“The thing about Harper,” I told Eloise Taverner onThis Friday Night, “is she actually believes everyone is as obsessed with her as she is.”
Eloise looked to the audience and winked. “No, I’m sure no one here would know anything about being obsessed with Harper Moore.”
I flipped my phone open during the break in filming. I had a dozen text alerts set up for her name.
Harper Moore Casually Glam in Juicy Tracksuit
Did Harper Moore Know About Joel Ingram’s Affairs?
Harper Moore and Greta Liao on Mother-Daughter Shopping Trip
When I got home, I sat on my sofa and powered on my laptop. (I had, finally, upgraded from my clunky computer.) I pulled up the texts and searched for the relevant articles. I tugged on one of Harper’s jumpers (it smelled of her shampoo) and brewed a cup of Harper’s favorite tea (lemon, ginger, and chamomile) and read through every single article about her day.
(I told myself it was because of Joel. That I’d set up thosealerts to know if we were in danger. But however much I mulled over the varied ways I wanted her attention, the truth remained that no matter the shift in us that Harper Moore was the center of my world. I didn’t know hownotto be obsessed with her, even as we grew into whatever it was we were.)
The door creaked. “Hey!” she called, pushing through and dropping bags I’d already seen in a dozen shots. At some point, perhaps in the car, she’d tied her hair up, because all the pictures had it down, loose and fluttering. The teal velour tracksuit might have come straight from Paris Hilton’s wardrobe. It was so far from her usual grunge edge that I could only assume it was an effort to signal supposed distress, a need for comfort.
I slid the laptop closed, reached for the pot of tea—still hot, and poured a cup.
“Show me what you bought,” I said, as I crossed to her, offering the mug.
She took it with a self-conscious smile, dipping her eyes to the chamomile flowers on the surface of the tea. (They meant patience in adversity, and wasn’t that apt?) “Sit down,” she said. “I’ll give you your own private catwalk.”
None of the alerts could have shown me this. None of the articles.
Nobody got her like this but me.
———
“When did you have this done?” I asked, tracing the outline of a small crescent moon tattooed on the edge of Harper’s ribs.There was a shot inWilder Ones, Jane stripping off her gown to the white slip underneath, running through the rain. Could I see this through its translucent mesh? Or had they covered it? The cameras I so adored hiding a part of her from my gaze?
Harper bit her lip, and it took all my concentration not to part those lips with my thumb and remind her they were mine to worry at.
“1998,” she said, as though that were all I was truly asking.
“Oh?”
“Shortly after I started hanging out with Kayla Alexander.”
“Does she have a sun?” I teased. “Do I have to fight her for your hand?”
Harper looked at me—and in the hazy morning light filtering through the curtains she looked like she was on film. Her hair splayed across the pillows. The sheets crumpled around her. But whatever youthful radiance she ought to have embodied was lost in the tired creases of her eyes. The eternal red that tinged them—my beautiful Harper, always a breath away from tears.
Her lids shuttered.
“I started spending time with models, and the press began drawing comparisons between us. My mother visited—she moved back to San Francisco after the divorce … I half expected her to agree but … it’s different, she says. To her day. She was furious with the headlines. I don’t know what it was aboutthemspecifically—I’d had hideous pieces before.”
“Harper,” I said gently—because she hadn’t really said anything. But that was her when she was real—a little all overthe place, her scrambled thoughts a thing to decode—but I knew. I always did.
“Who’d have thought anorexia would fix my relationship with my mother?”
“That’s not funny,” I scolded, drawing up as I connected some dots. “Have you been eating properly since …he left you?”
Like we could speak that story into existence.
She was quiet a moment. “No.”
Oh, so that was the confession beneath the confession. The same way I’d turned up at Ivan’s doorstep: Help me, because I’m scared I’m getting bad again.
