesn’t matter what I think I should want, or think I should do, not when
her name is thundering in my chest like a heartbeat.
She races down the rickety steps, pulling me into a tight hug. “Damn, I missed you,” she says, and then her lips are on mine.
The kiss is a frantic, desperate thing—teeth and tongues clashing, swallowing my laughter as I relish in her unbridled enthusiasm. We’re standing in her doorway kissing like a couple of fools on the beach, and in this moment, I’m forgetting again why I ever thought this could be a bad idea.
“Hi,” she says, smiling, when we finally break apart.
“Hi, yourself,” I say softly. I peek behind her through the cabin door, spying a bag of takeout on the small table by the
kitchenette. “Is that going to get cold?”
Nikki shakes her head. “I really need to work on my kissing skills if you’re thinking about food right now.”
I’m about to protest that her kissing skills are just fine, more than fine, fan-fucking-tastic actually, when my stomach grumbles,
betraying just how hungry I really am. I’ve been too excited to see her today to eat anything much, the anticipation and nerves
combining in a way that left my stomach unsettled and my brain buzzing.
“Oh,” she says, tangling her hand with mine and leading me over to the table. “Baby, you’re starving! Sorry, let’s eat.” She
gestures for me to sit as she moves about the room, pulling out plates and silverware and carrying it all over to the table.
It’s awfully domestic, and I know that should give me pause, but . . .
Nikki’s about to settle in across from me when I give the laptop poking out of one of her bags by the door a pointed look.
“Were you working on the flight?”
She looks sheepish. “Yeah, my agent has kind of been on me for not getting it done. I’ve already had to get an extension,
and I rewrote most of what I had done before I first came out here. She’s worried my editor is going to be upset about some
of the stuff I’m changing in it.”
“What do you mean? We’ve been working on it all along—how fast do they want it done?”
“We’ve been working on some of it,” she says, and I know what she means. The good parts—the happy ones. “Plus, the more time we spend together the more bitter I get about how things went down. The tone of the piece has changed
quite a bit from the proposal.”
I pull open the bags of food, waiting for her to elaborate on her own, but when she doesn’t, I decide to do a little prying.
“Bitter about . . . ?”
“When I started this book, I just wanted a place to get everything out of my head and to make sure I didn’t forget any of
the happy times. It was almost like a way to honor and remember our past and how things really were. I also thought it might
clear up some misconceptions people had. It turns out I was the one with all the misconceptions.
“Things were a lot more messed up for a lot longer than I realized. I’m mad that I—that we—had to go through so much at such a young age. My editor bought a book pitched as a fun and occasionally scandalous accounting
of things, and now it’s turning into a condemnation of the whole industry—or at least of the people who were around me in
the early years.”
“Well, I always hated Eliza, so if you want to condemn her, I fully support you.” I’m half kidding, but Nikki frowns anyway.
“Seems a little like kicking her when she’s down, given that she hasn’t done much since I fired her.” Nikki shrugs. “Even
if she did bring it on herself.”
Nikki’s so casual about it, like she’s not talking about how she tossed her biggest ride or die to the curb, and it’s kind of messing with my head.
Nikki and Eliza were . . . well, frankly, they were already totally enmeshed with each other by the time I met them.
It only got worse as Nikki’s star began to rise.
In the beginning Eliza was simply an adviser and advocate, but as time went on Nikki became almost dependent on her.
She wouldn’t even go on vacation without making sure Eliza approved, let alone anything else.
Whenever I would try to question it a little, Nikki would always just say she owed Eliza because Eliza helped her get her
start in the industry and that Eliza believed in her when no one else did.
I guess we had very different interpretations of what that meant back then.
Nikki felt like Eliza had plucked her out of obscurity and given her a chance. All I saw was a star fucker overstepping her
bounds. To me, it looked like Eliza hung her shingle on a rising actor who didn’t have as much familial oversight as I did—Nikki’s
parents were more worried about bragging rights than actually keeping their daughter safe. It made for an easy mark. Eliza
was all too happy to become Nikki’s de facto parent and manager, on top of being her agent. She was involved in every single
tiny detail of Nikki’s career and life, at a level I never saw with anyone’s else’s agent—certainly not mine.
I was jealous. My agent always made me feel like he didn’t have time for me. I could barely even get a call back. But there
was Eliza, practically holding Nikki’s hand to cross the street. Nikki even jokingly referred to Eliza as her “agent-mom.”
At first, I thought it was a little weird, but mostly fine. But the more Eliza interjected herself into Nikki’s life outside of work—the more she intruded in our relationship—the more I found myself hating her. I can’t even remember how many fights I had with Nikki over Eliza’s meddling.
Especially when all the stories came out about us dating, effectively outing us to the world. Eliza advised Nikki not to be
photographed with me anymore, as if we could put that particular genie back in the bottle. She was worried it would impact
Nikki’s “marketability” and “scare off shareholders at the network.”
Meanwhile, my agent was MIA and my parents wanted me to make a statement confirming things—own our queerness on our own terms—which,
while I didn’t love that I was being forced into the position, was what I really wanted to do.
In the end, Nikki and I landed somewhere in between, meaning no formal statements were made but also there was no hiding away
and pretending we didn’t know each other either. Let people talk; neither confirm nor deny became the strategy.
And talk they did.
It was awful for a minute, having not just our feelings for each other but our whole sexuality put on display for the public
to shred—the amount of people who thought we were doing it for publicity was staggering. I was glad to have Nikki by my side
during that time, both on and off camera. I thought it was a sign that she was gaining independence . . . but of course it
wasn’t. Eliza was right back to meddling in our business on every other front and keeping Nikki under her thumb. Which is
why I’m still so shocked that Nikki actually fired her.
“How long has it been since you parted ways?”
“Hmm.” Nikki pauses, thinking. “Maybe four and a half years? Give or take.”
Not long after I left, then.
“You want to talk about it more? Or do I have to wait for the book?” I tease.
“It just wasn’t working for me anymore.” She pulls open one of the boxes of fried rice, spilling some onto her plate and avoiding
eye contact. “That’s all.”
“You sure about that?” I probably shouldn’t be pushing the issue, but I can’t help myself. Eliza was such a sore spot between
us right up until the day I left LA. How could things have changed so quickly once I was gone?
“I didn’t trust her advice anymore, that’s it,” she says. “I had to let her go.”
“Her advice about what?” I ask.