10. Duncan
DUNCAN
The arrangement has stopped feeling like an arrangement.
I notice it first in small ways: the fact that I call Millie on a Wednesday night to ask if she watched the documentary about the Apollo Theater that just dropped on Netflix, and she answers even though there's no PR reason for her to.
Or the way I find myself checking my phone during meetings to see if she's texted back about the article I sent her on Janie Torres's latest interview where she took a subtle dig at Millie's Oscar chances.
"She's really going for it," Millie had written back. "Three paragraphs about how 'some actresses confuse technical skill with actual depth.' Very brave of her."
"You're better than she is," I'd replied.
"I know."
The confidence in those two words made me smile for the rest of the afternoon.
Now it's Friday night and I'm supposed to be reviewing contracts for a real estate deal in Williamsburg, but instead I'm reading an old Variety profile on Millie from two years ago that I found while procrastinating.
The journalist had asked her what success felt like and she'd said, "Like standing on a stage where half the audience is waiting for you to fall off. "
I close my laptop and pull out my phone. Her contact photo is from the gala, a shot someone took of her laughing at something I said, her head tilted back and her mouth open in genuine amusement. I'd set it as her picture without thinking about what that meant.
The text I send is simple. "You awake?"
Three dots appear immediately. "Unfortunately. What's up?"
"Nothing. Just wondering if you still hate the cold."
The dots disappear, then reappear. "I do. Why are you asking me this at eleven PM?"
"Because I was thinking about high school. You used to wear that green coat that was two sizes too big."
"It was my mom’s. And yes, I remember. You made fun of it approximately six hundred times."
I wince at the phone. "I'm sorry about that."
"I know you are. Go to bed, Duncan."
But she doesn't stop texting. Twenty minutes later we're still talking, the conversation drifting from high school to the documentary she did watch, to her thoughts on Janie Torres's campaign strategy, to whether the bodega near her apartment still makes those mangonadas at midnight the way they used to.
"I should go check," she says. "Ernesto would be devastated if I stopped coming around."
"I'll come with you."
"It's almost midnight."
"So?"
The dots appear and disappear five times before she responds. "Okay. Meet me there in twenty."
I'm out the door in five.
The bodega is still open when I arrive, the lights harsh against the dark street.
Millie is already inside talking to Ernesto, who's restocking a shelf with canned beans and laughing at something she just said.
She's wearing black joggers and an oversized Howard University sweatshirt, her hair pulled back in a puff, and no makeup that I can see.
She looks more like herself than she has in any of our staged appearances, and I realize that's becoming my favorite version of her.
"Duncan!" Ernesto waves me over. "You're back. Millie says you liked the mangonada."
"Best I've ever had."
"Because it's the only one you've ever had," Millie mutters, but she's smiling.
We take our drinks outside and sit on the curb like we did the first time. The street is quieter now, most of the shops closed, just the occasional car passing and the distant sound of someone's music playing from an open window three buildings over.
Millie takes a long sip, then sets her cup on the pavement between her feet. "Can I ask you something?"
"Sure."
"That tape that leaked. The one that started all this." She doesn't look at me, just stares at her drink. "Did you mean what you said? Or were you just performing for whoever recorded it?"
I knew this question would come eventually. I'm surprised it took this long.
"I meant it at the time. I was twenty-two and trying to impress men whose respect I didn't actually want, and saying cruel things about women made me feel like I had power I didn't earn." I pick up my own drink, turn the cup in my hands. "Does that make it worse?"
"Honestly? Yeah." She finally looks at me. "Because it means you knew exactly what you were doing."
"I did."
"And now?"
"Now I'm trying to be someone who wouldn't say those things even if there was no public backlash. Just because they're wrong."
She nods slowly, processing this. A cab turns onto the street, slows like the driver is looking for an address, then keeps going.
"Janie Torres told a reporter last month that I only get roles because I'm a diversity hire," Millie says. "That studios cast me to fill quotas and it has nothing to do with my actual talent."
My jaw tightens. "That's bullshit."
"I know it is. But half the internet believes her because it's easier than admitting a Black woman can just be good at her job.
" She takes another sip of her drink. "I wanted to respond.
LaToya talked me out of it. Said engaging would make me look defensive, and defensive reads as desperate sometimes. "
"You shouldn't have to defend yourself."
"But I do. Every single day." She sets the cup down again, harder this time.
"You got caught saying something shitty and you're getting crucified for it, which you deserve.
But I have to be perfect every single second or people will use it as proof that I never deserved to be here in the first place.
And the thing is, Duncan, I'm so tired of being perfect. "
The honesty in her voice cracks something open in my chest. I don't have a response that won't sound hollow, so I just sit there and let her words hang in the air between us.
"You know what the worst part is?" she continues. "I'm actually good at this. At the performance. I've been doing it so long I barely remember what it feels like to just exist without calculating how it'll play."
"Except right now."
She glances at me. "What?"
"Right now you're not performing. You're just talking."
"Because you're the only person who's already seen me at my worst. There's nothing left to protect."
I turn that over in my mind. The idea that I've somehow earned access to the unfiltered version of her because I was cruel to her in high school and she has no illusions left to maintain. It feels both like a gift and something I don't deserve.
"Well, I think the version of you that doesn't perform is more interesting than the one that does."
"You're just saying that because you're supposed to be in love with me."
"I'm saying it because it's true."
She doesn't respond to that. Just finishes her mangonada in silence and tosses the empty cup in a nearby trash can that's already overflowing. I do the same.
We walk back toward the subway station even though neither of us has said we're leaving. The platform is nearly empty at this hour, just a guy asleep on a bench at the far end and two women in scrubs who look like they just finished a shift.
"I have a premiere next week," Millie says as we wait for the train. "For a friend's film. They want you to come as my date."
"Okay."
"It's going to be photographers, red carpet, the whole thing. You good with that?"
"I'm good with it."
The train pulls in and we get on, finding seats near the middle of the car. Millie leans her head against the window and closes her eyes, and I watch the city slide past in blurs of light and shadow.
Somewhere around Fifty-Ninth Street, her phone buzzes. She pulls it out, reads whatever's on the screen, and her face shifts into something I can't immediately read.
"What is it?"
She turns the phone toward me. It's a photo posted to Twitter forty minutes ago: the two of us sitting on the curb outside Ernesto's bodega, mangonadas in hand, looking at each other in a way that doesn't seem staged.
The caption reads: "Spotted: Duncan Ellington and Millie Harris at midnight in Washington Heights. #RelationshipGoals."
The tweet has six thousand likes already.
Millie locks her phone and shoves it back in her pocket. "Well. There goes our cover."
"What cover?"
"The one where we pretend this is all strategic." She meets my eyes. "People think we're actually falling for each other."
"Are they wrong?"
The question is out before I can stop it, and I watch her face freeze. The train slows as we approach her stop and she stands without answering.
"This is me," she says.
I follow her onto the platform because I'm apparently incapable of letting the moment end cleanly. She walks toward the exit and I catch up to her at the bottom of the stairs.
"Millie."
She stops but doesn't turn around. "Please don't."
"Don't what?"
"Don't make this more complicated than it already is.
" She finally looks at me, and there's something raw in her expression that I haven't seen before.
"We have four more months of this arrangement.
Four months of pretending and performing and making sure the public believes a story that isn't real.
And if we start confusing the performance with reality, someone's going to get hurt. "
"What if it's already real?"
"Then we're both screwed."
She walks up the stairs before I can respond, disappearing onto the street above, and I'm left standing on the empty platform with the train pulling away behind me and the weight of her words pressing against my chest.
I pull out my phone and look at the photo again. The way I'm looking at her in that shot, like she's the only thing in frame that matters. The way she's mid-laugh, her guard completely down, her face open in a way I've never seen it in public.
We look like people who are falling in love.
And the truly terrifying part is that I don't think we're acting anymore.