Chapter 39
Thirty-Nine
Mae hadn’t necessarily planned to see Callie. She hadn’t planned anything. All the way on the train to London, she was arguing with herself.
She’d sat halfway up the audience, coat still on, watching Callie, trying to understand what she’d even come for.
Then Sam had chosen Priya, and the audience had whooped, and confetti had gone off, and Callie, confined to a dress so tight Mae could count her ribs, had smiled with a total lack of surprise.
She’d looked hollowed out. It was terrible to see. Mae began to regret coming, seeing Callie like this. Like a puppet with its strings cut.
Until she saw Mae. Then the life seemed to return to her eyes. And Mae knew this was not a mistake. She was precisely where she should be. She felt something vital return to her, too. Something tired and cold was waking up. For both of them.
They’d stared at each other. Just smiling at each other like a couple of goons until Callie was ushered offstage.
Whilst Mae was trying to figure out how to get to her, a man with a headset crouched beside her row.
‘Mae?’ he asked.
She looked up. ‘Yes?’
‘Callie Price has asked me to come and get you,’ he said. ‘She’s in her dressing room.’
Mae hesitated for half a second. Was she ready for this—to talk to Callie? Well, what the hell else had she come all this way to do, really?
She stood and followed the man.
Backstage was narrow corridors and grey carpet. Someone hurried past holding a garment bag. Mae followed the runner, trying not to shake.
He stopped at a door with a handwritten sign taped to it: CALLIE PRICE.
‘You can knock. She’s waiting for you,’ the runner said and vanished back down the corridor.
Mae stood there, suddenly unsure. She went to knock and then put her fist down. Then put it up again.
The door opened.
Callie was already out of her TV dress. Just a faded T-shirt and jeans, hair pulled back, makeup wiped off. She was the definition of loveliness.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Hi.’
‘Hi,’ Mae said.
Callie stepped aside. ‘Coming in?’
Mae walked in, telling her trembling knees to cut the shit as Callie closed the door behind her.
The room was tiny, with a cluttered vanity unit filling one end and a short sofa filling the other.
Mae turned to her in the tiny space between, and they stared at each other again. With a smaller gap between them, it was even more stirring. It took all of Mae’s nerve to hold it. To look at Callie.
‘You’re here,’ Callie said finally.
‘You sent for me,’ Mae replied with a nervous shrug.
‘I meant in the studio. In London.’
Mae folded her arms. ‘Yeah. I finally made it.’
A corner of Callie’s mouth twitched, then fell.
‘So, you saw it,’ Callie said.
‘I did.’
‘And?’
‘They reshot it,’ Mae said. ‘The me bit.’
Callie went very still. ‘Yeah.’
‘With someone else.’
‘Yeah.’
‘I spoke to your mother.’
Callie grinned. ‘Ooh, fun.’
Mae had to stop herself from laughing. She had to remind herself that this was serious. ‘You destroyed the footage.’
Callie rolled her eyes. ‘You make it sound like I burned a film reel. All I really did was toss an SD card into the pond.’
‘Our pond?’ Mae asked.
Callie smiled. ‘Yeah.’
‘Hope a duck doesn’t eat it.’
‘Have you seen any floaters?’ Callie asked dryly.
‘No,’ Mae admitted.
‘Probably cool, then.’
‘And Neil found out?’
‘He watched me do it,’ Callie admitted.
‘You threw it even after he told you you’d lose? He did, right?’
‘Yes,’ Callie said again. ‘He did.’
Mae let out a little groan. ‘That’s a high cost.’
Callie shrugged and perched her bum on the vanity.
‘You didn’t win.’
Callie’s dark eyes danced. ‘I noticed.’
‘So the extra payment. The bonus. Your…’ Mae hesitated. ‘Your mum.’
‘She’s furious,’ she said casually. ‘She thinks this is your fault.’
Mae flinched at the memory. ‘She said. I didn’t understand that bit.’
‘She thinks you guilted me into it.’
Mae felt real horror. ‘Did I?’
‘No,’ Callie said with a shrug. ‘It was my call. Oh, by the way, my mum also said she’s gonna try to bill you for the marriage counselling she now has to go to, so look out for that in the post.’
Mae smiled. ‘Cool.’
Now she had the full story, the confirmation of all her suspicions. So, what would she do with it?
‘You must be wondering why I came all this way and talked myself into the studio audience?’ Mae asked.
Callie pushed off the vanity, took a step closer. ‘Perhaps a skosh.’
Mae tried to ignore the movement. ‘Because I needed you to hear it from you,’ Mae said.
‘Hear what?’
‘Why.’
‘I did it for you,’ Callie said undramatically. ‘Because… I still love you.’ She seemed happier for having admitted that and pushed on. ‘I don’t think I ever stopped. And you didn’t deserve to pay for that again.’
Mae’s heart pounded so much she didn’t think she’d be able to speak. But she managed to get out something. Her own truth. ‘I spent a long time thinking you’d chosen yourself,’ Mae said slowly. ‘That when it came down to it, I was only something you stepped over.’
Callie nodded. ‘I know that’s how it must have felt.’
‘Then you came back. And you made me feel that old way you used to. And then you didn’t choose yourself,’ Mae said. ‘Which has, if I’m being honest, confused the ever-loving fuck out of me.’
Callie’s lips parted, but she couldn’t seem to find words.
‘I didn’t want you destroying your life on my behalf,’ Mae told her.
Callie let out a long breath. ‘I didn’t break anything that didn’t need breaking.’
They were close now, but not touching. Yet.
‘You’re an idiot,’ Mae said softly.
Callie smiled, and Mae could see the fear in it. ‘You always were the brains of this operation,’ Callie told her.
Mae reached out, and before she could overthink it, her pinkie finger hooked onto Callie’s. ‘I don’t know about that.’
Callie’s eyes widened as she let Mae’s little finger hold hers. She looked terrified. ‘I wasn’t going to come back. I was going to let you go. I didn’t think I’d bought myself forgiveness. I want you to know that.’
‘But it happened anyway. I forgive you,’ Mae said, and it was true. She’d let go of it. And when all the anger was gone, what was left at the bottom was a girl who loved her best friend.
Callie’s lips parted in a gasp. She hadn’t expected this. And it made Mae feel that old love anew.
She leaned in and kissed Callie carefully. Callie made a small sound against her mouth, hands coming up like she wasn’t sure she was allowed until Mae tugged her closer by the hem of her T-shirt.
‘Are you sure you can forgive me?’ Callie murmured.
‘Yes, now lock that door,’ Mae said, kissing her again. Callie reached out without breaking the kiss and flicked the lock.
As the kiss intensified, Mae thought the dangerous thought she’d been avoiding for days, since she’d find out what Callie had done for her.
What had happened wasn’t fixed. But it could be.
This could be the start of repairs, the start of Callie and Mae, thirties edition. It could happen. It was happening. And it had started the second they’d locked eyes through the bakery window a few weeks ago.
Mae had known on some level this would happen, hard as she’d fought. All she’d done today was stop pretending she didn’t know the truth. She wanted Callie back in her life, her heart, her bed.
And she was making big strides on that last one. Even if there wasn’t a bed, as such. But it wasn’t like the last kiss, angry and raw. It was sweet, like coming home. As Mae held Callie’s waist and gently guided her onto the couch, Mae felt that old alignment, their bodies remembering each other.
But the space wasn’t ideal. Fucking tiny, actually.
The couch was not designed for the kind of activity it was currently enduring, and it protested with a sharp creak as Callie and Mae moved against each other, flinging their clothes away at speed.
‘If this couch collapses,’ Callie murmured as she trailed down Mae’s stomach. ‘I’m not gonna stop.’
‘Don’t stop if the roof comes in,’ Mae told her, biting her own lip.
As Callie's mouth found what it was looking for, Mae’s left leg curled out fully and knocked the vanity. The mirror shuddered dangerously. Mae wouldn’t have cared even if she had noticed.
The sofa groaned in distress. The vanity rattled with further kicks. A collection of beauty products rolled off the edge and collected on the floor near a bra, shocked witnesses to all manner of action.
By the time it was all over, the room looked like it had survived a medium-sized earthquake. Mae and Callie lay in the centre of it, holding onto each other, catching their breath. Callie glanced around the wrecked little room.
‘Wow. We really destroyed the place.’
‘They're gonna think you wrecked the place because you didn’t win,’ Mae said dryly.
‘I didn’t?’ Callie asked with a grin.
Mae returned the grin and then regarded the destruction. It really was a mess in here.
But messes could be cleaned up.