Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
“You have to go,” Iris proclaimed, leaning over the kitchen counter across from where Vivian was drinking tea.
Vivian blinked. “The only things I have to do are pay taxes and die.”
“Oh, we’re dipping into melodrama now?” Iris laughed, hand tucked under her chin like tormenting Vivian was her new pastime. “It must be worse than I thought.”
Narrowing her gaze, Vivian let her silence, and slightly lifted brow, do the talking. When Iris refused to elaborate with more than an I’m-so-amused-with-myself smirk, Vivian set down her cup. “If you want to speak in riddles—”
“You’ve been moping.” She lobbed the accusation like a stink bomb.
Vivian dodged it with little effort. “I don’t mope.”
“Moping,” she repeated with the finality of an executioner’s swing. “And you should go because those awards are a big deal—”
“I’ve been nominated before,” Vivian countered.
“Not in the last three years. Never in the book of the year category.” Iris spread her hands, miming lights on a marquee. “And never with someone you like as a co-narrator.” Her eyes shone like a damn lighthouse when she referred to Bryn, even if not by name.
Vivian’s hackles hit the ceiling. “I don’t like her.”
Iris chuckled. “Uh huh.”
“I don’t.”
“Okay,” Iris infused the two syllables with so many accusations it was a wonder they fit in her mouth.
“Iris,” Vivian snapped.
“Vivian,” she volleyed.
“Why are you being like this?” Vivian crossed her arms.
“Why am I proud of your talent and achievement and want you to roll into those awards and win?” She laughed. “What a c-word I am.”
“I don’t remember you lobbying for me to go when I skipped every other year.”
Iris exaggerated the effort required to ponder. “And what could be different now?” She gasped. “Oh, I know, we’re back to the moping.”
“I—”
“Vivian, I know you believe your own BS, but I don’t.
” Iris straightened, playful energy extinguished.
“You miss Bryn. And that’s because despite your best efforts, you liked her as a person and colleague.
And you’ve probably missed having someone around the house who you could connect to like that, and now she’s gone, and you’re lonely. ”
“You make me sound like a tragic Victorian shut-in.”
Iris smiled, warm and loving. “If the fainting couch fits,” she said with a wink.
For a brief and nauseating moment, Vivian tried to imagine herself getting on a plane, enduring the indignity of commercial air travel, and getting all of her luggage to the hotel.
Walking through a lobby packed with so many of the same people who made Hollywood toxic.
Their eyes on her, their whispers around her.
Grubby, hard hands reaching out to touch and shake and squeeze.
“You’re catastrophizing,” Iris said gently.
Vivian didn’t argue. She took a steadying breath instead. Was she envisioning the worst possible scenario? It didn’t feel like it. It felt like a lifetime of memories rushing in to warn her at once.
She was back at her first major awards ceremony.
Nineteen and nominated for a best supporting Emmy.
She’d made it nearly to the end of the red carpet after enduring a million prying eyes and blinding flashes and comments on her appearance.
She’d even made it through several unwanted arms wrapped around her for photos.
And then she got to the delegate sent from a comedy network. Vivian prepared herself for a crass joke. What she hadn't expected was a photoshopped picture of her face on a porn star's body. The joke, apparently, was casting couches.
“I’m not catastrophizing,” Vivian said with shame’s residue still slimy on her skin. “I just don’t see the point in parading myself in front of industry blowhards to thank them for their recognition.”
Iris tipped her head to the side to consider Vivian’s refusal. “I was picturing more of a boss-like stroll on behalf of gay ladies everywhere, but if you don’t care that Magpies is the first sapphic romance ever to be a finalist—”
“You can’t guilt me.” Vivian forced her voice to stay even, but she sounded so close to a shriek.
“Why not? It’s so effective.” Iris grinned. “Listen, do what you want. You always do, but it’s a big deal and you cared a lot about that book, and I can’t imagine Bryn has ever navigated a space like that. But if you want to leave her alone—”
“That’s still guilting.”
“I know.” Iris shrugged. “It just also happens to be true.”
Vivian held Iris’s stare for exactly as long as it took to make it clear that she’d heard her.
Then she stood, because standing meant the conversation had ended, and Vivian had built a career out of deciding when things ended.
“I have to get back to work,” Vivian said, already gone.
Iris’s mouth twitched like she was holding something back. “Okay,” she said with a shrug.
Instead of taking the what-does-that-mean bait, Vivian took her tea and walked out the back door to the patio. The spring morning was cool but too windy. She hurried into the guesthouse.
At the table with her tablet in hand, she went back to prepping her next manuscript.
She couldn’t get through a damn paragraph without thinking about the awards.
About Bryn and her perfectly friendly text and her being fed to the lions.
It wasn’t Vivian’s concern or responsibility.
Bryn was her own person and could handle herself just fine.
Vivian’s stomach roiled, distracting her from her reading before she’d reached the first period. She stood as if she might shake off her lack of focus. Her attention caught on the small potted plant on the side table near the door.
The violets.
Bryn’s violets.
“They’re low-maintenance,” Bryn had said, as if Vivian didn’t know what those words meant. “And they bloom when they’re happy.”
Vivian crossed the room and leaned over the miserable plant.
The leaves were a little droopy, which was absurd because Vivian had been watering them with religious consistency.
The flowers, what few there had been, were gone.
The plant was either throwing a tantrum or punishing Vivian, she couldn’t be sure which, but its refusal to thrive felt pointed.
Vivian narrowed her eyes at it.
“You’re ungrateful,” she decided before filling a glass with water to see if it would appease the damn thing.
The water darkened the dirt. The leaves didn’t perk up in gratitude. The plant remained stubbornly, offensively unimpressed.
Vivian had moved it ten times. On the windowsill. Too much sun. On the table. Too little. Near the sink. Drafty. On the bookshelf. Dry. Back to the table. Back to the window. Every new location came with a quiet plea: Please. Just cooperate. Just bloom. Stop trying to die.
It was unwilling or unable to just be happy.
“Fine,” she muttered. “Stay miserable.”
The words landed in the room with a weight she didn’t like. But Vivian couldn’t move away. She stood there with her clammy hands braced on the table, looking down at the plant like it might finally speak up and tell her what the hell it wanted.
It was, Vivian realized, very Bryn to give her something living and expect her to keep it alive. To assume she could. To burden her with it.
Vivian’s throat tightened again, and she made herself breathe through it.
She missed Bryn.
There. Done. The admission sat in her chest, ugly and honest. It didn’t make the world end. It didn’t make a spotlight flick on. Nothing dramatic happened, which was almost irritating. Vivian had always suspected that telling the truth should come with more obvious consequences.
Instead, it just made everything sharper.
She missed the sound of Bryn’s laugh and her terrible jokes and her amusing anecdotes about Gloria and the way she talked about her family.
She missed sharing meals with her, and had even enjoyed cooking for the first time in her life.
With her. Damn it, why did being around Bryn have to be so easy? So… nice.
Fuck!
Before she could stop it, the memory of Bryn’s kiss slammed into her. Her lips tingled reflexively and the soft sound Bryn had made when she deepened their kiss echoed in the hollow of her chest. She closed her eyes and willed the ache to leave her.
It didn’t budge. Maybe if she just answered Bryn’s text she’d stop thinking about her. She’d say congratulations and wish her luck. That would close the door.
Vivian picked up the phone and had no idea how to fill the emptiness. Her thumb hovered over the keyboard. An unhinged thought popped into her mind. She could say something real, something that wasn’t a dodge or a performance.
Why was it so hard to say she was scared?
To admit that she didn’t want to go back to a place like the Platinum Voice awards.
That it was just the same old garbage in a different suit.
Vivian shook her head. This wasn’t about her.
She could tell Bryn not to go, but she wanted Bryn to have the external validation she’d worked for.
The one that would show her she had real talent.
But somehow a message like that felt condescending.
Vivian stared at the blinking cursor in the message field, that tiny impatient light. She dropped onto the couch and stared at the screen, a wash of too many emotions coursing through her at once.
Vivian didn’t type.
She didn’t put the phone down, either.
She just held it, staring at the open text like it was a hand extended toward her across a gap she didn’t know how to cross, even if she wanted to.