CHAPTER 33
I have to wait until the camera guys are coiling up the extension cords and Boss and the panellists have left the studio.
When Archie finally bids goodbye to the elderly couple from the live audience who he’s been chatting to since filming stopped, I decide this is my moment to surprise him.
I will pretend it’s routine business. We are both professionals. This doesn’t have to be a big deal.
‘Archie,’ I say curtly, striding out from stage left. ‘Can I speak to you for a moment?’
‘Millsy.’ He blinks, startled, then looks around as if to check for Boss, but he’s long gone. ‘I thought Petria must have come with Harcourt. I didn’t know you were here.’
‘I need to talk to you,’ I say, eyeing the cameramen.
This place would also have security cameras everywhere and I don’t want to accidentally gift the ABC a giant scoop by inadvertently revealing Boss’s secrets (i.e.
the treasonous behaviour of his media director).
‘We should go somewhere private.’ I tap my nose as if we are two people who communicate in code, when really, this is just a move I have seen in lots of Ryan Reynolds films.
Archie’s eyes light up. ‘I know a place,’ he says, mocking my CIA signals with some nose-tapping of his own.
If I was concerned there would be some level of lingering sexual tension, I needn’t have worried. He’s reverted to making fun of me and I’m not even angry about it. In fact, it’s quite calming.
‘How do you “know a place”?’ I ask.
‘I interned here.’
‘What? When?’
‘First-year uni.’
‘Why?’ Everyone at uni knew Archie already had a three-year holding contract with the Roosters and a bunch of agents clamouring to get him to France in the interim; that was why he didn’t need to get a part-time job like the rest of us. All he did was train, drink and pick up girls.
Archie shrugs. ‘I wanted to be a journalist.’
‘You never told me that!’
‘You never asked.’
Not for the first time, I’m filled with helpless rage at how inexplicable this guy can be.
Is he trying to confuse me on purpose? During uni, Archie never hinted that he aspired to anything more than a well-earned Mad Monday.
Trust him to drop this bomb after the festival to throw me further off-kilter.
‘Follow me,’ says Archie. My body flashes with heat at the memory of holding his hand at the festival, so I clench my fingers into fists. That was an extenuating circumstance, I remind myself. The campsite was very poorly lit.
If a photo got out of Archie and me holding hands, the press would have a field day. It would be cyanide for both our careers and more so for mine because I’m a) less high profile and b) female.
I follow Archie through a corridor and down a few stairwells, and we arrive in the basement.
‘Here,’ he says, opening a red door. I walk inside and it’s completely black. Archie comes in after me and closes the door behind him.
‘Archie, I can’t see.’
‘Wait for your eyes to adjust.’
‘Can’t we go somewhere normal?’ We seem to be in a broom cupboard.
‘Everywhere else has security cameras.’
That quietens me. He’s as paranoid of being found out as I am. ‘Where are we?’
‘The stationery room. I know how you like stationery.’
It’s true. I almost get off on colour-coded Post-its these days. It’s an affliction.
‘I’m so glad you wanted to talk,’ he says, reaching for me. ‘But first I have to tell you about this story. It’s going to drop—’
‘Archie!’ I jolt back, smacking his hands away.
‘We’re not here to transgress boundaries like that.
We’re not suddenly going to share secrets like fur-wearing Soviet double agents.
I’ll read your story when it comes out, and then I’ll fix whatever damage it does to Boss, like I always do.
I don’t want anything to change. That’s what I wanted to talk about.
I need you to promise you’ll be professional, in terms of … ’
‘In terms of what?’ says Archie, and I can tell from his voice that he’s about to smile.
‘In terms of … well … this situation … the stuff that happened.’ I wave my hands between us, hoping he’ll get the picture, but it’s so dark in here we can hardly see each other.
‘What stuff do you mean?’ asks Archie. He’s definitely moved closer to me; I can feel some kind of energy radiating from him.
‘Just, like …’
‘I’ll need you to be more specific,’ says Archie. His chest is almost bumping mine. I try to shift back but I’m already up against the shelves; there’s no room. There’s also no air. There must be a problem with the vents.
‘Archie,’ I whisper.
‘Millsy,’ he whispers back.
He manages to grab my hands in the dark and I’m suddenly saturated with memories of the festival.
How the skin on his back was cool and firm and how his every movement felt so strong but gentle.
I remember with perfect clarity: This is how it starts.
It starts with his hands and then it moves to his lips and they wipe my mind of normal human thoughts.
‘We need to pretend it didn’t happen!’ I blurt.
‘Millsy, you don’t need to freak out. When a man and a woman like each other—’
‘I’m not freaking out!’
‘You’ve missed three press conferences in a row.’
Gosh darn his attention to detail. I swear Boss hardly noticed that.
‘I was busy.’
‘Busy avoiding me?’
‘Not on purpose.’
Archie drops my hands and exhales in a way that suggests he’s rolling his eyes.
‘Well, okay, maybe on purpose, but what else did you expect? We accidentally had sex!’
‘It was hardly accidental!’
This is true. I definitely pulled my own underwear off. On purpose.
I decide to change tack. ‘Look, I know you do your player thing, and that’s fine. I know you—’
‘Millsy!’ Archie interrupts. ‘Stop calling me a player as some kind of excuse. I’m not, and you know it. I don’t have a sex-favours database filled with phone numbers. I’ve told you about every single person I’ve dated in the last four years.’
‘And I’m happy for you. Really, I am.’ My voice sounds brittle and shrill. ‘So let’s pretend the festival never happened. We’ll never tell a soul. It’s what we both want.’
Archie is quiet. I can’t even hear him breathing. I wonder if he’s noticed the issue with the air vents too.
‘No,’ he says eventually.
‘No, what?’
‘No, I don’t want to pretend it never happened.’
I don’t know what he’s saying. He’s not making sense. ‘Archie, you’re speaking in double negatives.’
‘I can’t help it, Millsy. You make my brain malfunction.’
‘That’s not my fault, Archie. Maybe you should have done a comms degree instead of flaking out to play rugby in France.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
To be honest, I don’t know what it was supposed to mean, but now I need to form a cogent argument so he doesn’t realise my brain malfunctions around him too.
‘It means you didn’t even train to be a journalist. You did an internship, skipped off to France, played one season for the Roosters, then landed a job that thousands of people would work their arses off to get.’
‘Millsy, I work my arse off too.’
‘I know. I just don’t think you appreciate your footy privilege.’
‘What the hell does that mean?’
‘It means there are always jobs for the boys! And you’re the biggest boy of all.
You just did News our eyes felt like magnets the way they’d automatically connect across a room, even though we’d never spoken before.
It’s why I always had to turn away when he came into a room, because it was embarrassing how much I wanted to look at him.
‘Of course I’d noticed you,’ I bleat pathetically. ‘You fill up all my eye-space.’
Tears are suddenly leaking out of my eyes, and my chest feels like it’s pressing in on my heart. I don’t know what I’m feeling. Confusion. Pain. Fear that something is slipping away from me before I’ve worked out what it is.
I think of Archie’s text—We need to talk—and that makes me think of my phone, which makes me think of Boss, and my job, and my tiny shoebox apartment and how much it would destroy me if I lost my job, if I couldn’t afford rent, if I had to move home; how I’d be reminded of Mum every single day.
‘Please,’ I say quietly. ‘We need to forget this happened.’
Archie takes a step backwards and it feels as though the barometric pressure plummets. Before I can say anything, he yanks the door open and light streams into the room. In less than a second, the door slams behind him.