Page 14 of Seven Minutes In Heaven
“Interesting.”
“Please, Mom, I can’t stand looking at it. I feel like I’m gonna be sick.” Claire gripped the stairway banister. “I need to prepare for my callback, anyway. If Arthur stops by, you know what to do.”
She didn’t wait to hear her mother’s reaction. Claire wanted to get as far away from the portrait as possible. With any luck, Arthurwouldhang it up in his office, and she would officially have a reason to stay far, far away from that tainted room.
***
The gifts kept coming.
Every day, someone stopped by to deliver a new gift for Claire Finn. First, it was one bouquet after another. Then? Teddy bears. Chocolates. Pieces of jewelry and slinky cocktail dresses Claire had been eyeballing. Every day was Valentine’s Day in the Finn household.
A part of Claire felt guilty that she didn’t acknowledge them. Something was terribly off, anyway. It wasn’t abnormal for her fiancé to send her presents like this, but at this rate? Ridiculous. What was she supposed to do with this junk? The worst part? Claire’s allergies had gone more haywire than usual, as if she suddenly turned into her mother overnight.Stop. Sending. Me. Flowers!It got to the point that the servants in Claire’s house had to immediately do away with the flowers to keep the women of the home from dying of hay fever. Claire chalked this up to such an overdose of floral arrangements. It was also probably why she felt queasier with each passing day.
She threw herself into preparing for her final audition. Meetings with her agent, wedding planner, and stylist for the upcoming garden party season had her so stressed that she skipped a period. Not unusual, honestly. Claire’s body was so susceptible to stress that she had skipped four periods in the past three years. It was even worse when she was a teenager!
So, she upped the amount of yoga and meditation sessions she took. She changed her diet around, both to account for swimsuit season, and to help keep her stress in check. It kept her mind off things, anyway. It was one thing to stop thinking about her stressful audition to turn around and think about marrying Arthur Carter.
Because each day that went by meant she was one day closer to her wedding.
I should call it off.She thought that every night, when she tossed and turned, sweating, half-sleeping, and smacking her tongue against the dry roof of her mouth. She often awoke naked, because she had stripped her clothes off in the middle of the night and pitched them across the hot room.
The morning of her audition, she woke up wanting to hurl.
“No breakfast, thanks,” she said to her family’s cook. “I’m afraid I’ll vomit all over the casting directors if I even look at a cup of yogurt.”
“Oh, my,” the cook said. “You really don’t look good, Ms. Finn. You sure you’re all right? I hear the flu is going around.”
“I’m fine.” She had to be. This audition was too important to miss or fuck up. She would have to put on her big girl stockings and drive to the audition with a mind over matter attitude that kept her food – and bile – in her stomach.
She arrived fifteen minutes early. The producers and casting directors were still in session with the actress scheduled before her. Claire filled out the last of her paperwork and sat down in the waiting room, going over the lines one more time.
Nope. That rumble in her stomach had her storming down the bathroom door, in time for her to unleash last night’s dinner all over the porcelain throne.
“Ms. Finn?” the casting agency’s secretary called from the waiting room. “Are you all right? Should I call someone?”
“No!” Claire braced herself against the toilet as another wave of nausea controlled her nervous system. And digestive system. And probably the skeletal system, if given the chance. “I’m fine! Be right out!”
The nausea left as soon as she finished purging. Claire cleaned everything up before going back into the waiting room and touching up her makeup so she didn’t look like a wraith.
It was certainly a first. While Claire had her share of butterflies before auditions, throwing up was on another level ofsad. Makes sense, I suppose.She had a lot on her mind. The wedding, her career, the strange familial dynamics about to clock her in the side of the head once she was legally related to Jake…
God, Jake…
The last person she should be thinking about right now! Talk about a renewed wave of nausea! Claire held her head between her hands and tried to block out the memory of Jake Carter kissing and touching her as if she were the sweetest morsel to cross his lips.
She popped a mint five seconds before she was called into the other room. The actress who had auditioned before her gave her a little wave and wished her luck.How old is she? Twenty? Is she even old enough to drink?That was the kind of body only twenty-year-olds could get away with. Claire had been fighting the battle of the twenty-five-year-old bulge for the past several months. Her personal trainer and nutritionist both told her she would be lucky to ever see another carb again.
“Ms. Finn?”
Scott Lee, the head casting director for the film, motioned for her to enter the room. Claire patted down her hair and straightened out her dress before entering.
More people here this time.The table was filled with people. Casting people, producers, the director of the film… half of them were people Claire had met during the first round of auditions. The others were newcomers.
Except for one.
There, sitting on the far end of the table with a label that said “SCREENWRITER,” was Jake.
