Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
The hangover wasn’t nearly as bad as Vivian expected.
Lots of water and two tablets had chased away the dull ache at her temples by the time she stepped out of the shower.
When she pulled on tight jeans and a soft ivory cashmere sweater—because conference rooms were always set to Siberian winter—she was feeling fine.
Better than fine. She had to make herself stop humming like an asshole while applying mascara. Twice.
She checked her watch before plugging in her curling iron again. For the third time, she touched up the waves she’d added to the tips of her long bob.
You look fine, Vivian shouted in her head while looking at her reflection.
She painted her lips red, rubbed them together, and called her reflection a liar.
The moment she left the silence of her room, Vivian nearly wished she hadn’t. The elevator stopped on every single floor, filling and filling until Vivian was all but splattered against the reflective back wall. Until she was holding her breath and trying not to worry that they were over capacity.
Lower back damp and her jaw on the verge of snapping, Vivian talked herself out of shoving people out of the mobile prison cell when the doors finally opened onto the lobby. All but gasping for fresh air, Vivian might have been relieved to be out of the cattle car but the lobby was packed.
Teeming with swarms of people who’d apparently never held a conversation indoors or been to a conference in their lives, the room’s energy was unbearable.
Vivian was considering running up twenty-three flights of stairs to barricade herself in her room when she saw her.
A flash of red in a faceless sea of sound.
“Vivian!” Bryn’s voice broke free from the roar, bright and comforting.
Vivian exhaled and tried to convince her nervous system that she wasn’t in mortal danger. She moved off to the side while Bryn politely but confidently shouldered her way through the crowd with two coffees in hand and a hideous orange conference tote on her shoulder.
“Hi,” Bryn greeted, eyes bluer than Vivian had ever seen them.
Vivian hated that her pulse jumped, but her discomfort eased at the sight of Bryn. Bryn with most of her red hair in a stubby ponytail and the rest framing her perfect face.
“I didn’t know how you liked it, but I assumed cream, no sugar.” She handed her a paper cup.
Vivian took her coffee with honey, no dairy.
“Thank you,” she said, because she wasn’t an ungrateful nightmare despite what anyone said about her. “You seem… better.”
Bryn wrinkled her freckled nose. “Yeah, well.” She rocked on her feet, cheeks flushing.
“I might have overreacted a little.” She chuckled.
“I blame the booze and shock. So two people know.” She shrugged.
“It’s not the end of the world. If I can get another dozen books under my belt before the news spreads, I might get away unscathed. ”
Vivian wanted to reply with a sarcastic, I guess you don’t need me to accompany you then, but she didn’t. She couldn’t take the risk that Bryn might agree. That she’d lose her excuse for being there.
“I can’t believe this is the line just to register,” Bryn said, wide eyes fixed on the hoard taking over the lobby.
It was only then that Vivian looked down and noticed Bryn’s orange lanyard and name tag. She looked between Bryn and the disorganized masses aimed at a tiny registration table positioned, inexplicably, next to the front desk for optimal chaos.
“Did you register yesterday?”
“No,” Vivian replied, staring down the crowd like it was Everest. “Certainly I don’t need landfill fodder to listen to a lecture.”
“You need one of these to get in though.” Bryn tugged on the hideous plastic tag hanging around her neck. “See?” She pointed toward a sign that insisted: name tags required beyond this point.
There was no way of saying what she was thinking without being completely insufferable. No way to protest that surely her face was proof enough that she was an attendee. Taking a swig of lukewarm coffee, Vivian eyed the chaos again and wondered if the woman with the drink tickets would reappear.
“Guess it’s a good thing the lady working the A-G line is a big fan of Magpies and let me register for you too.
” Bryn beamed with blinding self-satisfaction when she opened her hideous tote to reveal its twin concealed inside.
She opened it and pulled out another lanyard.
“I’ll keep your landfill fodder, but there is a pretty cool water bottle so I’m not throwing that away. ”
Staring. Vivian was staring at Bryn, but she couldn’t help it. She didn’t have any reference points for a person like her. The more Bryn revealed herself, the more out of her league Vivian felt.
“Thank you,” Vivian managed, chest unbearably warm and skin tingling from her Gucci loafers to her numb hands.
Bryn nodded toward the conference rooms. “Come on.” She smiled as if everything was so easy. “I like to sit in the front,” she added without a hint of jest.
It was the sincerity that was going to kill her, Vivian realized.
How could anyone be so unapologetically, painfully bright?
How did Bryn move through the world with a terrifying lack of armor, finding genuine joy in cheap swag and repetitive programming?
Vivian swallowed. And what the fuck did it mean that Vivian couldn’t stop seeking her light?
* * *
Julius Thorne’s self-aggrandizing, fifty-five minute masturbatory exercise could have been worse.
It was so tolerable that Vivian remained in her seat six inches from the podium for a session on voicing anime characters.
Instead of heading back to her suite for lunch, she choked down a bland turkey sandwich and returned for three more hours of sitting in chairs that could spur her to confess to witchcraft.
During every talk, Bryn was so focused. She’d filled half her Moleskine with notes. Notes that Vivian didn’t think she needed. Bryn understood instinctively what other people had to be taught. Maybe she’d learned more from creating her Siren audios than she ever could from a coach.
“You don’t need that.” Vivian followed Bryn out of the slowly emptying conference room.
“Need what?” Bryn tossed her notebook into her bag while Vivian stepped out of line to throw away their empty coffee cups.
“These little tricks up your sleeve.” Vivian held the door open for Bryn. “It can be tempting to try on other actors’ styles for size. But what you have can’t be taught here.” She looked to her side to find Bryn had stopped walking next to her.
Vivian stopped in the middle of the corridor. She waited for a group to pass before she rejoined Bryn in three long strides.
“What’s wrong?”
Bryn looked up at her with an unreadable expression.
“What?” Vivian snapped, needing to know what the hell was wrong. To identify what she needed to fix.
“I don’t know, you just called me an actor and complimented my craft in one breath, and I need a sec to recover,” she replied, hand to her chest.
Vivian chuckled despite herself, relieved nothing was wrong. “Did I miss the talk on melodrama?”
Bryn grinned and Vivian would have given anything to call up that expression on command. To keep it in her pocket and absorb it like a blast of sunshine when she was lost in the cold and forgot how good the heat could feel.
“Do you have dinner plans?” Bryn pivoted unexpectedly while they walked toward the lobby.
“Why?”
Bryn laughed, looking over at her as if the question was ridiculous. She shook her head. “Because I’d like to take you to dinner, Vivian.”
All Vivian wanted was to ask her question again.
To know why Bryn wanted to spend time with her.
To know what she saw in her that most people didn’t.
Vivian opened her mouth to politely decline, to say that she’d be eating room service in private like she’d always done.
But she couldn’t bring herself to turn Bryn down, even if she couldn’t find the words to accept either.
“I was hoping to run into you.” Seraphina’s voice appeared behind them and set Vivian’s teeth on edge.
Vivian was going to turn around and tear into her in the middle of the crowded lobby while they ebbed slowly toward the elevators, but Seraphina continued talking before Vivian had the chance. Damn, she was getting slow and soft.
“Bryn, I’m very sorry that I approached you all wrong yesterday.” She summoned up more acting chops than Vivian had ever seen her display to sell her apology. “I didn’t realize how private your work is, but I—”
“It’s okay,” Bryn said easily when she should’ve eviscerated her. “I should have handled that better—”
“No, no.” Seraphina’s bony fingers curled around Bryn’s forearm and Vivian had to fight the visceral urge to tear her hand away.
To tell her not to fucking touch her. “It was a very clumsy and tacky move on my part. I’ve been so impressed with your work on the app and I wanted to pick your brain on getting started there too. ”
Seraphina looked at Vivian as if expecting a pat on the head for being discreet but all she got was an unimpressed glare.
She cleared her throat and continued. “Right. Well, I’d love to buy you dinner and ask you some questions. Is that—”
“We have dinner plans,” Vivian interrupted, like the practiced swing of the executioner’s axe.
“Oh.” Seraphina’s smile was nothing like Bryn’s. It was comparing nickel to platinum. “Of course.” She shifted her attention to Vivian and then back to Bryn. “Well, I’m sure I’ll be in the hotel bar when you return. Can I buy you a drink then?”
Vivian was still opening her mouth when Bryn replied with a cheery, “Sure! That’d be nice.”
“Great, see you later!”
Seraphina retreated, a fox having snatched its prey and running off before Vivian could do anything about it.
Bryn gave Vivian an accusatory glance as soon as Seraphina was gone. “Be nice.”
“To whom?”
Bryn rolled her eyes and stepped into the endless line for the elevator. “She was sorry.”
Vivian laughed. “Bryn, you can’t trust people. Not here. They’re all egotists looking for any neck to step on that might get them a little closer to the spotlight.”
“You’re not, and neither am I,” Bryn said with unwavering and misguided conviction. “We can’t be the only two people—”
“This isn’t a nursery full of African Violets,” Vivian said, moving forward when another group boarded the elevator.
“You’re more likely to find pitcher plants at industry events,” she explained, using a metaphor Bryn might absorb more easily.
“Everything here is meant to be attractive by design. Supposed to trick you until it’s too late and you’re drowning in the nectar you thought you wanted.
Assume everything you touch is carnivorous unless proven otherwise… and even then.”
Gazing at her with something dangerous swirling in her bright eyes, Bryn moistened her lips. She held Vivian hostage, pulling her in with nothing but the way her bottom lip slid slowly between her teeth.
“What does that say about you?” Bryn’s voice was low and soft and the only thing Vivian heard in the ambient noise. “Are you carnivorous too?”
She stepped in so close that Vivian was transported out of her body. Out of time. She was back on the patio, pool water lapping and Bryn’s breath falling against her skin. The soft sound in her throat and softer lips against hers.
Vivian couldn’t breathe. She wanted to say no. Wanted to say that she was different. But the truth was she was starving for this. For her.
“Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to,” Vivian muttered.
Bryn’s throat flushed but she didn’t move away. “I’m not afraid of teeth.” With nothing but her voice, she held Vivian by the throat, fingers digging into her neck and prompting Vivian to beg for more. “Maybe I even like to bite.”
Mouth dry and heart pounding, Vivian nearly groaned.
“There’s room for one more!” a man called from the open elevator.
“You go,” Vivian said too fast. “I’m going to take the stairs.”
She was already turning. Already primed to run when Bryn called out.
“Meet back down here at eight for dinner?”
Vivian froze. She should tell her the truth. Tell her that she’d only said that about dinner to get rid of Seraphina for her. A shield she’d thrown up to deflect Seraphina’s grasping hands. But Bryn was looking at her, eyes wide and expectant, and Vivian couldn’t crush her.
Or maybe, an insolent voice echoed in her mind, maybe she wanted the plausible deniable for her own desires. She stopped thinking and nodded as the doors slid closed and she bolted for the stairwell.