The View Was Exhausting

by Mikaella Clements

  Win tensed—Marie had warned her she was on the cover this week—but Charlie only had a clipped article. In the photo Shift was tucked under Charlie’s arm while they stood in a parking lot, her face scrunched in a laugh, one hand held up to Charlie’s mouth, her thumb resting against his lower lip.

  “Oh, come on,” Shift said.

  “No, this one’s good,” Charlie said, and began to read the caption. “Adorable scenes this week from Montreal, where Charlie Washington and his longtime girlfriend, British EDM princess Shift, were seen embracing tenderly outside a local restaurant just days away from their wedding.”

  Shift scoffed. “We have never embraced tenderly.”

  “Of course we have,” Charlie said. “The pair will say their vows this week at the Rosemont Greenhouse with an intimate gathering of family and friends, including—well, whatever,” Charlie said, glancing up at Win. “It’s nice, though. The picture’s good, too. I might see if Georgia wants to include it.” Georgia was the Vogue journalist; Charlie had taken to referring to her as though she were a dear friend.

  “It’s gross.” Shift plucked the clipping from his hands, scrunched it into a ball, and lobbed it into a corner of the room.

  Charlie settled back into his seat, untroubled. “I have copies,” he said.

  Shift gave Win a look out of the corner of her eye that Win thought was meant to convey exasperation. Her mouth was twitching.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “It’s okay,” Win said.

  “Oh!” Charlie said. “So you told her, then?”

  “Told me what?”

  “Oh,” Charlie said again, this time low and anxious. Shift tilted her head back toward the ceiling, her eyes closed.

  “Told me what?” Win repeated.

  “Come on.” Shift looped her arm under Win’s, tugging her toward the kitchen.

  Shift whipped up whisky sours, the same in the kitchen as she was in her studio, hands flying about and always at least three things in the mix at once. She managed to look busy enough that Win couldn’t probe her further, and Win’s gaze wandered around the room instead, Charlie’s basil plants in the window and the fridge plastered with save the dates and invitation drafts and Polaroids. She caught sight of it, half-hidden under a caterer’s proposed menu: Leo’s face, a line of beer bottles, his arm slung around a shoulder that Win knew was her own, though the rest of the photo was out of view. Her stomach twisted, a flood of misery and nausea, and she said quickly, “You might as well just tell me. If it’s about Gum coming to the wedding, I already know.”

  She wasn’t looking forward to meeting him, but hopefully he would be too caught up in his own drama to focus much on his little brother’s—he seemed the type. “Right, Geoffrey is coming,” Shift said. “Only…he called Charlie yesterday.”

  She paused. There were fast, unhappy ripples in Win’s stomach.

  “He won’t come to the wedding unless Leo does, too. Geoffrey says the whole thing is a plot to undermine him.”

  Win’s chest tightened. “Okay.” She drew a breath. “Has Leo— Is he going to do it?” It hurt to say his name, like an allergy. A swelling and soreness in the throat.

  “Leo’s said he won’t come unless you say it’s okay. But Charlie loves Leo, and he’s worried about Geoffrey. He’s very protective of him,” she added, looking briefly annoyed, “as if he’s some kind of sensitive child and not an—anyway. Charlie didn’t want me to say it to you, but I think he’ll be really crushed if they aren’t there.”

  Keeping her voice deliberately level, Win said, “So are you asking me about this, or telling me?”

  Shift winced. “Telling.”

  “Right.”

  “Win,” Shift started, but Win cut her off with a dismissive wave of her hand.

  “Right,” she repeated. “So I guess Chilton isn’t coming, then?”

  Shift blinked. “Chilton?”

  “Georgia Chilton. The Vogue profiler. And whatever photographer she’s bringing.” Win was surprised that she had to spell it out. “They can’t be there if both me and Leo are. It’s too risky.”

  She didn’t like the way Shift was staring at her, not quite taken aback but instead with narrowed eyes, her face slowly setting.

  “You know how much that profile means to Charlie,” Shift said. “It’s not even about you.”

  “You don’t think the fact that I’ll be there might make it in?”

  Shift took a neat sip of her drink. “So Charlie has you to thank for it, then?”

  “That’s not what I mean. If anything happens...”

  “You’ll just have to control yourselves,” Shift said, and set her drink down. “I know it’s a lot. But I don’t ask you for much.”

  Leo and Shift never thought they were asking her for anything, even when they were demanding everything. Win shook her head. “This is too much. I’m sorry. It’s either me and him, or me and the profiler. Not both.”

  “Is that an ultimatum?”

  “I’m not trying to force you,” Win said. “I told you, it’s just too risky.”

  “Maybe you just have to take a risk.”

  “It isn’t that simple. You know how hard I work.”

  “You think Charlie doesn’t work hard? You can’t use your career as an excuse all the time.”

  Win leaned back, stunned. “This isn’t an excuse.”

  “No, it is. It always is.” Shift stood up, pushing off her stool. Her eyes were bright with anger, her chin tilted up. “You think you’re being professional and making smart decisions, but you just make easy decisions. You always do whatever’s easiest for you.”

  “Nothing about this is easy!”

  “No?” Shift folded her arms. “You’re sticking with what you know. You’re clearly breaking your own heart to do it, but that’s never stopped you before. You’ve always played it safe with Leo—”

  Win gaped. “Safe?”

  “Doing your stupid platonic publicity thing,” Shift said. She was speaking very quickly now. “You’ve always been obsessed with each other. Why didn’t you give him a chance?”

  “I did,” Win said, standing up herself, her stool screeching across the floor. “It didn’t work out—”

  “Seven years ago,” Shift said. “And you didn’t, actually, you slept together a few times and then you decided Leo was too useful for your career to risk anything with him. You treated him like a tool, and he loved you—”

  “Believe it or not,” Win said, voice shaking, “I didn’t actually come here for relationship advice.”

  “Good,” Shift said. “You’ve never listened to any, and I don’t—I don’t care, anyway, this isn’t about you, Win, hard as that might be to believe.”

  “Oh, god, yeah, because I’m so selfish,” Win said, chest tight with fury. She felt worryingly close to bursting into tears. “That’s why I’m here, just selfishly wallowing around the place and making you talk about my problems. Shift, you’re the one who keeps making things worse. I don’t need a reporter from Vogue anywhere near me right now. Marie wasn’t even sure if I should come to the wedding. I’m here and I’m trying for you.”

  “Marie also said that it would be a good ‘change of scenery’ for you,” Shift said. “I heard you talking to her, the night you arrived. Like my wedding is a set backdrop.”

  “That’s not what she meant—”

  “You have a busy life, Win, and a job that’s more intense than I can understand. But you forget other people want things, too, and even if we don’t end up on magazine covers, we’re still important. And I think you use your job as an excuse the moment you’re scared of something.”

  “I’m not scared of Leo.”

  “I think you are,” Shift told her. “And it’s not just Leo. You never want to commit yourself to anyone. Me, your mum—”

  “Don’t talk about my mum!” Win was seething: everyone thought they knew her mother better than her; everyone thought they could explain Pritha and Win to each o
ther. “God, I—I’m here, aren’t I?”

  “Because it works for you,” Shift shouted back. “Do you think for one second you would have come if you’d known Leo was going to be here?”

  “My career is on the line—”

  “I’m your best friend! Win, I love you, but for years, every time we’ve hung out, it’s been on your terms!” Shift’s voice cracked, like she, too, was trying not to cry. “Sometimes it’s like you’re just fitting this friendship into your timetable to prove that you’re still down to earth. I know your career is important, but does it have to be the most important? Why can’t I count first sometimes?”

  Pick me, Leo had said. Win turned away, slamming her hand down hard on the counter, taking ragged breaths. They didn’t understand; neither of them understood. They hadn’t had to work as hard for recognition as she had. They both looked the part, they had no reason not to be confident in being rewarded, and people loved them without their having to try.

  And Win’s career had to be important now, it had to be the most important thing, because if that spotlight stayed jeering or worse, tracked away and left her in the dark, then everything would have been for nothing. All of Shift’s accusations, torn out of her like she’d been thinking them for a long time; Leo’s face wiped clean with shock when he realized what she’d meant that morning in London when she left.

  Charlie appeared unsmiling in the doorway. “I heard shouting.”

  “I’m going.” Win pushed past Charlie into the hallway and saw the lights flashing at the front door again. She stopped, swung around on her heel, and bit out, “To bed.”

  As she stormed up the stairs, she heard Charlie say, “Baby,” and Shift saying, voice thick with emotion, “Fuck, it’s okay, I just— She’s just so fucking cold sometimes—”

  Win slammed the door behind her and burst vengefully into tears.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Win didn’t really sleep. She exhausted herself with her crying jag, passing out almost immediately afterward with her face wet and her chest still pulsating with anger, but she woke up at midnight feeling cold, and cruel, and alone. She sent Marie a short message explaining that Leo would be at the wedding. She spent some time composing awful, cutting speeches about all the things Shift did that annoyed her: never being able to remember time zones and calling Win in the middle of the night, going absolutely insane every album cycle and acting as though nobody else had ever gotten a lukewarm review, leaving an unbelievable mess in her wake whenever she visited Win. When they were kids, Win constantly had to shake her out of daydreams, and she still had a tendency to zone out in the middle of conversations.

  The hour after that, Win stared at the ceiling thinking numbly that none of those things were as bad as what Shift had thrown at Win. That Win was selfish. That Win was cold.

  Leo had edged uncomfortably close to those accusations, too, more than a few times. Win couldn’t bring herself to think about their fight that morning before she’d left. It hadn’t been enough of a fight. It had felt like a breakup, like she was being torn apart, like Leo was sinking out of her reach.

  But she thought about Saint-Tropez, when she’d found out about Lila. Both at the time and afterward she’d been too angry and hurt about the secret marriage to pay much attention to the content of what he’d said. Now she couldn’t stop thinking about the astounded fury dawning on his face. Not everyone lives their life based on what it’s going to look like on the fucking internet! Shift had accused her of that, too. Like the glittering machinery of Win’s life was something she was hiding behind, instead of something she was living inside.

  Win had to live her life like that because it did end up on the internet, or in magazines, or in the supercilious mouths of talk show hosts. She wasn’t being arrogant or self-obsessed; she was being realistic. Win couldn’t just hope that people would see her best side. She had to carefully curate her best side so that they couldn’t miss it. If she wanted producers to cast her, it wasn’t enough just to read the lines well. Win had to make herself impossible to dismiss. She had to make herself so shiny and smooth that all the old excuses—too demanding, too intense, too brown—couldn’t stick.

  That’s not cold, she thought. It’s clever. Actually, she supposed, it was both.

  She tossed around in Shift’s spare bed. Other memories came back without invitation. That night in London felt as though it was burned into her brain, or worse than that, her muscle memory, her skin.

  If she closed her eyes, she could feel his hands on her, his mouth, the easy way he shifted her about until her limbs felt hot and malleable, like he could just mold her into the shapes he wanted. She’d been avoiding looking at the marks on her hips, her décolletage. In the dark, she pressed her thumb against the bruised remainder of his kisses and hissed. It was such a sharp, perfect little sting; it made warmth pool in her stomach. It made her want to cry.

  She felt strangled with the truth of it. She loved him. She wanted him with all the fierce desperation and possessiveness of a child. She wanted to sit in a corner and yell his name and refuse to do anything until he was brought to her.

  Leaving him felt like the hardest thing she’d ever done, but she still felt sure that it was easier than the overwhelming nightmare that her life would turn into if she stayed. Her career would probably be over. If it wasn’t, it would have to be clawed back bit by bit, three steps back for every step forward. She would have to explain herself or, worse, have to stay silent in the face of a jeering audience, with no opportunity to manage her image. Prior to this her critics had viewed her as a controlling and high-strung talent, the Indian girl who had to have things her way. Now they could call her the scam artist who had snagged the most susceptible man she could find and tricked or coerced him into a life sentence of a relationship. Pritha would be drawn further in as either another of Win’s victims or a potential coconspirator, the mother-in-law slash jailer, trapping Leo for all those months in her hideaway mansion on the coast.

  Things were bad now, but she wasn’t the first public figure to be wrapped up in a scandal of their own making. She had faith in Marie; she had faith in her image and her work. If she turned her back on everything, if she apologized, she could still recover. There was no precedent for staying with Leo, though. Nobody had ever been caught so definitively in a lie and then just continued as if it hadn’t happened. Nobody ever said, I don’t care what you know about us. And there was no guarantee, after all, that she and Leo would last, that they wouldn’t have one of their explosive fights, that they wouldn’t find they weren’t made for a real relationship after all. Pritha’s house was a bubble and Win had been frantic, pacing like a caged animal, pushed into telling Leo things she wouldn’t have tried to explain before. Alone with her, he had stopped searching for the perfect thing to say, given up on his crusade to fix her life, and offered something more like sanctuary. But eventually things had to go back to normal. Normal meant scrutiny, pressure, wave after wave of outsiders beating against their door.

  Even imagining it made her heart speed up, her breath stuttering, panic crawling over her skin. It would have been the most frightening, most dangerous thing she had ever done. And it didn’t matter now; it was gone with that clouded dawn in London when she could have made a different decision. She had chosen her career, not Leo. She’d seen the fury and disbelief on his face, the way he’d turned away from her with a violent shrug of his shoulders, as though he was giving her up for good, as though he’d held out some hope that there was something true left in her and been disappointed. He’d laughed when she left the room. She’d heard it echoing behind her as she set off down the hallway, screwing her face up so she would be calm when she faced the photographers. His laughter had sounded low and rough and unsurprised.

  At five in the morning she gave up on the possibility of sleep. She padded out to the kitchen and stopped in the doorway. There was a pool of yellow light, and Shift was sitting in it, a cup of green tea in her palms, her face smal
l and pale like a little girl’s, her gaze resting on the dark shapes of trees out the window. It was snowing outside.

  Win didn’t think she made a noise, but Shift looked over anyway. Her face changed in a way that Win couldn’t completely track, some realignment of feeling or resolve.

  “Can’t sleep?” Shift said, before Win could say anything.

  Win shrugged. She felt stupid and embarrassed. She felt as though she’d been fighting with everyone for months. She was exhausted.

  “Thought I might have a cup of tea,” Win said, and put the kettle on. The kitchen was dim and quiet, but she noticed, with a dull flush of embarrassment, that Shift had taken down the photo of Win and Leo from the fridge.

  “Yeah.” Shift set aside her cup and stood up. “Look, I—I was really angry and—”

  “Shift,” Win said, voice small. Shift bolted across the kitchen and they clutched each other, Shift’s face shoved up against Win’s collarbone.

  “You’re too fucking tall,” Shift said.

  Win said, with all the fervor of a night spent staring down her ghosts, “I’m really, really sorry—”

  “I’m sorry! I completely overstepped the line—”

  “I was being such a bad friend but I’m going to do better—”

  “Oh my god, you’re the best friend in the world, I’m such an idiot I shouldn’t be allowed to speak,” Shift said.

  “This is why we’re bad at fighting,” Win said. “We go right back to being sixteen.”

  “I know,” Shift said. She smiled, a little watery, and tapped Win on the nose. “It’s how I know you’re still in there.”

  Win flinched, and Shift began to apologize again, but Win shook her head.

  “Look,” she said, “I—I don’t keep you around to prove anything—”

  “I was angry—”

  “No, but I need you to know,” Win said, because her throat was still tight with misery, and because the idea that Shift didn’t know was terrifying. “You knew me before everything happened. Sometimes it feels like you’re the only person who actually does know me, who doesn’t fall for…” She flapped her hand uselessly at herself. “But you’re right. I think…my work takes up everything in my head sometimes.”