Not Here to Make Friends, page 30
I loved her so much.
I couldn’t be with her. I knew that. I wanted a partner—professionally and personally—but when Jeff had died and she’d drawn that line between us, she’d made that impossible.
For those glorious few weeks on set, I’d fooled myself into thinking we could fit our hard, jagged edges together. That we could click into place like puzzle pieces, find our old dynamic again somehow, even if it didn’t look quite the same, but… well. Here we were.
Or rather, here I was, on this side of the camera; and there she was, on that one.
She was only a few steps away. Steps I could not make.
I still loved her so fucking much.
“Ten seconds until we’re back,” came through my earpiece.
“Copy that.”
It wasn’t something I really needed to acknowledge, but this was my last ever segment as the working showrunner. It shouldn’t pass without recognition.
“It was the surprise announcement that took the nation by storm,” Z said, looking down the barrel of the camera. “When we first met her, we thought she was a villain, but she soon revealed she was so much more than that. She’s the diva that stole all our hearts, and very soon, she’ll be walking into the Villa as the Juliet on her very own season of Wherefore Art Thou Romeo?—please give your firiest warm welcome to Lily Fireball!”
The cheer from the audience was so loud I almost laughed. They might love her almost as much as I did.
“Hello, Z,” Lily said, arranging her long skirts elegantly around her on the chair opposite his. “It’s been a while.”
“And yet it only feels like five minutes.”
“Really? It’s felt like ages to me.”
Classic Lily, getting someone off balance right at the beginning of a conversation.
But Z was a pro, and he recovered quickly. “I’m sure it’s been a massive change for you, this new level of fame and recognition. Tell us what’s that been like.”
“Well, I was prepared,” Lily said. “After so many years working behind the scenes on the Romeo and Juliet shows, I knew what I was getting myself into.”
My heart flipped over in my chest.
So, apparently, had Z’s. The initial jolt had done nothing, but now he was staring at Lily in shock.
“I know you usually ask the questions, but how about I ask one?” Lily said pleasantly. “You and I have known each other for—what, nearly a decade, Z? How did you feel, when I walked onto the set pretending to be twenty-five and calling myself Lily Fireball?”
There was a burst of chatter in my earpiece. I ripped it out.
“I—I, uh, was definitely surprised,” Z said.
“How about I introduce myself?” Lily said, tone completely even and calm.
Z just nodded. His finger crept up to his earpiece.
I put mine back in. “Don’t anyone dare interrupt this,” I growled, then ripped it out again.
“My name is Lily Ong,” Lily said. “I turn thirty-six next week, and I’ve been working in reality TV for almost fourteen years.”
Shocked murmurs and gasps came from the audience.
“This has been a season of twists and turns,” Z said. “I suppose we should have expected one last twist.”
He touched his earpiece again—a rookie mistake from him, I noted in the one part of my brain still functioning, he was normally much too professional to alert the audience to its presence. “We all know the scandals that have arisen this season around rigging,” he said. “It’s not surprising that the show had an inside woman. But you got away with it, Lily! Why are you coming clean now?”
“I wasn’t an inside woman.”
“So a producer ended up on a rigged season of Marry Me, Juliet by accident?”
“Oh, no. It definitely wasn’t an accident. And the network thought they had an inside woman. But if we’re being honest, I was more of a saboteur.”
She looked directly down the lens. “The show wanted the Dylans to get together,” she said. “But who do you think was the fairy godmother helping Cece sneak out of the Convent?”
She winked. The audience cheered. It was a hesitant cheer, but a cheer nonetheless.
“Part of me stands by what I did,” she said. “I was horrible to all four of them at various points on the show, but I’m genuinely very happy for Dylan JM and Cece and for Dylan G and Amanda. I know what it feels like to lose someone you love. I’m glad that’s something they don’t have to go through.”
My heart was racing. My palms were sweating. I felt like I’d swallowed a stone, and it had got caught halfway down my throat.
“But part of me—a bigger part—regrets it,” she said. “Because I’m a very selfish person, and the price I paid was far too high.”
The audience murmured in disquiet.
“Tell us more about that,” Z said.
“Like I said, I know what it feels like to lose someone you love,” Lily said. “Eighteen months ago, I lost my husband in a car accident.”
“I remember. I’m so sorry, Lily.”
“It was so sudden. One day he was there, and the next he was gone, and there were so many things I never got to say to him. It was like reading a book and then finding the last three chapters were torn out, and there was no way you could ever finish the story.”
It was so hard to breathe around the rock in my throat.
“It was awful,” she went on, “but at least it wasn’t my fault.”
“Of course it wasn’t,” Z said, injecting some warmth into his tone. “And you’ve got the opportunity for a fresh start now. To find a new love for this next chapter in your life. What a way to kick off your Wherefore Art Thou Romeo? journey with a clear conscience. What an amazing, brave, strong heroine you’re going to be.”
Lily started laughing.
It wasn’t just a chuckle. It was completely, utterly uncontrollable.
“You seriously think I’m going to do Wherefore?” she choked out, mascara beginning to run. “Really?”
Z looked the most stricken I’d ever seen him. “I—”
“Losing my husband wasn’t my fault,” Lily said. “But doing this show cost me the fucking love of my life, and that was my fault. I’m not making that mistake again.”
Later, I would realise what chaos the swearing must have caused backstage. You absolutely couldn’t swear on primetime TV.
In that moment, though, I didn’t even notice. There wasn’t room in my brain for a single thought.
There was only her.
“I could make you a brilliant season of television.” Mascara tears were streaming down her cheeks. “You could serve me up twenty handsome men, and I’d eat them for breakfast. I might even like one or two of them. Stranger things have happened.”
My hands were balled into fists, the material of my pants pulled tight around my thighs as I clutched at it.
“But that’s not what you want in a season of Wherefore.” She was addressing the audience now. “You want what those four people backstage have got. Real love. And I—” she struck herself in the chest, hard, “—I’ve already found my person. I self-sabotaged so hard that I sabotaged him too, and I lost him, but I’m going to do whatever it takes to get him back. I’ll fight. I’ll grovel. Hell, I’ll beg. I am not someone who begs, but I’ll beg if I have to, and—and—and—”
She buried her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook convulsively as she sobbed.
It wasn’t instinct that drew me to my feet.
I took a second and a half, and I did the calculations.
I made myself wait.
I made myself think.
I made myself choose.
And then I was running to her.
Something in my left hip crunched as I slid to my knees in front of her, but I ignored it. “Lily,” I said. “Lily, Lily, Lily, hey, I’m here.”
I cupped her face in my hands, my palms against her mascara-stained cheeks, stroking her cheekbones with my thumbs. “Lily.”
“Murray, no,” she said, voice hoarse. “I didn’t—you don’t—you don’t—”
“Shut up,” I told her, pressing one hand to the back of her head and pulling her into me.
Her arms snaked around my neck, tight, so tight, as if she could hold us together if she just held on tight enough. “I love you,” she sobbed into my throat. “Don’t let me go.”
“I won’t,” I promised. “Never.”
* * *
“I didn’t mean for it to happen like that,” Lily said later.
We were in my hotel room. It was two in the morning—given all the chaos, we hadn’t been able to leave the studio until much later than planned—and we were sitting side by side on my bed, leaning back against the pillows.
It would have been so easy to fall into that bed, to kiss her and peel her clothes off and let the pillows swallow us, but we hadn’t. We were both still fully dressed, me in my producer blacks, her in her designer gown. The only things we’d taken off were our shoes, and the only place we were touching were our hands, fingers brushing lightly against each other on the covers.
“I want to be clear about that,” she said. “That wasn’t intended to be some stunt to manipulate you into feeling sorry for me and taking me back out of pity.”
“I know,” I said. “If it had been, it wouldn’t have worked. I’m not a fucking amateur.”
That drew a smile. “No. You’re not.”
Her thumb brushed over my knuckles. “Thank god,” she added.
I chuckled.
“I don’t want to watch it back,” she said. “Ever. I don’t think I can stand to watch myself have that many feelings in front of that many people. How embarrassing.”
“You know,” I said, “you’re actually very romantic, deep down.”
“Take that back.”
“It’s true.”
“I’ve changed my mind.” She pushed herself up out of the pillows. “This was all a terrible mistake. Bye.”
I grabbed her wrist and pulled her back. “You,” I growled, “are not going anywhere.”
“Fine, fine.”
I put my arm around her. She nestled into me, resting her head on my shoulder. I rested mine on top of hers.
It was comfortable. Easy. We fit together perfectly.
“I’m right, though,” I said.
“Shut up.”
“I am. Only someone who’s extremely sappy would have said the shit you did about being a fairy godmother for Dylan and Cece.”
She made a disgusted noise, but she snuggled deeper into me. “I promised grovelling—” she turned her head so she could press her lips to my collarbone, “—so I’ll let you have this one.”
I stroked her hair. “We have to talk about that.”
“About what? The grovelling?”
“No. The point-scoring.”
She looked up at me.
“I don’t want to compete with you, Lily,” I said. “We never competed when we were partners, not really. And if we’re going to be…”
“Partners?” She raised her eyebrows suggestively.
“—then I don’t want it to be like that either. If you and I are going to work, we need to work with each other, not against each other. We need to be a team.”
She leaned up and kissed me gently on the lips. “I can agree to that.”
“And we’re going to couple’s therapy.” I threaded my fingers through her hair. “I want to be with you. I’m terrible at being without you. But we clearly have some work to do on being together, if we’re not going to cut ourselves to pieces on each other.”
She sighed. “I’m going to hate it.”
“So am I. But that probably means we need it even more.”
“I know.” She ran a hand over her eyes. “Ugh. Thuong’s going to be so fucking smug about this.”
Then she sighed again. “I wish I was as brave as you, Murray. You knew when to end things with Julia. I’m going to be carrying around this guilt about Jeff for the rest of my life. I loved him, but not like I love you. I was always going to cross the Rubicon eventually, but I owed him an ending, and I ran out of time to give it to him.”
I kissed her temple. “Sometimes things are just really fucking unfair.”
“Our therapist is going to have a field day with us.”
She looked up at me suddenly. “We’re not going to anyone we’ve ever had on the show. Promise me that.”
“Are you kidding? Of course we’re not going to anyone we’ve ever had on the show. We’re going to a real therapist, not an Instagram therapist.”
“Good. If I have to talk about my feelings, I want it to actually achieve something.”
I rested my forehead against hers and closed my eyes. We still had so much farther to go, so many more things to work out, but just sitting with her, just being with her, felt so fucking right.
“Coming back to the thing about competing with each other, though,” she said, “I’d like to propose a caveat.”
I opened one eye. “Hmmm?”
“Could we, perhaps,” she said, fingers tangling in the patch of chest hair above the open neck of my polo shirt, “occasionally compete in bed? Because I don’t know about you, but I thought some of our little battles there were pretty hot.”
“Oh, did you now?”
Gently, I pulled her hair, drawing her head back so I could press my open mouth into her neck. “I’ll win.”
“You keep telling yourself that.” Her fingers traced a line down my shirt to my zipper.
* * *
The score was about even when we were interrupted by my stomach growling. “God damn it, Murray,” Lily said, shoving me in the shoulder to push me off. “When was the last time you ate something?”
“Hey, I did all right today. I had breakfast. But then I had a bunch of meetings, and…”
She shook her head. “Where’s the room service menu?”
I found it on the bedside table and handed it to her. “Now that you’re a fancy development exec, what’s your per diem like?” she asked. “Because if the network’s paying, I’m going to order one of everything.”
“Maybe temper that ambition a little. I’m not that fancy an exec.”
“Fine, fine. I’ll just order half, then.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“Why are you so obsessed with feeding me?”
“Because I’m trying to fucking keep you alive, dipshit,” she said, slapping me in the shoulder. “Do you have any idea what it would do to me if you suddenly dropped dead?”
I stared.
“Lily,” I managed to say. “Lily, I—”
“No.” She held a finger up. “We’ve had enough big emotions for tonight. I’ve reached my limit. Move over. I’m going to call room service.”
It didn’t take long to arrive. She pulled her shoulder straps back up and I rezipped my fly and we moved over to the table to eat. “This is a new level of luxury,” she said, three fries in hand. “A hotel room with a dining table in it. You really have hit the big time.”
“You, however, just very publicly quit your job.” I nudged her foot under the table. “Are you in the market for a new one?”
She pointed the fries at me. “No. No charity.”
“It isn’t charity. You know how this business works, Lily. You might not be doing Wherefore anymore, but if anything, what happened tonight is just going to make you a bigger star. You’re going to get more offers than you’ll ever be able to even look at. If you wanted to, you could make a living off spon-con alone.”
She laughed. “I could, couldn’t I? What a thought.”
“You should take your time. You should consider your options. But I want to put one on the table. Consult for me.”
She leaned back in her chair. “I’m listening.”
“I’m building six shows from the ground up. With more to come. I need someone who’ll tell me when I’m doing something stupid.”
“Like rigging a season?”
“Precisely. Plus, consultants get to work their own hours, so if you wanted to do other things, you could. And they get paid through the fucking nose.”
“Now that interests me.” Lily picked up another fry. “Because my partner is this big fancy exec, and I don’t want to be his kept woman.”
I rolled my eyes. She smiled and ate her fry. “Can I think about it?”
“Absolutely. Take as much time as you want.”
“And can I ask you something? Something that’s really been eating me up?”
“Of course.”
The words came out of her in a rush. “What happened on Kumiko’s season? I’ve been driving myself insane trying to figure out what the twist could possibly be.”
“Oh!”
I told her.
Her eyebrows shot into her hairline. “No way,” she breathed. “Kumiko and Z?”
I nodded, my mouth full of hamburger.
“Z? Our Z? Tom Zelig Z?”
I swallowed. “The very same.”
“Fuck me,” Lily said. “How the hell did you pull that off?”
Epilogue Lily
Three years later
“Wait,” the cashier asked me, as she put the magazine in a paper bag and handed it to me. “Aren’t you Lily Fireball?”
I laughed.
My number one line of defence against getting recognised was huge dark sunglasses, but wearing them inside the airport would have been a neon sign saying I AM VAGUELY FAMOUS. Luckily, my second line of defence—just laughing at people—was usually equally effective. All it took for most people to doubt their own eyes was the suggestion that they might be being ridiculous.
I went up the escalator to the business class lounge, found a couple of quiet chairs near the window, flipped the magazine open, and started reading.
Murray joined me about half an hour later. “Hey,” he said, leaning down and kissing the top of my head.
“Hey yourself.” I smiled at him as he sat down opposite me, stretching his legs out in front of him. “How’s Julia?”
“She’s fine. She says hi.” By coincidence, Julia was flying out of the same airport as us to go to a conference, so she and Murray had grabbed a quick coffee before her flight. “Is that it?”
