Lauren glowered at Maria, who was staring at her. Lauren didn’t understand why she was acting surprised, when she had been working hard at getting this sort of reaction. It would give her a nice, juicy story to write about how Lauren was ungrateful and rude.
“Honestly, this is very unprofessional behavior,” Maria said. “I think people deserve to know what you’re hiding.”
“Oh please. I don’t need to be lectured about professional standards by a bottom-feeding vulture like you,” Lauren snapped. Gasps rippled through the room. She stood up and walked toward the door, holding it open.
Maria had no choice but to do as she was asked, but she glared at Lauren and shook her head in disgust the whole way. Lauren closed the door behind her and then stood for a moment, loosely gripping the knob. It was difficult for her to believe that she had just acted like that, but she couldn’t deny that it felt good. Lauren took a deep breath. Now that she didn’t have Harper, there was nothing important left for her to lose.
Lauren turned around. “I’ll do the rest of today’s interviews and tomorrow’s too. I’m not stupid; I know what my obligations are. But Franklin, Celia? I’m letting you both go. You’ve been giving me bad advice.”
Franklin held out his hands, looking at Celia then back at Lauren in exasperation. Lauren could imagine exactly what he was thinking. That she was throwing a childish hissy fit, that she was just another neurotic client on a power trip. The fact that Lauren had independent thoughts and feelings was an inconvenience to him.
“Lauren, if you want me to apologize for bringing her in here then fine, I will,” he said. “We know you don’t like her. I’ll cut her off like you’ve been wanting me to. Okay?”
“Nope,” Lauren replied. “That’s not enough. Neither of you have never listened to me. All you do is tell me what I should think, what I should want. I want to work with people who respect my opinion.”
“Darling, you’re obviously tired,” Celia said. “You know Franklin and I think the world of you. We’re here to handle the business side of things so you don’t have to worry about it. But if it’s what you want, we’ll consult you more. Let’s sit down and have a meeting about it tomorrow, when you’re feeling a bit fresher.”
It only strengthened her resolve. They were acting like she was a spooked animal, something they just needed to wrangle.
“Thank you for offering to consult me. But I pay you and I’m your boss, so it’s actually the least you could do. I want to go in another direction. That’s the end of the discussion. It must be time to bring in the next interview.”
Lauren spent the rest of the day doubling her efforts to be charming and co-operative. She wasn’t sure how much she cared about her career at this point, but it was a strategic move. If Maria wrote an ugly article about her, she wanted it to be drowned out by positive ones, if only so that Maria wouldn’t win by damaging her reputation.
It was a lonely day. Some of the people in the room were kind toward her, like Melinda, but there was nobody here she could really talk to.
Harper would understand, and she would encourage her to fight. Lauren would give anything to have Harper by her side.
Chapter Twenty-One
Harper woke up with the same gnawing emptiness in her gut that had been there the day before. She had never been the kind of person that had to drag themselves out of bed, but she had to today. Before she rose, she spent half an hour staring at the ceiling and wondering how she was going to deal with this. It hurt so much more than she had thought it would.
At least she had a day off before she had to go back to work at the diner. She packed up a bag with a book, her journal and a thermos. At the last minute she decided she had better eat, so she put some leftover mac and cheese she made for her brother in a container. It occurred to her that she hadn’t eaten dinner the night before.
When she got to the lake, she sat and looked out over the water. She wondered how many times she had stared out at the same view with Lauren by her side. The tears came and Harper didn’t fight them. She let the emotions of the last few weeks overwhelm her. This was why she had to come here, because she had known this was going to happen sooner or later, and she needed to be alone when it did. Harper lay back on her picnic blanket and put her arm over her face. It had been a long time since she had cried like this. It felt like a heavy weight had been laid on her chest, the pain physical.
After a while, she sat up and wiped her face with her sleeve. The silver ring Lauren gave her caught the light and she touched it, running her finger over the metal. Harper was filled with an angry impulse to throw it into the lake. It didn’t make sense that she should feel upset with Lauren for leaving, but she was angry nonetheless. Harper took off the ring and felt the weight of it in her palm. When she picked it up again she noticed engraving on the inside. Assuming that it was just a manufacturer’s stamp, she turned it to take a closer look, and saw that it was an inscription: My love, forever.
It was just like Lauren to do something like that and not even draw her attention to it. How could Lauren say such things and mean them when they had only known each other for a short time? Yet she felt the same way and could not imagine a time when her love might fade away. How could there be a day when Lauren was only a memory, and this ring just didn’t mean that much to her anymore? If Harper were to meet someone else, she couldn’t exactly go on wearing it. She imagined herself putting the ring away in a drawer, something that she took out now and then and looked at fondly. It was impossible.
This was not her first breakup, if that’s what this even was. She had been through enough in her life to know that the saying “time heals all wounds” had some truth in it. There was no way of guessing how long it would take, but she could be sure that the pain would dull and she would be able to go on with her life, albeit with a few new scars. That knowledge was of small comfort to her right now.
On the drive home, she realized that she felt lighter, that her tears had been cleansing. A Springsteen song that Lauren loved came on the radio and she listened to it for a moment, flashing back to a night when Lauren had sung along quietly with the lyrics as they drove to the lake. Harper reached over and pressed the knob to silence the radio.
When she got home, she was shocked by the smell wafting through the house, because it was obvious that somebody had been cooking. Harper couldn’t remember the last time anyone else had made a proper dinner. Tommy and her dad both fried themselves bacon and eggs or heated up a TV dinner now and then, but they never sat down to eat together anymore. It had been up to Harper to nag them about it and to try and get her dad interested in food, even though he had been a really good cook once. Harper walked into the dining room to see her dad piling chicken and dumplings onto plates. Her brother was watching him. They were talking and stopped when they realized that she was there.
Her dad wiped his hands on the front of his shirt. “Harper! Glad you made it home in time, I thought I was going to have to try to keep this stuff warm for you for later.”
“Yeah,” Harper said warily. It wasn’t that she was unhappy to see them together like this, but it made her feel like something was up.
“Well sit down and let’s eat then,” her dad said, as though he cooked for the family all of the time.
“Okay,” Harper said. Her appetite hadn’t been great today but it returned in full force thanks to the mouth-watering smell. They room filled with the sounds of clinking knives and forks and chewing mouths.
“So, Lauren went back home yesterday?” her dad asked.
“Yep,” Harper said, her fork slowing as it returned to her plate. She pushed a piece of chicken around on its surface, trailing it through broth.
“How did you guys leave it then?”
Harper glanced at her brother, who was staring at her. Of course they knew, and she’d known that they knew, but she had made it clear that she didn’t want to talk about it.
Harper shrugged. “She has work, I have work. Not much we can
do about that.”
“But you would keep seeing her if you could, right? Have you made plans to see each other again?” he pressed.
“Dad, thanks for your concern, but I don’t want to talk about it.”
Tommy was looking awkwardly down into his dinner. Harper ate faster, hoping to get away from the table as soon as possible. She looked over and realized that her dad didn’t have a drink sitting by his plate. Lauren looked up into his clear eyes. By now he usually didn’t get drunk enough to slur his words or stumble, but she could always tell by his eyes.
Her dad nodded a couple of times uncomfortably, and Harper felt guilty for her evasiveness. He was obviously trying.
“This dinner is delicious, Dad. It’s real good to taste your cooking again.” Harper smiled at him.
He grinned back at her, pleased. “I was just glad to find out I hadn’t forgotten how. I showed Tommy how I do it too. I’m going to teach him how to cook.”
Harper looked across at Tommy. “Really?”
“I told him, a man should know how to cook. A man should know how to do everything for himself.”
Neither of them had ever shown much interest in helping her out. Harper didn’t mean to look skeptical, but they must have been able to see it on her face.
“Dad says I need to start doing more around the house,” Tommy added.
“That would be great,” Harper said, opting for being gracious instead of saying that it was about time and she was beyond sick of nagging them.
“Now, there’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you kids. I’m going away for a little while. Just a week or two,” her dad said.
So that was what this was all about. The out-of-character behavior was just his way of buttering her up for something. She waited patiently for him to come out with the rest of the story. A fearful sliver of herself worried that he might leave and never come back, that he might just finish the process of going away from them. For years he had left inch by inch in spirit, if not in body.
“I’m going into a treatment facility. For the drinking. Gotta dry out,” he said.
Harper looked back at him in shock. It was the last thing that she had expected him to say. It was something she had never stopped worrying about, but she had long ago stopped trying to talk to him about it. The last time she suggested that he was drinking too much, they had a huge argument.
“Cool,” Tommy said, as though their dad had just said that he was going on a fishing trip.
“When did you decide this?” Harper asked.
“I’ve been cutting back for a while, but the doc says if I want to stop properly, I need a bit of help. So that’s what I’m doing.”
“Okay,” Harper said. She put down her knife and fork, feeling a lump in her throat.
“Okay. I’m not going until Wednesday. Just wanted to let you know.”
“Thank you,” Harper said. They returned to their meals and ate in silence, the three of them lost in their separate thoughts.
When her father left, Harper tried to not get her hopes up. She knew that her dad might not finish the treatment, or that he might come home and go right back to drinking again. It was strange not having him in the house, but it was also a relief to not have to come home after work and find him already three sheets to the wind, or walk out to the living room to find him slumped in front of the TV with a drink still in his hand. They didn’t discuss it, but Tommy seemed happier too.
Each night after work, Harper watched every movie of Lauren’s that she could find. It may not be the healthiest way to deal with her grief, she knew that, but she did it anyway. Until recently, Edge of the Sea was the only movie of Lauren’s that she had ever seen. It was comforting to Harper to see her face, though sometimes it made missing her even more painful. She drew the line at buying magazines to read about Lauren, although the impulse struck her more than once. The idea of learning about Lauren’s movements from a source like that depressed her. Anyway, Lauren hated those magazines. Looking Lauren up on the Internet was out of the question too, because Lauren had warned her about all of the horrible comments people wrote online. Harper didn’t want to see that.
It took a week for her to crack. The urge to call Lauren grew until she couldn’t stand it anymore. She told herself that it wasn’t a failure on her part that she couldn’t stay away. All she needed was a check-in thing, just to hear Lauren’s voice. It would be strange to spend all of that time together and then never call to find out how Lauren was doing.
Harper prepared for the call as though it were a job interview or a public speaking engagement. She went over it in her mind, musing over what she should say and how she should say it. When she decided that it was time, she took the cordless phone into her bedroom and shut the door behind her, then lay on the bed and squeezed her eyes shut tight. By the time the phone started ringing in her ear, she wasn’t sure what she was most afraid of—that Lauren would answer or that she wouldn’t.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Lauren almost missed the call. She was sitting on the fire escape with her legs dangling out over the street, sipping from a can of beer. Her stereo, pulled up close to the window, blasted out Springsteen. It was time to celebrate.
It had only been a week since she had come home, but with each day, she grew more confident about making the changes that had been such a long time coming. Firing Franklin and Celia started a chain reaction. The day she let them go, she contacted her agent and fired him too, and then signed on with a guy called Chris from a smaller firm with a good reputation. They met for the first time earlier in the day. He was respectful and seemed smart. When she described the kinds of roles she wanted from now on, he reeled off a list of directors, producers and writers he thought they should set their sights on. They showed her that he understood her taste and how much of a different direction she wanted to go in.
It had taken her too long to wrestle back control. Now that she had, she felt amazing.
Her cell was on the window ledge, so she heard it vibrating. Lauren glanced over with no intention of answering it when she saw Harper’s name on the display. She scrambled so fast that she kicked her beer can over. When she answered, the music was so loud she couldn’t hear anything. She frantically turned down the volume.
“Hello? Harper?”
There was a pause. She thought the line was dead, but then Harper responded. “Hey.”
Lauren closed her eyes, flooded with relief at the sound of her voice. During the last week, Harper had remained an invisible presence looking over her shoulder. Lauren imagined Harper watching her and wondered whether she would be proud, and whether she would think Lauren was making the right decisions.
“How are you?” Lauren asked.
“I’m okay. How are you?”
It was a difficult question to answer. The pain of leaving Harper had weighed heavily on her. She had to work very hard to distract herself from thinking of her every minute. She also felt anxious about cutting off staff that had worked for her for years, and yet she was elated too. It had been a roller coaster to say the least.
“I’m okay,” she said cautiously. There was a silence on the other end of the line.
“How did the press stuff go?” Harper asked.
“Oh, actually it was a bit of a thing. I fired my manager and publicist.”
“You did? I always knew you weren’t happy with them, but I didn’t know you were thinking about letting them go.”
“It was a bit impulsive, I guess. But I’m happy about it. I feel like I did the right thing.”
“I’m sure you did.”
“I hope so. I’ve got a new agent and we’ve been making plans. How has it been back at the diner? You’ve started right?” Lauren asked, mindful that she was talking too much about herself. She pictured the diner, and felt a strong wave of nostalgia for the red vinyl seats and checked floor.
Harper laughed. It sounded awkward, but Lauren wasn’t sure why. “It’s okay. It’s the same old thing, you know?
”
“Well, tell Sue hello from me.”
“That will make her day,” Harper said.
It was quiet again. Lauren stared down at the street, biting her lip. She had been desperate to talk to Harper for days, but she hadn’t expected it to feel stilted like this. They never had trouble thinking of things to say to one another, not recently anyway.
“How are your dad and Tommy?” Lauren asked.
“They’re good. Listen, I should go. I just wanted to check in,” Harper said.
“Oh. Okay,” Lauren replied. “Tell your family hello from me, as well.”
“Of course, I’ll do that. You take care.”
The line clicked and it was silent again. Lauren stared at the screen for a long time. When she scanned back over the conversation, she couldn’t figure out what she’d said wrong. It was almost worse than having no contact at all, to hear from Harper and then have her go so quickly. Or had Harper only made the call out of a sense of duty, not really wanting to talk to her in the first place?
Lauren’s chest ached with everything left unsaid.
A week ago, she would have tortured herself over the call. She would have let it ruin her afternoon, in fact her whole week, and not done a thing about it. Being separated from Harper made her feel like she had nothing left to lose, and somehow that gave her the strength to start going after what she wanted. Now she could feel the hard beating of her heart and knew that she needed to assert herself, even with Harper.
Lauren pressed the button to call her back. If Harper didn’t answer, she would keep pressing it until she did. Harper picked up almost immediately.
“Why did you do that?” Lauren asked.
“Do what?”
“You practically hung up on me. Did I say something to upset you?”
Harper sighed, and took a long time to answer. “No Lauren, of course you didn’t.”
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