Chapter 12 #2
“Did you work in a restaurant?” Vivian asked because they were halfway through the Merlot and she was too buzzed to keep her curiosity to herself.
“No.” Bryn leaned back against the counter when there was nothing to do but wait for everything to cook.
“Driving food deliveries is as close as I get to that.” Her smile was a little lopsided and Vivian guessed it was from the Merlot, even though she’d only had the one glass.
“But cooking is a big deal in my family.”
“Food delivery,” Vivian repeated. “Is that how you supplement your income?” She didn’t add that with how astronomically expensive Miami was, she didn’t know how anyone survived. But there was no way that comment would sound anything but condescending.
Bryn’s attention darted to her glass when she shifted her weight. “Mostly, yeah. I have many diverse streams of income,” she replied like she was ashamed. Like there was anything wrong with working hard to make your goals a reality.
“Well, you’re not going to have to do that much longer.” Vivian waited for Bryn to meet her gaze. For the truth to stumble from unguarded lips. “You are talented—”
The electronic shrill of a ringing phone cut Vivian’s compliment short. When Bryn rushed over to the table to grab it, Vivian decided it was for the best. She was too close too drunk to trust what she was going to say.
“Sorry, it’s my mom.” Bryn tossed the apology over her shoulder. “I told her I’d text her when I got here and forgot.”
Bryn stepped away, posture relaxed and tone light. She’d never spoken to her late mother with that level of comfort. She’d had a better relationship with her dentist’s office.
“Are you close?” Vivian asked when Bryn hung up after the brief call that ended with an effortless “I love you, too.” Like the sentiment was tossed around without purpose or ceremony.
“With my mom?” Bryn asked as she flipped the steaks.
“No, the Pope.”
“Yeah, I guess so.” Bryn laughed. “I think it’s been long enough that I’ve repaired the damage from my angsty teen phase. Both my parents are pretty great, even if I know they secretly wish I wanted to be active in the plant nursery. They’re really supportive of what I’m trying to build, you know?”
Vivian didn’t know.
“And they were always really cool about the gay thing when I came out in middle school.”
Middle school? Vivian couldn’t imagine having the fortitude to come out so young. Even though she’d always known who she was, she’d taken a long time to say it publicly.
“That’s nice,” Vivian said, surprised to find that she meant it.
By the time they sat down to eat an impressively prepared meal that Vivian had not hated helping to make, she’d lost track of how much wine she’d had.
Lost track and too tired to care. So tired of tracking and watching and weighing.
She poured the rest of the bottle between two glasses and started eating the unreasonably delicious food.
“Are you close with your parents?”
“Your Wiki didn’t tell you that?” Vivian teased.
“I didn’t really research—”
Vivian banished the panic on Bryn’s face with a smirk.
“My dad was never in the picture. My mother would never admit it, but I don’t think she really knew him.
She never had details about how exactly he died in the war.
” Vivian’s blood chilled at the thought of her mother.
“She’d go into hysterics and flee the tragic pain of her unspeakable loss when pressed.
” She rolled her eyes and took another bite of grilled squash.
“I’m sorry,” Bryn replied cautiously, like her response was trapped between question and sentiment.
“Yeah, well. I’m sure you’ve already read about how she misspent every penny I ever earned and I only discovered it when I turned eighteen and my manager was forced to disclose my own life to me.
” She didn’t mean to sound so bitter. Didn’t want the truth to still awaken the festering pain of betrayal.
“What? Vivian—”
“You don’t have to act surprised. I’m used to everyone knowing every shameful—”
“I’m not acting. I really didn’t know,” she swore, like she desperately needed Vivian to believe her. “I would never betray—”
“There’s nothing to betray.” Vivian wished she sounded more detached than defensive. “It’s all out there for the world to see. I was one of the country’s highest paid child actors and I was destitute by the time I was twenty-one.”
Bryn looked around, bright eyes wide and curious. “How did you rebuild it all?”
Vivian studied Bryn’s face. Scoured her expression for the slightest hint of deception. When she couldn’t spot any, she leaned back, glass in hand. “You really don’t know?”
“How you lost everything and ended up back on top? No,” she promised.
Vivian’s chuckle tasted bitter after such a lovely meal. Nothing about her life felt like she was on top. That evoked a feeling of completeness when all Vivian had was security and control and the overwhelming fear of losing it all again.
“Well.” Vivian drained her glass. “I was in my early twenties and I couldn’t get any work.
And I mean any. The best I had in two years was a call back for a soap playing an escort with no lines.
” She forced her body not to remember the feeling of desperation.
“I couldn’t get any non-acting work either.
Everywhere I went, all anyone saw was Cyndi.
Not Vivian.” She swallowed. “So, when Sports Illustrated called…”
“You answered?”
“Not exactly.” Vivian grinned, remembering the first time she’d ever wrestled control over her own life from so many greedy hands. “I called Playboy.” She paused, considering. “Do people your age know—”
“I know what the hell Playboy is, Vivian. I’m almost thirty.”
“So sensitive.” Vivian laughed. A real, truly amused chuckle. “One day you’re going to miss people treating you like you’re too young. Trust me.”
“Well that day is not today,” Bryn said with a surprising amount of steel in her tone. Vivian let it go without comment. “Did you pose for Playboy then?”
Vivian’s body was buzzing. She was back in tense negotiations when her manager was sweating bullets and warning her that she was pushing too hard.
That she was going to end up with nothing.
But if Vivian had learned one thing, it was that people’s obsession with her body was boundless.
And for once, the greedy, insatiable, demanding hands were going to be hers.
“No,” Vivian replied, drawing out the mystery. Keeping Bryn leaning forward like she regretted not looking this up for herself. But she was captive now, and Vivian wanted to reel her in slowly. “Not until Hustler called.”
If Bryn’s eyes widened any further, they were going to tumble right out of their sockets.
“Recognize that one too, huh?” Vivian took her time swirling the wine in her glass before sipping. Bryn’s attention was turning addictive and she told herself that she’d only indulge for another minute.
“You’re killing me, Vivian!” Bryn gripped the table. “Are you going to tell me—”
“That I pitted them against each other until I became a millionaire with the flick of the pen?” She laughed, chest warm and body weightless.
“No,” Bryn replied in joyous disbelief. “Holy shit, that’s so bad ass!”
Feeling a little smug, Vivian shrugged like it hadn’t been a big deal. Like having become the highest paid person to ever grace the cover of a magazine, albeit topless, hadn’t actually been a terrifyingly stressful game of chicken.
Bryn’s expression turned pensive. “And you didn’t feel exploited?”
“By letting the world see me naked?” She swirled her wine, hazy gaze drifting over the pool and through time.
“No,” she confessed quietly. “It was the first time the choice about my body had been mine. That I was the one telling the joke.” Her chest burned like a warning.
Like alarms and flashing lights telling her to shut up.
That she was saying too much. That she was sounding pathetic.
Too close to fifty for comfort, Vivian wished she hadn’t resented her body then. But it was hard to love something when it felt like a prison, even when it turned into salvation.
“And anyway, more women should memorialize their bodies when they are at their best.”
Bryn’s face flushed from forehead to throat before she replied, “I don’t know about that at your best part.” She swallowed visibly. “I, uh, can’t imagine you ever looked better than this.”
Vivian opened her mouth to argue. To tell Bryn that she was young and naive.
But the words died on her tongue. Because Bryn wasn’t looking at her chest, or her lips, or scanning her body like she was a real life sex toy.
She was looking right into Vivian’s eyes with a terrifying amount of sincerity.
It was awful. It was intoxicating. It was unacceptable.
“Yes, well, I made enough to buy a restaurant franchise and make some investments. And here we are,” she said with a flourish. When she almost disclosed that she’d never mended her relationship with her mother before she died, Vivian got to her feet.
“Well, goodnight,” Vivian said so abruptly that Bryn slammed her knee on the table when she got up too fast.
“Wait, I—”
The sound of Bryn’s phone again. She grabbed it as if to turn it over, but was distracted by a text.
“Oh you’ve got to be kidding me,” Bryn groaned.
Vivian’s fuzzy mind sharpened at the concern on Bryn’s illuminated face.
“What?” Vivian stepped closer, tempted to read the text so there would be no wasting time. “Is it your friend again?”
“No.” Bryn flared her nostrils. “One of my roommates asking where I am.” She looked up at Vivian, surprisingly and visibly annoyed. “The work on the house is done.” She shook her head. “I could’ve gone home last night but no one thought to tell me,” she huffed.
The disappointment hit Vivian with the force of a physical blow, sobering her up for exactly one second. She didn’t want the night to end. A night where she’d made dinner she hadn’t hated with a person she… also hadn’t hated.
Panic flared, hot and embarrassing, but her brain scrambled for rationalization and found it in the dregs of the wine glasses. They were drunk. Or, at least, they certainly weren’t sober.
“Well it’s too late to leave tonight and you’ve been drinking,” Vivian said, handing down a decree. “I’m not getting sued for letting you drive away like this.” She stood firm. “I’m not being held liable for you running over a mailbox.”
Inexplicably, Bryn smiled. The brightness of it, like she was genuinely happy to be ordered to stay, hit Vivian in the chest like a blast of pure oxygen. It made her feel too seen. Made her want to lean in.
She moved back. “Clean this up,” she said, gesturing vaguely at the remnants of their dinner as she turned on her heel. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
There was no waiting for a response. No way to outrun the icy panic in her gut even with the door locked behind her.