Page 61 of All In
But I couldn’t say it. The words, born in my heart, rose up and became stuck in my throat, trapped by excuses.It’s too soon. She’s not ready. She said it herself…
“Thanks. I’m here for you too.”
God, you’re pathetic.
Kacey nodded. “Because we’re friends. And friends miss each other when they’re apart, and they’re happy to see each other when they’re together. It makes sense. Right?”
“Sure,” I said slowly.
She sighed. “I guess that’s it then.”
We started back for her house. But the perplexed look on her face wouldn’t leave.
Friends love each other too,I wanted to tell her, but it was too late. The moment had slipped out of my fingers, and I’d let it.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
Grant Olsen's grin was so wide I thought it would tip his glasses off. “And that, as they say in the business, is a wrap.”
“Thank God,” I said, as a production assistant wrapped a towel around me. “I look like a drowned rat.”
Phoebe handed me a hot coffee. “I would tell you that’s not true, but I like to keep my relationships honest.”
I stuck my tongue out at her.
The set for the music video to “The Lighthouse” was a black, windowless boxy room with cables and lines snaking all across the floor. Two flood lights with blue and green filters beaming down on the water tank I’d spent the last three days in.
The director Grant hired had envisioned a girl trapped in the tank while a man—his face always obscured by shadow—was just out of reach on the other side of the glass. Using some fairly expensive CGI, they were going to pull the video of me in the water and superimpose it on shots of people in everyday life: at a cocktail party, at an apartment, in the bedroom of my cheating boyfriend and his lover. I would be the Drowned Girl, always submerged, while life went on around me.
I appreciated the theme of a cheating boyfriend and not a dead one. I wouldn’t have agreed to do it otherwise. I would never have let some actor portray Jonah in a dramatic rendition of us. It would’ve felt cheap and disrespectful, exploiting what we’d had for a silly video.
Even with the changed narrative, I thought the shoot would be emotionally draining. But the video was shot out of order, chopping and shuffling up the story until it was unrecognizable. Take after take, until the takes blurred together. The constant technical adjustments. The stops and starts. The dauntless struggle not to let air bubbles leak out of my nose and ruin a scene. After three days, I was tired of “The Lighthouse.”
I dried off while the Olsen's updated me on record sales. “You're a hit, girl,” Phoebe said, shuffling some papers. “This video is going to put you over the top.”
“Thanks to you guys. None of this would have been possible without you.”
“Just don't forget us when you're accepting your Grammy,” Grant said, still grinning.
“I won’t.”
“You can’t,” Phoebe said, her eyes flashing. “We put it in your contract.” She flicked her fingers at her brother then. “Go away. We have girl talk.”
“We do?” I asked.
She waited until Grant was out of sight. “Matt Porter asked me if you were single.”
Matt was the graphic designer doing the cover forShattered Glass.Cute, dry sense of humor, nice smile.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.” Phoebe nudged my arm. “So?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll think about it.”
Even saying that sent guilt curling around my heart, and that unsettled feeling I’d told Theo about hit me with a vengeance. If I wanted to shut that door the Tarot card told me about and start a new chapter, I had todosomething. Or maybe a bunch of Big Somethings.
