Close Ups and Mess Ups

by Natasha West

  The problem was, I wasn’t sure if I’d just made an enormous fuck up. Cameron was sensitive, and you weren’t supposed to go to bed with someone like that unless you meant it. And I didn’t know if I meant it. I didn’t not. I liked Cameron and I sure as hell fancied her. But I didn’t know her all that well. We’d probably spent a total of about five hours in each other’s presence, not counting last night, and those hours had been spent discussing the business of the script.

  I worried that when she woke up, she’d think this meant that something was starting, that she might assume I was going to be her girlfriend. I wasn’t sure if that was something I could do right now. I was too fucking busy for a start.

  ‘Morning’ Cameron said into my ear and I jumped. I’d imagined I’d have a bit more time to think this through but Cameron, and my time, were up.

  ‘Hi’ I said, squeezing around in the bed to face her. She wiped the sleep from her eyes and looked at me, giving me a nervous smile. ‘Well!’ she eventually said.

  ‘Well’ I replied, equally nervous.

  ‘What time are you in today?’ she asked me.

  ‘Err, nine.’

  ‘Same. So I suppose you’d better get home.’

  I was amazed. Was it possible that she felt the same, unsure of what this meant? That simplified things. ‘Yeah, need a shower and a change of clothes. Can’t walk in like this or everyone will know…’ I trailed off and grinned.

  ‘Yeah, you do a walk of shame and everyone will talk.’

  She slipped out of bed, grabbing a robe and covering her nudity. ‘I’m just gonna get in the shower. You can let yourself out, can’t you?’

  OK... There was simplification and then there was… This.

  ‘Oh yeah. Sure’, I said, scrambling out of bed and grabbing up my clothes, getting dressed in completely the wrong order. Everyone knew that when you got dressed in front of another person, it was supposed to go bra, knickers, bottoms, top, socks. But I went for socks first, then bra. My bare arse was cold in the early winter morning but at least my feet were toasty.

  And then Cameron said, as though we’d had some nine-year old’s sleepover and we weren’t two people that had gotten naked and wild, ‘Thanks for coming over, it was nice to have the company.’ And she shut the bathroom door.

  What the fuck?

  The walk home was confusing. I hadn’t wanted her to propose but bloody hell, she’d practically kicked me out. It hadn’t been what I was expecting from somebody like Cameron. I’d assumed she was the settling down kind, that if she went to bed with someone, it was a first step, not a last. But she’d made it pretty clear, it was a one off. More than that, that she couldn’t have cared less how I felt about it.

  I didn’t want to be offended. After all, I’d been confused and uncertain if I wanted more. It would have been hypocritical to have wanted her to hang off me, beg me to stay. I think what bothered me was the casual rudeness of it, the outright rejection. Because I hadn’t totally made my mind up about what this meant. And Cameron hadn’t seemed to have any predicament at all. She’d gotten hers and that was that. And I felt a little used. I’d ran after her last night because I cared that she was hurting. And she treated me with such a lack of care this morning, I was shocked and hurt. At the very least, I thought we were friends and she’d acted like she’d banged a stranger.

  But I suppose I had my answer. Cameron didn’t see me as anything at all. Just a body, some hands, a mouth, something to make her feel better after a rough day. Fine. I could get in line with that. I’d thought we’d work together again but after something like that, how on earth could I?

  As I took a tally of the night’s events, the things I’d achieved were: Feeling used and losing a talented collaborator. And the gain? An orgasm. On balance, it hadn’t really been worth it. But too late, what was done was done.

  Nice one, Allie. Classic.

  Chapter Ten

  For the next week, I didn’t really see Cameron. It was three weeks before Christmas break and things were busy at the school. We were doing exercises every day in class and I was learning a lot. I was looking at things like sound and light with a new respect for what it could achieve. And I continued to learn how to direct an actor, how to break down a scene into its emotional beats, how to find ‘The truth’ of a moment, as Kim put it. I couldn’t always get down with some of her pretentious ways of talking about directing, but I couldn’t deny, she was teaching me a lot. I wasn’t even at the end of the first term and I already felt like I was growing as a director, moving beyond amateur status. And Kim hadn’t publicly humiliated me more than twice lately, so that was progress. Kind of.

  Still, the school only had about three hundred students, which made hiding from Cameron virtually impossible. But whenever I caught distant sight of her, I felt a twinge of something. I wasn’t sure what. Anxiety? Possibly. Longing? Not enormously so. Anger? A bit. But if this was the worst mistake I made in my year, it wasn’t the end of the world. I’d shagged a writer who turned out to be less sensitive than I thought. It wasn’t worth dwelling on.

  And then I heard something that changed it. Something that made me feel truly wounded. Janey told me that Cameron was working on a project with Jonny. JONNY! He hated writers, he thought they were not worth dealing with and he was pretty certain he could bang out a decent script himself without needing a real writer. Why on earth was Cameron working with him?

  ‘He asked her to help him on a project for some short he’s working on over the break’ Janey explained to my horrified face.

  ‘Why isn’t he writing it himself?’ I demanded. ‘He always says the writers are little babies that he doesn’t have time for.’

  ‘Maybe he changed his mind. He was forced to work with an actual writer just like we all did. Maybe he realised he was wrong?’ Janey posited.

  ‘Jonny? Realising he’s wrong?’ I said in hushed anger. ‘Not likely.’

  ‘We all came here to learn’ Janey said with compassion. I didn’t want her to be compassionate. I wanted her to hate Jonny with me. But she was insisting on being an adult. It was deeply annoying. ‘And Kim’s been fighting him on that issue since day one. Maybe she finally broke him down?’

  I made a cynical face. What bothered me about this so much? It was the whole problem with this place. It was incestuous. Work was mixed with friendship; was mixed with romance; was mixed with competition; was mixed with sex; was mixed with ambition; was mixed with networking. We all lived and breathed the place and there wasn’t much room for anyone outside the school bubble. Was I jealous that Cameron was working with someone else? Or I was I jealous that she didn’t want me? I couldn’t pull it apart. So I didn’t try. Sod Cameron.

  Janey changed the subject to something less contentious, the Christmas party. She was excited. I wasn’t.

  ‘Oh, come on. It’ll be fine. You should let your hair down for once’ she pleaded. She didn’t know that I had let it down recently. I was keeping that one under my hat. I didn’t want people talking about it. I liked Janey, but discretion wasn’t really her thing.

  ‘I don’t know… I should really be packing for my trip home’ I lied. It would take all of ten minutes.

  ‘Allie, if you don’t come, I’ll never forgive you’ Janey said, semi-serious.

  ‘Jesus! Alright, if you’re gonna be a drama queen about it, you’re not leaving me much choice, are you?’

  Janey patted my head and said, ‘Good girl.’

  ‘Why do you care if I come anyway?’

  ‘Because you’re uptight and you need fun and I want you there. Will that do?’

  ‘I’m not uptight’ I protested.

  ‘If you were any more tightly wound, you’d pop’ she told me.

  Was that true? Was I considered a bit un-fun? Fun wasn’t really at the top of my list. I came close to splurging about the drunken Cameron incident then and there, just to prove that there was some wildness in me after all, even if it wasn’t always on display. But in the end,
I kept my yap shut.

  ‘Were you about to say something?’ Janey asked.

  ‘Nope.’

  Chapter Eleven

  I stood at the edge of the dance floor, eyeing up its occupants. Janey was out there, of course. She had no self-consciousness at all. She was even dancing booze free, which was a rarity in the room.

  It was 11pm. Everyone was merry. Most were drunk. Some were completely wasted. Me, I was staying sober. I’d pledged to come but no one said anything about drinking and I didn’t want to feel too terrible tomorrow. I was supposed to get on a train to go home for the break and I needed all my reserves of strength when I landed at the old homestead. I had mixed feelings about that. I wasn’t too keen to be under the same roof as my dad but I couldn’t wait to see my brother. We’d skyped a few times since I’d left for school but it wasn’t enough. I wanted us to hang out like we used to. The longing for something familiar was strong. I liked being here but I couldn’t say I was necessarily at ease.

  One source of my unease was my home life. It had finally happened. Zara and Mike were doing it. They thought I didn’t know, the idiots. Mike would creep out of Zara’s room at two in the morning, back to his own room, which was right next to mine. I had no idea why they were trying to hide it from me and indeed, how they thought it was remotely possible in our tiny house. I’d have had to be blind and deaf to miss it. Deaf in particular. Mike was quite loud.

  I just hoped to god that it didn’t go sour. Whatever their relationship status was, if it went tits up while we all still lived together, things could get sticky around the house. But who knew? Maybe they were meant to be? I didn’t believe that at all but I wasn’t Nostradamus. Crazier things have happened than a mild-mannered British composer and a harsh French director of photography making it work.

  Just as I was thinking about the questionable sexual decisions of my housemates, I saw my own standing at the bar. I wondered if I should go over, clear the air. I didn’t have to keep feeling like this, weird and angry, not if I didn’t want to. I could be an adult about it. I could just say, ‘Long time no see’ and then we’d hug and talk and be normal. I could go on Christmas break unburdened by this thorn in my paw.

  While I was dallying with the idea, someone nudged into me and I turned to see Ashley. She was wearing a top that hugged her curvy body in all the best places and her copper hair flowed down her back in gorgeous waves. She looked edible. ‘Hi’ I said, surprised. She was someone else I hadn’t really seen in the last three weeks. We had waved and said hi, but no real interaction, not since the shoot. ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Well, I’m not covered in paint or wood shavings or glass or dirt for the first time in weeks, so that’s something’ she said.

  ‘Yeah’ I said, taking the opportunity for a longer glance at her body. ‘You scrub up alright.’

  She smiled and checked me out in return, looking down at my clothes, a modest black tee and my best jeans. Not fancy but hopefully still complimentary. ‘You too. Wasn’t sure if you’d come tonight.’

  ‘Oh? Why’s that?’ I asked her. I liked that she’d even given a thought to my attendance this evening.

  ‘I don’t know, you’re always very…’ she waved her hands vaguely as she tried to find her word.

  ‘Blinkered?’ I offered.

  ‘Focused’ she corrected. ‘You’re hardly ever in the bar.’

  ‘I go sometimes. I just don’t stay till the bitter end.’

  ‘I get that. People get a bit messy on occasion.’

  ‘Yeah’ I agreed. ‘It’s tough to have a production meeting with someone you’ve seen giving praise to the porcelain gods the night before.’

  Ashley laughed, her head tilted back. It gave me a thrill.

  ‘I never got the chance to tell you, I thought the film came out great’ she said.

  ‘It definitely looked great’ I said, flipping the compliment back on her.

  ‘Are you dancing?’ she asked. I hadn’t planned to. But the thought of getting close to Ashley…

  ‘Hello’ said a soft voice in my ear. I turned to see Cameron, looking vaguely coy. ‘Hi there, stranger’ I replied, trying hard not to emote in any way. I’d been taken completely by surprise and I didn’t have a clue what I was supposed to do. I wasn’t exactly some spurned woman, so I couldn’t be all, ‘Well, you’ve got a nerve!’ But we had slept together, so it wasn’t totally, it wasn’t, I couldn’t, err… I didn’t have the first fucking clue what my position was. So I simply waited.

  ‘Yeah, it’s been a while’ she said. It was then that I remembered Ashley. I turned to her. But she was gone. In the distance, I saw her dancing. She’d clearly sensed she was in tricky territory and had done a bunk. I also saw that bastard Jonas creeping up behind her, clearly going in for the kill. Oh well. I wasn’t really going to do anything about Ashley anyway. Not after the incident with the person standing right in front of me, fiddling with her hair and looking nervous.

  ‘It has’ I responded. And then I was completely dry of things to say.

  ‘I was going to text you’ she said.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yes, I… I was weird, wasn’t I?’ she said, looking down.

  I knew what she meant. But I wasn’t about to let her off the hook just like that. ‘When were you weird?’

  She grinned and I think she knew that I knew what she meant. But she seemed to take it in good grace. ‘After you came back to my place.’

  I tapped my chin. ‘Came back to your place? Is that supposed to be a gentle euphemism for the time we had sex?’

  ‘Err… Yeah. That’s exactly what I meant.’

  ‘And then you kicked me out like I was a stranger you’d woken up next to? And then avoided me like the plague?’

  ‘Yep, all true’ she admitted ruefully.

  ‘It was rude’ I told her.

  ‘It was.’

  ‘I’m not saying I thought I was going to get breakfast in bed but still…’ I admonished her.

  ‘I… I’m…’ she stuttered.

  ‘Sorry?’ I offered.

  She nodded, utterly repentant. I wasn’t a monster. ‘Alright, cool.’

  ‘So we can be friends again?’ she asked.

  ‘Sure’ I told her. I was grateful. The thorn had been extracted.

  But after we’d done the apologies, I wasn’t sure how to transition into being normal again. So we just stood there, a couple of mannequins, stumped for conversation.

  And then Janey exploded into us in her usual fashion. ‘Hey, you two aren’t dancing. Not allowed!’ she said, putting a drink into my hand.

  ‘What’s this?’ I asked, sniffing at it.

  ‘Everything. Down it, you’ve got some catching up to do.’

  With the Cameron thing sorted out, I felt more open to the spirit of the evening and I shrugged at Janey, putting the cup to my lips and tilting it back until it was empty. I handed the empty back to her. ‘Satisfied?’

  Her eyes were wide. ‘Christ, I didn’t think you’d actually do it. That was my drink. There was MDMA in it!’

  I looked at Janey in horror. ‘Are you fucking kidding!’

  She shook her head. I looked between her and Cameron. ‘Oh, for fuck’s sakes!’

  I was now about to get extremely high and there wasn’t a bloody thing I could do about it.

  ‘Maybe you should go home?’ Cameron suggested.

  ‘No way! Janey exploded. ‘It’s a waste! That’s thirty-quid’s worth!’

  I looked between Janey and Cameron, devil and angel. I was pissed at Janey, the idiot has spiked me, however unintentionally. But the damage was done. I might as well get something out of it.

  ‘Right’ I said to Janey. ‘You’re going to look after me for the rest of the night and that includes apologising for my behaviour, cleaning up any mess and making sure I get home. Understood?!’

  ‘Yes, of course!’ Janey agreed vivaciously.

  I turned to Cameron. ‘See you on the other side.’ />