Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“We should actually sleep tonight,” Vivian said after glancing at the clock on the nightstand.
“Sleep is overrated.” Bryn hooked her arms and legs around her in open disagreement. “This is much better.”
Vivian chuckled, caressing Bryn’s back still slick with perspiration. “When you hit your forties, you’ll understand. Sleep is critical for brain—”
“Okay, WebMD,” Bryn teased.
“And, the awards are tomorrow”—she looked at the clock again—“tonight. You have no idea how long and uncomfortable and draining these things are. There’s never enough food. Going to the bathroom in a gown is such a pain in the ass you’ll stop drinking water—”
Bryn laughed. “You think I’m wearing a dress?” She traced the freckles on Vivian’s forearm and shifted so that her head was resting completely on Vivian’s shoulder.
Damn it, why did it have to feel so good?
“I have a very cool vintage tux I thrifted and one of my roommates altered. No shape wear. I can pee to my little heart’s content.”
Vivian’s chuckle highlighted her sore throat. She’d never been particularly loud during sex, but Bryn made her want to talk. Made her want to match her filthy verbal skills. To make her feel what she made Vivian feel.
Luckily, she’d get plenty of vocal rest when she got home. Unsure of what to expect after this trip, she’d built in an extra week off into her schedule. Alone, she’d have little occasion to talk her throat raw.
“Unlimited bathroom trips notwithstanding, we still need to sleep. It’s going to be a long day.”
Bryn made no effort to get up. It was on Vivian to be the first to move.
Move! her head screamed at her body, but nothing budged.
“Okay,” Bryn agreed. “So let’s sleep.” She rested her chin on Vivian’s chest and looked up at her with eyes so open they were hard to look at. “Unless you meant you wanted to sleep alone?”
Of course it was what she’d meant. Sleeping was a solitary exercise. No one rested well with another person next to them. Moving and snoring and muttering weird fragments of nonsense all night.
And to say nothing of the body heat. Vivian was tap-dancing her way right into perimenopause. The last thing she needed was a human furnace glommed onto her side. They weren’t teenagers giggling together at a slumber party. They were grown women; space was nonnegotiable.
But the longer she stared at Bryn, the harder it was to formulate any of those objections. Bryn and her heartbreaking eyes. How could she disappoint her? How could she tell her that she could share her body but not her bed?
“No,” Vivian said, but she didn’t know where the truth was. “That’s not what I meant.”
Bryn’s smile was a sledgehammer to Vivian’s sternum. It was cracking bones and more unbearable tenderness.
“Then let’s pee,” she said with blinding cheer. “A UTI will really put a damper on these awards you already hate.”
Vivian moved from muscle memory and didn’t let her brain engage in the act of getting ready for bed.
Didn’t let herself focus on what it felt like to wash her face next to Bryn.
To hand her an extra travel toothbrush. To slip into bed while Bryn closed the curtain, shutting out the lightening sky as if it might keep the day from getting them.
There were only five hours before the hair and makeup team Vivian hired arrived. It was nowhere near enough sleep, but Vivian convinced herself it was enough.
In the pitch darkness, Vivian held her breath when the mattress dipped beside her. When Bryn found her, warm and painfully close to belonging at her side.
Without discussing it, Bryn backed into her.
Vivian wanted to resist the urge but her body had other ideas.
As if it were the most normal thing in the world, Vivian wrapped her arm around Bryn’s bare torso and pulled her in as close as possible.
Somehow pressed together like this, Vivian felt more exposed than she had during any of the times they’d had sex.
It was pathetic and distressing, but it was true and she had to talk herself out of panicking.
“What made you choose Taylor?” Bryn asked, covering Vivian’s hand with hers and interlacing their fingers in a way that made Vivian’s heart stop and her mouth go dry.
“What?” she replied, distressingly close to a squeak.
Bryn squeezed her hand and chuckled. “Your stage name. What made you choose Taylor?”
“If we’re going to sleep, Bryn, we’re going to sleep.”
“I will, I promise.” She picked up Vivian’s hand, kissed her knuckles like she was an adorable dolt, and put it back on her stomach. “After you tell me.”
Vivian tried to swallow but her racing heart was taking up all the fucking room in her throat. “I had a crush on Elizabeth Taylor,” she managed to her own surprise. “If I was going to let my mother erase our heritage, I made it as gay as I could.”
“What did that feel like?”
The question was the most complicated utterance that could have come from Bryn’s mouth. Erasure was impossible to explain when Vivian’s identity had been erased so early. How could she articulate the absence of something she barely understood?
“It’s hard to explain. My mother refused to speak Spanish. I only learned a little as an adult, and mostly from Iris.”
She tried to find something grounding. Something familiar without being terrifying.
She had clung to Iris and her Dominican Spanish and disastrous attempts to teach her how to dance merengue.
There was no point in talking about the diction coaches that scrubbed any accent she might have inherited from her grandmother—the only person in her family who’d loved her.
Loved her until she died when Vivian was seven and left her alone with her mother.
“So, long story short, I know more about sancocho than plantain soup, and my accent is horrific.”
Vivian exhaled as if it might get rid of her shame and regret, but those were her most accessible emotions.
Her longest friends. She couldn’t bring herself to say that being Cuban-American was an identity that never felt like hers.
That even using her birth name again made her feel like an imposter.
That she was neither Taylor nor del Castillo.
That sometimes she wasn’t even sure about Vivian.
“Oh, man. There’s this Cuban place by my parents’ place that makes the best—”
“Bryn. Sleep,” she snapped, because she wasn’t sure that she could stay if Bryn kept digging. Kept wanting to know her.
“Okay, okay. Sorry.” She kissed her knuckles again because she couldn’t stop tormenting her with affection.
It was so much worse when Bryn was quiet. When her breaths turned deep and her body heavy. When she left Vivian alone with her thoughts.
Vivian lay there, fighting the spiral from starting.
But she was defenseless against her own toxic thoughts.
Powerless to stop the warmth spreading in her chest like a slow poison.
Powerless even if she knew it was the paradoxical cruelty of a person feeling warm just before they froze to death. A trick to make the end palatable.
Vivian wasn’t the kind of person who could have this, the kind of person who deserved anything or anyone as good as Bryn.
Closing her eyes, Vivian tried to convince herself that Bryn would have gotten it out of her system now.
Tried to make herself believe that Bryn wanted the novelty of fucking a former celebrity.
That she wanted a story or bragging rights or a notch on her thrifted belt.
But even her worst feelings couldn’t make her believe that about Bryn.
Her throat tightened and she had to focus on breathing through her nose to keep from making any sound that might wake Bryn. She couldn’t cry. Wouldn’t cry. Not when Bryn was right there, warm and trusting and completely unaware that Vivian was already planning her escape.
Bryn shifted in her sleep, making a soft, content little sound that hit Vivian like a freight train. She tightened her grip on Vivian’s wrist, as if to unconsciously check that she was still there, and Vivian’s chest constricted so violently she almost gasped.
Stop it, she commanded herself. Get a fucking grip.
She should be grateful, not pathetic. Bryn had given her something beautiful to carry with her. A perfect weekend she could replay in the safety of her own mind. Just this. This perfect, finite thing. Not everything was built to last, but that didn’t mean it lacked value.
Vivian couldn’t make herself believe that either. And so, she relented. Eyes closed, she tried to memorize the feeling. The weight of Bryn against her. The sound of her breathing. The scent of her skin.
Maybe she could have this for just a few more hours. Maybe she could pretend, just until morning, that she was someone capable of keeping beautiful things instead of destroying them with her damaged touch.
Vivian found herself imagining the kind of person Bryn deserved. Someone younger. Someone without decades of baggage and defense mechanisms that had calcified into immovable stone. Bryn deserved someone as bright and loving and wonderful as her. Someone not so afraid of themselves.
Those thoughts only made her want to throw up, which was at least quieter than trying not to cry. Sleep was impossible, so Vivian closed her eyes and listened to Bryn breathe.