Everything was fucked.
I spent another long evening alone in the war room. I hadn’t put a chair under the door handle this time, but the doorknob didn’t rattle.
I didn’t go back to the footage of Lily and Romeo-Dylan. I didn’t make myself watch it again.
But it played on a loop in my mind, just the same.I’m all hard edges. I need someone soft, to balance me out.
Her lipstick, all over his face.
The jagged pieces of her, falling apart in my arms, no matter how badly I tried to hold her together.
Her lipstick, all over my throat.
The twin pangs that had lived inside me every day since.
The pain, that the most precious thing in her life had been ripped away from her.
And the guilt, because of the tiny, hopeful flame that loss had rekindled in my heart, after all these years.
13LilySix years ago
‘… I’m sorry?’ I said. ‘I don’t think I caught that. Can you say it again?’
‘Sure, honey.’
Denton leaned back in his chair in front of the green screen and repeated one of the single most racist things I’d ever heard in my life.
‘I’m not sure I understand.’ I smiled at him, batting my eyelashes. ‘Can you explain it to me?’
‘Okay.’
With a lack of self-awareness so astonishingly low it belonged in the Guinness Book of World Records, the Season FiveMarry Me, JulietRomeo unpacked what he’d said in excruciating, wildly offensive detail. ‘I’m surprised you haven’t heard that before,’ he told me. ‘Given you’re, you know, the same as her.’
Jeanette, the woman he was talking about, was Singaporean, not Vietnamese, but there was no point trying toexplain that. There was no way a man like this would be able to fathom the fact that not all Asians were ‘the same’. ‘Thanks for your time,’ I said, keeping my tone so friendly I sounded to my own ear like I was talking to a pre-schooler. ‘That’s our interview done for today.’
‘Do you know who I’m taking on the next single date?’
‘I don’t, I’m sorry. Tony makes those calls, not me.’
‘How about I take you?’ He waggled his eyebrows at me. ‘You’re as much of a smokeshow as any of the other girls.’
I forced myself to laugh. ‘You’re very kind, but I belong on this side of the camera.’
After Denton left, I let my head fall back against the wall, took a breath, and gave myself ten seconds.
Ten seconds to be angry. Ten seconds to be absolutely fucking furious with Tony’s piece of shit investment banker nephew that he’d somehow talked the network into casting as the Romeo.
And then I started to scheme.
Murray was on dailies duty that night. He’d been volunteering for it a lot lately, ever since he and Julia had separated. He said it was because he wasn’t sleeping well, so he might as well work nights, but I strongly suspected at least part of the reason was making sure Suzette and I had our fair share of the opportunities.
‘Hey,’ he said, pausing playback and sniffing the air as I swiped into the production office. ‘Is that Thai food?’
‘Yes.’ I dumped the takeaway bag on the table. ‘We’ve got work to do.’
‘Not that I’m ever going to say no to free food, but I’ve got this, Lily.’
I grabbed a couple of paper plates and plastic forks from the stash I kept in my desk drawer. ‘I take it you haven’t seen it yet.’
