Chapter Two #5
At least she had got to enjoy being just Amy, if only for a few short-lived minutes. With an internal sigh she yanked the glasses off like she was ripping off a Band-Aid, and braced herself for what would undoubtedly happen next.
“Wow.” Imogen blinked a few times.
“Yeah,” Amelia replied knowingly. Imogen would probably want an autograph or a selfie now. Which was fine. Amelia would happily do that for her. That was her life after all, not having normal conversations with beautiful women in bars.
“Sorry. It was probably a selfish reason to get you to take your sunglasses off, but I had made a bet with myself that your eyes would be blue. But I lost and they’re green. Which is a nice surprise, by the way.”
Hold up. “My eyes? You were wowing at my eyes? Nothing else?”
Imogen started to blush. “I mean, the rest of your face is lovely too, but I didn’t want to be so forward as to come right out and say so.”
Oh God. Now Imogen thought that Amelia was fishing for compliments.
Did she really not know who she was? Not that Amelia was complaining, but it just rarely happened that way anymore.
“I didn’t mean—” Amelia shook her head. “Sorry. My eyes. Green. Yes, they are. And yours are brown, which I noticed too. And really pretty.” Oh, hello, goof, there you are.
“Oh. Thanks,” Imogen said, her blush deepening. She fidgeted with one of the beer mats on the counter. “So, you said you were here for business. What do you do for work, Amy?”
The quick subject change wasn’t lost on Amelia—Imogen turning all shy and bashful was too adorable.
Her question also highlighted that Imogen really did not recognise her and Amelia felt an overwhelming sense of relief.
It had been a long time since she’d just been a girl in a bar.
She liked the feeling. Though losing the shades and now the job question—hiding who she was wasn’t easy.
Amelia didn’t want to outright lie to Imogen, but she could remain vague.
“Have you heard about the movie being filmed here?”
Imogen visibly tensed for some reason. “Oh, the bridesmaid one you mean?”
“Yes, Always the Bridesmaid. I’m currently working on that.” Not wanting to go into any more detail, Amelia tried to veer away from the topic. “Not today though. There’s an open day and some of us were lucky enough to score a day off. So, here I am.”
A frown replaced Imogen’s easy smile. “Yeah, those two friends who I mentioned earlier are away to that.”
“And you didn’t want to go with them?” Amelia asked, trying to work out why the mood had suddenly shifted.
“Definitely not. I have zero interest in trailing around after some random film stars.” Imogen winced. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that to come out as harshly. It’s just not my kind of thing.”
“No apology needed.” It worked to Amelia’s advantage that it wasn’t Imogen’s kind of thing. Though there seemed to be more under the surface. Something that Imogen wasn’t saying. She seemed more annoyed than disinterested. “You aren’t a movie fan then?”
“I have nothing against movies. It’s more the industry itself that I’m not a fan of. Or the type of people in it. People who care more about their image, and cameras, and content, than they do about real life.”
Okay, so it was celebrities that Imogen wasn’t a fan of, or at least the stereotype.
That didn’t bode well for the rest of their conversation.
Although Amelia didn’t spend a lot of time stressing about her image or playing up for the cameras, she was still technically a celebrity.
It was an inevitable consequence of her job.
Amelia did understand a lot of the hang-ups with celebrities, but there was a lot to like about being one too.
Like anything in life, it had its perks and its disadvantages.
Now was probably the right moment for Amelia to come clean and tell Imogen who she really was. Imogen clearly wasn’t going to be impressed by her profession anyway. In fact, it would probably have the opposite effect.
Only, Amelia didn’t want that either. She didn’t want Imogen to look at her differently than she had while they’d been talking before.
There was a chance that Imogen would pull away from their conversation entirely, and Amelia wasn’t ready for their time together to come to an end.
Not yet. Maybe she could keep being Amy for a little while longer.
Would that really be so bad? Did it count as a lie if she was still being herself? Her real true self?
Agh. Talk about a moral dilemma. Of course, she knew that the right thing to do was to tell the entire truth, always, no matter what it was. She knew that. But. But.
If she could steal a few more minutes to get to know Imogen before she told her.
Like ten more minutes. Fifteen, tops. To show Imogen that she wasn’t some kind of a diva or a dreadful human being, before preconceived bias creeped in and clouded Imogen’s judgment.
Didn’t Amelia deserve the chance to be seen as a woman, rather than the woman on the screen? Just this one time?
What to do?
Imogen was waiting for some sort of response from her, so Amelia was going to have to make a decision. And fast.