Chapter Nineteen Sometimes Lies Are Better #2
“How about this, since you like questions so much tonight,” Nikki asks, the barest hint of irritation in her voice. “What
was it like when you first got here? Was it strange being away from all the LA bullshit?”
I look at her for a moment, deciding if I really want to let her dodge my question and if I really want to answer hers. Regan’s
words about how Nikki and I are clearly more than just friends echo through my head. If I share what she’s asking for, it
will feel suspiciously like reinforcing that. Those early days were hard. I was raw, I was a mess, and the worst part was that all I wanted to do was turn my car around and crawl right back into
the bed Nikki and I shared, self-respect be damned.
I reach for one of the take-out boxes, weighing my options as I pour food onto my plate. I glance over at her laptop again,
taking the coward’s way out.
If she can do it, so can I.
“What were you writing about while you were gone?” I ask, changing the subject.
I catch a quiet “Thought so” under Nikki’s breath before she shovels another forkful of rice into her mouth. I think she’s
going to drop it completely for a second, but—
“That, kind of. You leaving, me wondering where you went and if you were okay.” She looks up just in time to see the smile
slide right off my face. “This week away dredged up a lot of memories. I know it’s not the same as now, obviously—we FaceTimed
all week and things are solid—but stepping into my empty bedroom the other day after being with you so much . . . it brought
me right back to coming home and finding out I was the only one who lived there anymore.”
“Right,” I say, wondering how I managed to get myself out of one minefield just to immediately land in another. We’ve been
avoiding anything to do with me leaving or what happened after. I didn’t realize that she was ready to work on that, let alone
already has been all week. Sure, a part of me is curious to see how she’s laid it all out for her future readers, but the
other part of me has been steadily dreading this moment since she handed me that first chapter.
The spiral I thought I had staved off on my ride over comes roaring back to life.
What are we doing? What am I doing? I shouldn’t—
“I understand if you don’t want to talk about that right now. Seriously, it’s fine. I just didn’t want to lie.” Nikki gives
me a tight smile that almost morphs into a grimace before brushing her fingers against mine briefly—there and then gone in
a blink. I wonder who that was supposed to comfort: me or her?
Maybe the lie would have been better.
I sit sharply in my seat, not sure how to get from one sentence to the next, because where do you even start? Me leaving was
the culmination of so many things—her partying, our fighting, all the drama and chaos of finding out my agent had been stealing
from me while hers had been trying to push me out of the picture all along. The resentment, the hurt, the jealousy . . . I
was clawing my way up the mountain and losing ground while she was on a private plane to the top.
The show, I think, the last season—the other elephant in the room we’ve been avoiding. That’s what really set us down the path to ruin.
That last season, when Nikki was away more than she was on set, was the knife in my back. Everything that came after was just
us waiting for me to finally, finally bleed out.
Even our time here all those years ago, that little mini vacation to bridge the gap between the end of what we knew and everything
that still lay ahead, was little more than a Band-Aid. A temporary fix. We dug our fingers into each other’s skin, desperately
holding on to the relationship for a few more years after that, even though we probably should have walked away long before
we did.
If we’re being honest, I think we both knew it too.
And if we’re being really honest, I think a case could be made that we’re doing that again right now.
I watch her eat, my earlier hunger completely dissipating in the face of this conversation. A part of me wants to flip out.
To yell at her. To sneer, “What could you possibly say about me leaving? You left long before I did, you just kept coming
home at night pretending you hadn’t!”
But instead, I simply ask, “And what’s your take on all of that?”
Nikki hesitates and then sets down her fork. She looks as if she’s bracing for something much worse than a brief conversation
about our shared history. The entire mood has shifted now. Everything that made this feel like a happy homecoming flies out
the window as her eyes slide up to mine. This is the work. This is the war.
And good. Good. Maybe we need to rip that Band-Aid off for us to heal—for us to move forward in whatever form that takes.
Closure. Closure. Maybe that’s all we have left for each other. Maybe that’s all we deserve.
“Do you really want to talk about this right now?” she asks quietly.
“We probably should, if you’re behind on your work,” I say, already hating the next lie sitting on my tongue. “This isn’t
like . . . you shouldn’t put important things off for me. You can keep writing while I’m here. It’s not like this is a formal
date or anything. Like we said, we’re friends—”
“Friends with benefits,” Nikki finishes for me. “How long are we going to keep telling ourselves that? You have to feel it
too. You—”
“As long as you’re in town, probably, because it’s all we can ever be.” I pretend the disappointed look on her face doesn’t
hurt. Reestablish boundaries. Protect your heart. “This is what I meant before when I said I needed your honesty. It can’t just be the good stuff! We can’t build a friendship
on highlight reels.”
“How real do you want me to get?” Nikki asks, looking sad.
“More than you have been.” I shrug. “But maybe a little less ‘real’ than whatever you’re thinking about saying right now. Let’s ease into it together, all right?”
She hesitates for a few moments, squeezing her eyes shut and exhaling sharply before reaching for her bag. “All right, Ducharme,”
she says. “We can do that.”
God, why is this so hard?
“If you really want to talk about why I left, I think we need to start earlier than you coming home to find out,” I say. “Catch
me up on the stuff you were doing on your own. Did you write about the last season yet?”
“Only some,” she says, opening the laptop with a tiny shake in her hands.
“Which part of it?” I ask while she clicks around.
“I’m writing about when we had that guest director come in, that actor’s daughter who did the second episode. The one who
took me to my first real Hollywood party.”
“That woman was hitting on you that whole week and you refused to see it,” I grumble into my rice.
“I didn’t care. I was in love with you, remember?” she says, like that matters. “Besides, all of our producers were at that party too. I wouldn’t have gone otherwise.”
“Wouldn’t you have?”
Nikki sighs. “I guess that’s fair, given everything that happened, but no, I wouldn’t have gone if the producers didn’t suggest
it would be a good career move. I wasn’t interested in that director at all. I was head over heels for you and only you.”
“If you say so.” I force myself to take another bite of my dinner, hoping she can’t see how worked up this all has made me. While that whole season is an incredibly touchy subject, the industry party at the start of filming, the one I specifically was not invited to, was the turning point.
The very first cut.
“I thought I was doing something good for us,” Nikki explains. “That if I made connections, that meant you’d have the connections too.”
I shake my head. “That’s not how it works.”
“I know that now,” she huffs. “But back then I had everyone in my ear telling me different things. You didn’t want me to go since you couldn’t
but the producers kept saying how important networking could be. Even Eliza showed up excitedly that night with designer dresses
for me, talking about how good this party would be for both of our careers.”
“Fuck Eliza,” I growl. “I remember everything about that night, you know? How me and Gouda sat on the couch together while
I cried into her fur. How you came home drunk and smelling like other people for the first time . . . it was weird! I felt
like you had been abducted by aliens and then sent back to Earth. You went on and on about how beautiful the mansion was,
how much I would have loved it, and then you called our apartment a ‘comparative shithole’ before passing out with all your
clothes still on. I had to figure out how to get you into bed all on my own. I did it, though, not even realizing I was going
to be doing it almost nightly for the next few years.
“I remember lying there next to you—the booze on your breath, the faint smell of cigars and money and perfume. You were someone
else already, someone I didn’t know.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You can’t pretend that night didn’t change you.”
“It was one party!” Nikki groans. “It was the first time I completely let loose. It was good for me after working so hard on the show for so long. I—”
“Wait,” I say, scrunching up my face. “Did you write it in the book like it was a fun anecdote? You did, didn’t you?”
“It is a fun anecdote!” she says. “It was my first true industry party.”
I roll my eyes. “First of a thousand.”
“Yes,” she says. “Yes, I got incredibly carried away with the party scene, I take full ownership of that. That first time,
though, that’s not a bad memory. Nothing happened that night except I met a few famous people and did shots by a pool in a
house so huge I could never even have dreamed of it. It made me realize how much bigger this career could be for me.”
“For you.” I nod. “It’s not a bad memory for you. I was the one sitting home alone wondering why I wasn’t good enough to even be your plus-one and if you were screwing that
guest director in a random bathroom or not.”
“You never told me that!” she says, looking shocked. “Why would you have even thought that? We were good. We were solid. None