Page 122 of Try Hard
“I’ve had an easier time paying attention to you over the last few years, I think you’ll find.”
She smiled that smile again, the one that looked like she was winning an Olympic medal. I couldn’t help remembering the way she’d looked on that podium—blissfully happy, overwhelmed, content in a way nobody could ever take from her. Ridiculous, really, that being around me could elicit the same response.
“I’m not gonna lie,” she said smugly, “I’m absolutely delighted you’ve been paying attention to me. The most incredible woman I’ve ever met watching me, cheering for me, and believing in me? That’s the dream right there.”
I laughed. “I feel like I’m supposed to say something about dreams coming true right here… but that’s so… cliché.”
“It’s good to be a little cliché. Most especially in love.”
Eve Archer loved me.
Loving her was so easy, but being loved by her? Well, that made everything feel like it would be okay. Even quitting my job with no idea of where I was going.
For years now, I hadn’t been a fan of changing big things in my life. I kept everything steady and tidy and manageable. There was nomanagingbeing in love with Eve, or being loved by her. It was completely encompassing and I already knew it was going to change everything. Maybe my job was just another thing to go with that.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Fia
“You really don’t have to… go so hard,” I said quietly after reading Eve’s proposed statement.
She’d brought us to her apartment in London. It was late and the place was beautiful. Smaller than you might expect, but perfect for her—for one person. Or two. Plus, there was no beating the unbelievably epic view over the Thames and the city from the wall of windows in her living area.
Now, though, we were standing in the small second bedroom that she’d turned into an office—lush, deep colours, stunning accents, comfortable but perfectly appointed. I’d seen Eve’s work as an interior designer and never doubted how good she was, but seeing it unleashed in her own home was another level entirely.
She looked up at me speculatively. “When have I ever not gone hard, Ophelia?”
Despite the stress of the situation, something curled in my stomach with the way she said my name.
I felt ridiculously safe here, in her seventeenth-floor apartment, away from the rest of the world with her. Part of me, a few years ago, had spent time trying to believe that, as we aged, we shouldn’t need to feel safe in the same way we had when we were children. That the need to run and hide and have a secret spot away from the world was a childish behaviour I needed to outgrow. Now, I knew that wasn’t true. Sure, the world tried to make you feel like that, but it wasn’t real. Of all the things humans needed, safety was paramount.
Eve was safety. Always had been.
I breathed a laugh and stepped into the space between her legs as she sat in her office chair. It was beginning to feel like I belonged there, like that spot was mine. Eve gave it to me readily, wanted me there, made me feel as though it had always been mine. Just like being in her arms was a place I’d always belonged.
“Fair point,” I said as I leaned to press my face into her hair. It was so thick. Even short, it was thick and beautiful and had that picture perfect lock that cascaded over her forehead as I disturbed it. “But you know what I mean. I’ll be okay if you want to go for something more measured, or if you want to pretend we’re just friends for public purposes.”
She held me close as she rested her chin against me and looked up to meet my gaze. “I do not want that. My dearest Ophelia, I don’t think you and I have ever just been friends, and, now we get to know that, I have no interest in pretending we are.”
I nodded and looked back at her proposed statement. The people who’d already been saying terrible things weren’t going to like it. They’d blame me, probably insinuate that I was controlling her, that it was some weird PR relationship to boost my career, or suggest she was just with me for pity, that it wasn’tgoing to end well. I wanted so badly to be okay with it all, to brush it off like it didn’t matter, but it stung. More than I liked.
Eve wasn’t leaving any wiggle room. This was it, a statement of our relationship, of how she felt about me, and how she felt about some of the attention she got. She so deserved to finally state how those things affected her. It was amazing that she was doing it, and I hoped her comments would make the tiniest bit of difference to how people treated her and others in the public eye. Parasocial relationships were too integrated into society. All of those things weren’t going away in a day, but every little bit helped. And, if Eve could call out how she and the people in her life were treated, maybe that would one day lead to even one less person being in this situation.
But I’d gotten tangled up in it. And nothing was going to change that. In the minds of some people, this would always be a thing she did to appease an ugly, fat woman who didn’t deserve her.
It wasn’t easy playing that role.
Marnie had been right, though. Those were not people I’d ever ask for opinions on anything voluntarily. Their disparaging opinions lived on the internet, where they thought themselves untouchable and entitled to say every cruel thought that passed through their minds. The likelihood they’d ever say something like that to my face was impossibly slim.
My eyes lingered on Eve’s mention of critical body-based comments people had been making. She was pointing out how wrong such comments were, but she was also pointing out the many, many comments she received about her body—several of them done with similar language—and how her fans knew the pain such things caused, how it was based on nothing, and how it hurt the people around those saying it. She was so eloquent in her fury. She was the adult version of the kid who’d stood besideme in a science lab and told off an annoying teenage boy. Could she scare a whole crowd of people off in the same way?
I was inclined to believe Eve Archer could do anything in the world that she wanted.
My heart rate wasn’t as even as it should have been, and there was still pain at the commentary we’d been receiving, but, as I read her words about me and our relationship again, the desire to physically shrink myself slowly started dissipating.
She wasn’t giving away much, but her words held so much love and care. This fierce adoration and protection screaming from the page in a way I was quite unused to but entirely mesmerised by.
What did it matter if some random person I’d never met and never would meet thought I was ugly because they wanted to date Eve? It wasn’t even really about me. It was about their uncontrolled jealousy. What did it really matter what my ex had thought? That hadn’t been about me either, not really. It had been about control.
