MARCH 2003 #4
“Isn’t she supposed to be your best friend?”
“She’s been leaking stories about me to the press for years.”
“Oh? What about Kayla?”
“She doesn’t actually like me—I heard her talking to her boyfriend. She’s just using me for the publicity. Which, to be fair, is exactly what I’ve been doing too.”
A retort rolled to the tip of my tongue. But instead I found myself saying: “It must be exhausting, pretending not to be lonely.”
“I’m not,” she said quickly and sounded just as startled. “Not anymore.”
I sighed and leant against my headboard, the wicker pressing into my back, and I tried to picture her doing the same in her bed overlooking the ocean. I wondered if my handprint was still pressed into the suede.
“I wish we could have left together.”
Harper was quiet.
“Is that what you want?” she asked eventually. “To be public with this?”
Was it? I had never wanted to be public with any of my relationships. I wanted to divide myself neatly down the center, to have the whole world looking at Nadine Heywood while Nadine slipped away to whisper to Oisín or press kisses to Sasha’s neck or draw Harper into me, one lungful at a time.
But to be public with the truth of me? I’d never made much effort to hide it, and I think that made me angry. They should have noticed. But now?
This was not as simple as telling the world who I cared for. We were more than lovers. We were accomplices. We already risked so much by being associated with each other. We did not need anyone prying further.
Unless it could become the perfect distraction …
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “Do you?”
I didn’t expect to be countered with: “Do you think I could have done Maldon?”
“Hild?” I asked, surprised.
“Yes.”
“Of course. It’s always been the most irritating part of you—that we are meant for the same roles.”
“Hollywood doesn’t see it that way, Nadine. White girls get cast in period dramas. I’d have never stood a chance.”
I’d spent so long picking over a rivalry, but of course it had never been an even playing field.
“They’re fools,” I said. “You’d have been perfect.”
I could see her on those marshes so easily. What did Harper do better than spur people into battle? There was no better rallying call than her fluttered lashes or sneering disdain.
“I don’t need to add ‘queer’ to that.”
I didn’t want to think of that—how hard this all might be. It felt so easy. Surely everything else would fall in line too, now the world had settled around us.
But roles were hardly flooding in as it was—not for serious, interesting projects at least. We would make ourselves even more of a risk for publicity.
“We’ll leave such displays to the Britneys of the world then,” I said—the VMAs and her kiss with Madonna had been all anyone could talk about until my gin was tossed in Harper’s face.
Harper made a disgruntled noise. “Aguilera and Spears might rival us for animosity. I think we need to up the ante.”
“I could hit you with my car rather than a G&T?”
She chuckled, low in the back of her throat, and I had to press my knees together. God, how had we ever resisted this? Ever chosen to drive this tension anywhere other than a collision? “I’m sure you’ve dreamed of it.”
“Yes. Alas, driving isn’t really my thing.”
“I’m pleased to know that’s the only thing stopping you.”
I hummed an agreement—then sighed. “I should go—I’m dying in the morning.” I’d been devoured by a monster in Dreadbase. Shot myself in Hedda Gabler. Been poisoned in Trellis.
Now I was freezing in the tundra. When would a good old hospital do?
“I’m filming a sex scene with Peter Tully—want to trade?”
“With Tully? Sure.”
She laughed again. Her laughter had been easy and frequent of late. I wondered how I’d ever resented it.
“Just so you know—scheming like this is so much more fun with you than against you. Good night, Nadine.”
———
That’s how it went for months—public escalations and private …
whatever we were. We got so cocky we even went back to London, just to be photographed at the same Wimbledon games.
Kasia had her baby and named Harper a godmother.
We ran lines and helped prepare each other for auditions, even, laughably, the same part in a Western that eventually cast Chelsea Green.
We agreed we each got a person to confide in about us, so I introduced her to Ivan—hilarious, he a touch startled and thoroughly amused (“It’s about time, Nadine, your obsession was unconscionably obtuse.
”) and her beyond nervous knowing how much his opinion mattered to me.
I met her mother—terrifying, worried I’d be another part of Harper’s life to disappoint her, but she seemed to understand the damage she’d inflicted. She seemed to want to undo it.
And I did not have a nose ring, which helped.
Harper and I even spent the goddamn holidays together, being unbearably adorable and detestably in love—though, of course, we weren’t calling it that. I don’t think we even quite recognized it as that.
We moved on, as well as we could.
On New Year’s Eve they found Joel’s body.