No More Pretending Page 10

  “Honey, you forgot your…” Sue started to tell her, but Lauren was already gone. Sue kept walking toward Harper with a curious look. “All that to not pay for a cup of coffee and a salad?”

  “Oh, she asked me to take care of it,” Harper lied. She paid Sue for both Sal’s and Lauren’s things and went to get back into her car. She sat for a moment with her hands on the steering wheel. Harper was one hundred percent sure that she’d done the right thing. It didn’t change the fact that she felt terrible about it.

  That afternoon and for the rest of the week, they avoided one another. It was only now that Lauren was staying away that Harper grasped how often Lauren had pursued her company before. Lauren had often lingered in her office or found her in the halls to chat. Now Harper found herself scanning rooms to see if she were there, and looking at her doorway to find it empty.

  A few days after their conversation at Joe’s,Sal asked Harper to bring him a notepad from his office. When she reached him, she saw that he and Lauren were watching a laptop screen together, their heads drawn close. When Harper walked in, they both looked up at her at the same time. Lauren registered her presence and smiled at her, but it was hollow. After all the time they had spent together, Harper knew the difference between her real smile and this fake one. Harper couldn’t bring herself to react to it at all, and she ignored Lauren in favor of talking to Sal. She could feel Lauren staring at her.

  By the time the weekend rolled around, loneliness was gnawing at her. For a while she had looked forward to weekends so much, but now the days seemed empty and boring. It was a taste of what she would have experienced when Lauren returned to New York anyway. She supposed it was better that she become used to it now.

  No matter how hard she tried to be pragmatic about the breakdown of their friendship Harper felt terrible. Visions of Lauren’s smile, the real one, were so clear that it was like a photograph in her mind. She missed the way Lauren always laughed at her jokes as though they were the funniest things she had ever heard, on the easy way Lauren would lie back on the blanket with her hands under her head, as though there were nothing she would rather be doing than spending time with Harper at the lake.

  She wondered if Lauren missed her even half as much as she missed Lauren.

  Chapter Twelve

  Could a person sustain a broken heart from the ending of a friendship? It certainly felt like it to Lauren, because she had never hurt this much over the loss of a lover. After Harper had told her she didn’t want to be friends, she just lay on the sofa and cried, while Chester crawled over her and tried to lick at her tears. She grabbed him and held him in her arms, knowing he was the one thing that could make her feel better. Harper didn’t even think enough of her to hear her out. It was clear she had lost Harper’s respect, and she was sure she would never be given the opportunity earn it back.

  Lauren had been aware of how much she had screwed everything up but she’d hoped for a second chance. That day Lauren just wanted that kiss, and didn’t care about the consequences. All the talk about kissing and the built-up tension made her lose her head. Initially, she lied to herself that if she kept up the façade of the kiss being about work it would be okay, but that pretense crumbled very quickly.

  Kissing Harper was eye-opening. Throughout her acting career, Lauren had played at passion, aping the kind of feelings she had never experienced in her real life. She never even really believed that kind of hunger and magic was real. That all changed when the lust shot through her as she felt Harper’s body pressed against her own. Lauren wanted to give in to it completely, but after a few minutes of blissful abandon she woke up to reality. Her actions made her feel so exposed that she would have done anything to put her guard back again, and for Harper to not see how much she wanted her.

  In the morning at work her heart raced and her chest tightened with anxiety. Sal had picked up on the fact that something was wrong, but she couldn’t imagine talking to him about it. She couldn’t imagine talking to anyone about it.

  Sal pulled her aside when she got back from the diner after chasing after Harper like an idiot. If she thought she felt bad before the lunch break, acting a love scene with Josh was going to be an even bigger challenge now. It had taken all of her nerve to go and talk to Harper. Harper’s disinterest in working things out crushed her.

  “Okay, I don’t understand why you can’t pull off this kissing scene. Normally I’d think it was Josh, but am I right in thinking it’s you?” Sal asked.

  “It’s nothing. I’m just not feeling it, that’s all. I’m tired,” Lauren replied.

  Sal put his finger under her chin. “I’ve always said that you create chemistry with anyone. It’s one of your many great gifts as an actor.”

  Lauren tried to smile. “Stop flattering me, you know I won’t fall for it.”

  “See, you’re smart too. If you can’t do whatever it is that you normally do, I’ll tell you what I tell everyone else. I want you to visualize your ideal person. I just want it to be a person who you need to kiss more than you need to breathe.”

  Lauren noticed the way he used neutral pronouns, knowing that people might overhear. She would have been angry with him if he had referred to her sexuality in front of anyone, but it was a painful reminder that she could just never speak freely.

  If only she needed to make that person up. For the rest of the afternoon, when she closed her eyes she thought of Harper’s face coming close to hers, and of the sweet bursting of nerves in her stomach. It struck her as a sad and dysfunctional thing for her to be doing, but it also felt like the only way she could get through this. How she felt or how she got there didn’t matter to anyone as long as she could turn in a good performance. Sal was happy with her by the end of the day. For now, that would have to do.

  Over the next few evenings, Lauren lost count of how many times she picked up her phone to call Harper. If she could have just one more try, one more attempt at finding the right words. In the end, she screwed up the piece of paper with Harper’s number that she kept near the phone, and then deleted it from her cell. It was the only way to ensure that she wouldn’t break down and go against Harper’s wishes. She kept having long imaginary conversations with Harper in her mind. Although Harper hadn’t said a great deal that day at Joe’s, she’d said enough for Lauren to know that Harper had her all wrong. The words kept coming back to her.

  A few days after the events by the lake, she was walking toward Sal’s office when Harper was coming out of it. Lauren’s first instinct was to turn and walk away but that would make her look ridiculous. Lauren was frozen in place. She watched while Harper clocked her, her step faltering just enough for Lauren to notice it.

  Lauren gathered her nerve and walked past her, looking over Harper’s shoulder and not greeting her. An unexpected wave of anger had come over her because of how bad things had gotten between them. It made her want to ignore Harper, to make Harper feel as bad as she did. When Harper brushed past her, Lauren had an overwhelming impulse to reach out and touch her, to grab her by the waist and make her pay attention. When Harper passed, she turned around and looked after her, but Harper didn’t look back at her.

  After a long pause, she eventually entered Sal’s office. “What did you want to see me about?”

  “Hello,” Sal said sarcastically.

  “Hi. What did you want to see me about?”

  Sal had his cell phone in his hand and he held it up. “Harper’s just gone to the store to get me some potato chips. You want anything?”

  Lauren scoffed. “Is that really necessary? Is she just here to play fetch for you all day long?”

  Sal sat back in his chair and spread his arms wide. “Darling, are you going to pretend you don’t have an assistant for the rest of time when you’re not here? You’re in a self-righteous mood today.”

  Lauren felt her face redden. She knew he was right. “Okay, sorry. Can we get to the point?”

  “I don’t think that scene I wrote with you and your best
friend is working. I want you to go over it with me, get a female perspective.”

  Lauren looked up at the ceiling. “Sal, you ask for my opinion and then don’t listen to it. I don’t know why you bother. I’m just an actor, not the writer. You’re the writer.”

  “You’ve written before, and a damn good script too. Besides, this way you’ll complain less when it comes to the time we have to shoot it.”

  Lauren reluctantly pulled out her script and started running through the notes she had already made. As she had expected, Sal kept arguing back at her every time she suggested a change. She was so on edge already that she felt like throwing her script at him in frustration. “Why don’t you ask Harper for her opinion again? You listen to her more than me.”

  “I will. She has a good head on her shoulders. I wish she lived in LA. Do you think she would move? She’s one of the best assistants I’ve ever had.”

  “Uh-huh,” Lauren said, feigning disinterest.

  “Well do you think she would? Move?” Sal prompted.

  “I don’t know. Why don’t you just ask her?”

  “I’m asking you because you two are so tight. Jeez, what’s gotten into you lately?” Sal asked.

  “Nothing. And we’re not that close, so I wouldn’t have a clue.”

  “Oh, you’re not screwing? I assumed you were,” Sal said, like he didn’t care one way or another.

  Lauren tried to not react too much. At least she could tell him the truth. “No Sal, we’re not.”

  Sal looked back at her. “I always see you two talking, and I heard you hang out on the weekends. Did you have a falling out? Is that why you’re so grumpy?”

  “No. I don’t care about her enough to fall out with her. I was only hanging out with her because there’s nothing to do in this town,” Lauren said, beating back a rising panic. She didn’t like that Sal had worked out what was going on. Maybe everyone knew.

  “Me-yow,” Sal said.

  Not a moment later Harper reentered the room. Without a word, she walked over and handed the chips to Sal. There was no way that she hadn’t heard when the door was wide open, and Lauren had been speaking at a normal volume. Lauren made eye contact with Sal, but he was either oblivious that Harper had heard them talking about her or didn’t care. He never had been one to get concerned with people’s feelings.

  “Can I get you anything else?”

  When Sal declined, Harper turned around and walked toward Lauren. Her eyes were steely. Lauren forced herself to withstand the glare, even though the right thing to do would be to act contrite. She wanted to follow Harper out of the room and explain that she had only said it to throw Sal off the scent, but she knew that Harper wouldn’t understand.

  When she was sure that Harper would be safely out of the way, Lauren excused herself from Sal’s office, needing to be alone. The words kept running through her head and she couldn’t stop thinking about how horrible she must have sounded.

  The possibility of any type of relationship with Harper was slipping further and further out of her grip.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Things had gotten ugly between them, and Lauren hated it. It was uglier than either of them wanted, or would have previously been able to imagine. It was a jumble of hurt and resentments and sadness on either side, and it was a mess.

  They were waging a secret war with one another, competing over who could ignore the other person in the most brutal ways. They were savage in their indifference toward one another. Nobody watching could ever notice it because it was too subtle to be perceived from the outside. When they did speak to one another because they had to, they would be coldly professional.

  The effort of behaving in such a way wore on Lauren, and it never stopped hurting when Harper behaved in kind.

  In the mornings, she walked past Harper’s office. She could have walked another way, but she had become used to this route when she’d dropped Chester off every morning. The need to be near Harper despite their new awful dynamic wasn’t a tendency that she wanted to examine too closely. Sometimes the door was open, and sometimes it wasn’t. Sometimes Harper was at work already, and other times it was clear that the office was empty. It was hard for Lauren to know when she refused to look in lest their eyes meet. She saw shapes out of the corner of her eye and tried to work out what they meant.

  Today the door was closed. She paused for a moment, trying to pick out the telltale sounds of keys tapping or music playing. It didn’t make any difference, not really, but she liked to know whether Harper had arrived and was in her office. It gave her the illusion of control over her day to know if she were likely to run into her or not. Lauren was holding her coffee mug in one hand and gripping her handbag alongside a sheaf of papers in the other. There was a stack of paperwork from her manager that she hadn’t been motivated enough to go through and she had decided that today should be the day she did.

  Lauren’s head was tilted toward the door. She couldn’t hear a sound. She was just about to walk on when someone rushed past her in the hall. The light grip she had on her papers faltered and they started to slip from her hands. When she was trying to stop it, she forgot she was holding coffee. In her attempts to hold everything together, she lost it all. Lauren swore as coffee went everywhere, spilling all over her clothes. The door opened and there was Harper, standing over her. She swore again.

  “What happened?” Harper said in her lilting voice, coming down to help her.

  “I was walking past and someone knocked into me. Don’t worry about it, I’ve got it,” Lauren muttered. Her voice was unsteady, her eyes filling with tears.

  “It’s okay. Just let me help you.”

  Lauren finally looked up and had to avert her gaze quickly. Harper’s voice sounded so kind just then. It sounded just like it had in the old days before hostility had sprung up between them. When she looked at Harper’s eyes, she was lost in them again. Even when Harper didn’t speak, you could read everything in her expression. In that moment, Harper was looking at Lauren like she cared.

  When was she going to get over this? It seemed like putting thousands of miles between them might be the only cure. It made her feel helpless, and feeling helpless made her feel angry.

  “No thank you, I don’t need anything from you,” Lauren answered.

  Harper sighed.

  “Yes?” Lauren said sharply.

  “Nothing, I just…I’m trying to be nice to you and you’re so rude all the time,” Harper said.

  “You are not nice to me. You ignore me every chance you get. And I’m just doing what you told me to and keeping my distance like you wanted. Make up your mind, I can’t keep up with you,” Lauren replied.

  “I said I wanted to keep a good working relationship with you, not that I wanted us to ignore one another,” Harper said in a harsh whisper. “And I heard that really shitty thing you said about me. I do have feelings you know. It’s not all about you!”

  “How the hell was I supposed to know what you wanted?” Lauren said, her voice rising. “You barely even let me speak to you!”

  Harper reached toward her, touching her cheek so tenderly that Lauren’s heart lurched. Harper looked around the hall and grabbed a handful of papers, then beckoned Lauren to come inside her office. When Lauren reluctantly did so, Harper closed the door behind them and retrieved a box of tissues from her desk.

  Lauren placed the bundle of papers she had picked up onto Harper’s desk and took the tissues, dabbing at the coffee on her skirt.

  “Thank you,” Lauren said. She could feel it rising up, that sense of tension between them that had been so thick and sweet sometimes. She had seen something in Harper’s face when she had touched her.

  “Look,” said Harper. “I’m sorry if I upset you that day at Joe’s, I just thought it was better for the both of us if we didn’t continue the way we were. I was really not okay with what happened.”

  “Well, I’m sorry I put you in that position in the first place,” Lauren replied. “But I
don’t know why you get to be the one who decides everything. You didn’t give me a say, you just shut me down.”

  Harper held her hands out. For once, she was at a loss for words. “I’m telling you, I needed to protect myself. I wasn’t trying to decide for you, I was just doing what I needed to do.”

  “Okay, but you didn’t even hear me out. You’ve made all these assumptions about me. If you’d let me talk you might have felt differently about everything.”

  “I don’t think I’ve made that many assumptions. I was just reacting to what you did.”

  This conversation was circular. Lauren wondered if Harper was ever going to understand. The fact that Harper was so calm only made her feel more irrational. All this talk felt useless and having Harper so close to her distracted her. She wanted Harper to comfort her again, to put her hands on her.

  “It wasn’t just that. The things you said…you really don’t know anything about me. You think that you do but you don’t,” Lauren tried to explain.

  “I don’t think that’s true,” Harper said. “I thought we were getting to know one another pretty well. If I don’t know you it’s because you don’t let me.”

  “That’s not true. I let you in but you weren’t listening. You thought I was dating Josh,” Lauren spat out. She balled up a handful of tissues and threw them angrily in the trash.

  “What does that have to do with anything? I mean, you never talked about him, why would I know the details?”

  “See, that’s what I’m talking about. You’re like everybody else. You think you know something about me just because you read it on the Internet. I’ve never been with Josh.”

  Harper stared back at her. “I’m confused as to why believing you were in a relationship that the whole rest of the world thinks was real is a problem. I asked you about Josh and you didn’t say a word about it. You were all secretive, I seem to remember. You had plenty of time to explain it to me if I was wrong about you two. We spent a lot of time together.”