Twenty-Four
“I’m sorry,” Grant gasps, and his breathing becomes erratic again. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I wish . . . I wish—”
He can’t seem to finish his sentences and Helen thinks of all the times she wondered (all the while wishing she didn’t), what was it like for you, afterward, all the times she briefly allowed the next thought, it must have been terrible, and the guilt, and the resentment, and the anger, and the present pain turning into the past hurt over and over again until her insistent heart beat out a never-ending rhythm of hurtpainhurtpainhurtpain. She’s spent a good fraction of her good fortune on therapy, training that terrible recurring poem of her heart to dull its thud, enough so she can hear her own thoughts over it, enough so she can think about something other than her still-beating organs.
She suspects she always imagined some version of this for him too—an echo of her own emotional scars, whenever she imagined what was it like for you. But seeing it, feeling it, from his cold skin to her not-cold-enough heart, is so awfully different.
Helen slips out of her shoes. She stands and slowly resettles herself above him, one knee on the inside of the couch, the other dangling above the floor.
“Would you hold me?” she asks, and after a beat, he nods.
She drops down more fully, her legs stretching over his, her body covering his body like a weighted blanket as his arms come around her. She is suddenly, bizarrely grateful that she can give this to him, that maybe she’s the only person in the world who can.
“I think I forgave you long before I ever forgave her,” she murmurs finally. “I still haven’t, really. I don’t know if I ever will.”
“You shouldn’t forgive me,” Grant says. “It’s not . . . you shouldn’t be mad at your sister forever. That’s not how it should be.”
“It’s how we left it,” Helen says. “We were supposed to grow up and get over ourselves and meet on the other side of the mountain as friends. Closer than friends—I see old classmates hanging out with siblings they grew up with and I wish I had thirteen more years of memories, I wish I’d said something else in that last moment, or she’d said something else, and I wish—I wish she’d wanted to live more than she wanted to die in that final instant. I wish I could tell her what a dick move the last thing she ever did was, and I wish she could respond. Anyway, it’s not your fault. I don’t blame you for any of it, Grant Shepard.”
She listens to his heartbeat slow down as she draws slow circles on his chest. She thinks he might be drifting off to sleep, when he mumbles, “I’m sorry I need this so much. I wish I didn’t.”
Don’t be sorry, she thinks, a little desperately. I want you to need me.
When she looks up, his eyes are closed. She isn’t sure why her heart feels like it’s breaking, when it hasn’t been working properly in years anyway.
Grant wakes up and it’s afternoon, and he hears a reassuring, soft click-clack of Helen working on her laptop behind his desk.
“How long was I out?” he asks grimly.
“A few hours,” she answers. “It’s almost one thirty.”
He sits up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Embarrassment too. If he looks up and she’s looking back at him with pitying eyes, he’ll get in his car and drive to Canada.
“I think you should buy us lunch,” Helen says, still typing. “Or we could go somewhere.”
“It’s your turn to pick lunch,” he says.
“Then I pick that sandwich place everyone likes,” Helen says. “Let’s go.”
He drives and she sits in the passenger seat as she updates him on the work that the others have done since this morning—Owen’s delivered his outline, Tom and Eve have delivered their first draft, Nicole’s sending in her revision, and Suraya sent the first three episodes along to production.
Helen mentions she’s getting nervous about them reaching her episode, the penultimate one of the season, and he covers her hand briefly with his while the car idles at a traffic light. She looks over at him, a fond smile in her eyes, and his heart squeezes in a way that’s becoming altogether too familiar.
They order a variation of the same combo and sit outside in the sun as they wait for their orders. Helen sips from a glass bottle of sparkling water, and as she sets it down on the spindly round metal table on the sidewalk, he thinks sharply—I could love you.
She eyes him warily.
“You look like you’re about to say something stupid,” she says.
“You’re a mind reader now?” He lifts a brow.
Helen shakes her head and the waiter brings them their sandwiches in red plastic baskets.
“I’m a Grant’s face reader,” she says, opening her bag of chips and dumping them into the tray. “You get this look in the room sometimes, right before you say something like, ‘Wild pitch, what if we change everything and toss all the hard work we’ve been doing for the past six hours out the window.’”
Grant laughs. “I’ll keep it to myself, then.”
Helen sips her water, then sets it down again. “Why didn’t you tell me your birthday is next week?”
Grant frowns and squeezes a packet of ketchup into a corner for his fries. She steals one of them deftly, popping it into her mouth.
“I saw it on the tax forms on your desk,” she adds.
“Okay, creep.”
“You shouldn’t just leave those out,” she answers. “What do you wanna do for your birthday?”
“Nothing,” he says, biting into his sandwich. “You.”
Helen rolls her eyes. “Do you have a favorite cake? Or a restaurant?”
He leans back in his seat, considering. “You’d go with me to a restaurant?”
“We’re at a restaurant now.”
“We’re at a sandwich shop on a lunch break,” he mutters. “I mean an actual restaurant, with snooty waiters and tiny plates and dressed-up people on dates.”
“Sure.” Helen pauses. “We could invite the whole room.”
Grant chuckles lowly as he wipes his mouth. “Right, the whole room. And drive home in separate cars?”
Helen shrugs.
Grant studies her. He feels like maybe there’s a way to solve this, but he hasn’t hit upon it yet. Maybe he needs a room full of professional screenwriters to workshop it out. He laughs at the thought, then something occurs to him.
“I know what I want,” he says slowly. “I want you to throw a birthday party—a dinner party—at my house. Invite everyone from the room. Come early to help set up. Stay late to break it down. And I get to touch you whenever I want, until you walk out the door.”
Helen flushes. “What, like, in front of people?”
Grant lifts a shoulder. “You asked me what I want.”
“That man is in love with you,” Nicole says, reading over a draft of Helen’s email inviting everyone to Grant’s birthday party. “What even is happening here?”
Helen flushes. “A birthday party invitation, that’s all.”
She would be lying if she didn’t suspect some feelings—she’s caught him looking at her with that warm, soft expression a few too many times, and there was that moment on her balcony last week, talking about hypothetical girlfriends he should be dating instead, when her heart had jammed into her throat—What about you?
“Which you’re sending, because you’re . . . such great pals that you’re hosting it at his house?” Nicole sips her wine skeptically. Helen is starting to regret accepting the invitation to come over to her house for “wine and whining.” “If I’m wrong, then he’s a psycho for asking. Are you in love with him?”
“No,” Helen says firmly. No. “We’re having fun, it’s easy and convenient for now, and then it’ll be over. It’s just . . . I think sometimes it gets confusing. Because we knew each other before, under kind of intense circumstances, and it’s impossible not to see each other all the time when we work together.”
Everyone in the room knows about Grant and Helen’s tangled connection from the past by now. It seems silly to her in retrospect that she thought they could keep it a secret for so long when Google exists. Helen still remembers the day they realized everyone else knew—some stupid plot point about a deadly car accident had come up in the room. A thick silence had descended over the table. Owen shot Tom and Eve a meaningful look, Saskia coughed lightly, Nicole was being suspiciously silent, and Helen suddenly realized, everyone is avoiding eye contact. She remembers looking up to see Grant having the same realization and sharing a private, laughing look with him. Suraya had been the last one still obliviously staring at the dry-erase board, only to turn around and instantly snap, “What the fuck did I miss?”
Only Nicole knows the full picture of past and present, though. (Saskia probably suspects too, given their last conversation at the precipice of everything, but has been too polite to ask.)
“You trauma bonded your way into mutual attraction.” Nicole nods. “Healthy.”
Helen laughs, then groans. “I think . . .” She pauses, carefully considering her words. “I think he might think he’s in love, or not even love, but catching inconvenient feelings. I think he’s the ‘falling in love, catching feelings’ type. You’ve met him.”
“Yes,” Nicole says dryly. “I have. You know, I do like Grant, as a friend. Maybe I should ask you what your intentions are here. I’d hate to see him heartbroken and left in the dust at the end of all of this.”
Helen shifts uncomfortably.
“Grant knows what’s happening,” she says. “This is just . . . it’s like a game we play. I keep us on track and he’s always trying to push and see what’s the most he can get. It’s like we’re negotiating, all the time, and it’s . . . fun, I guess, otherwise we wouldn’t both keep coming back. It forces us to pace ourselves. But he knows the rules. He wouldn’t . . . he wouldn’t ask for something he knows is impossible.”
“Hm,” Nicole says, and sips her wine. “Not gonna lie, that sounds confusing and kind of hot, but maybe you should be a little careful here, Hel. You’re smart, but you’re not smarter than dumbass lizard-brain feelings. You can still get hurt with your eyes wide open.”
“That’s a good line,” Helen says. “You should put that in something.”
“I’m such a writer,” Nicole says, and they laugh, and Grant and his unspoken, tricky, possibly-there feelings don’t come up again.
In the room the following Monday, Suraya declines the invitation (“You’ll have more fun without the boss around”) and has her assistant ask for Grant’s home address so she can send a bottle of champagne. Everyone else accepts.
“Nice of you to put this together, Helen,” Tom adds, and Eve jabs him in the ribs.
“I’m, um, trying to make up for being so mean in high school, apparently,” Helen answers, as Grant watches her from across the table with I fucked you against a wall this morning eyes.
“Anyway, production starts next week, and then the room’s going to end pretty soon after that,” Grant says. “It’d be nice to see you all not in this room, for once.”
They spend the night at her place on Friday, so she can pick from the full scope of her wardrobe for the party tomorrow. She wears a silk robe as she lifts options in the absurdly large dressing room adjoining her bedroom and auditions them against her body for him.
“I like it,” he says, when she holds up a flirty black dress.
“I like that one too,” he says, when she pulls a vintage green dress.
“My prom dress might be around here somewhere, think you’d like that one too?” Helen huffs, and he laughs. He stands from the dressing room bench and pulls her back against his body, kissing her neck. “You’re absolutely no help.”
“I like watching you get dressed up,” he says. “But it’s late, and there are other things we could be doing.”
She shivers against him and turns, and her arms lazily clasp around his neck as they sway gently to music that isn’t playing.
“What time is it?” she asks.
He glances at the clock on her bedside table. “A little after midnight.”
“Happy birthday,” she says, and rises on her tiptoes to kiss him. He lets out a satisfied little “huh” before he kisses her back. The sound washes over her, and the familiar yearning feeling in her stomach returns. When he pulls back, her breaths come out in shaky little spurts.
“Sometimes I feel like I miss you when you’re right in front of me,” she says as he nudges her cheek with his nose. “Isn’t that weird?”
He laughs, and tilts her face up to kiss her again instead. His hands slide down her arms and soon she finds herself lifted up, her legs wrapped around his waist as he walks them back into the bedroom. She helps him pull off his shirt, and by the time they fall onto her bed, all that’s separating them is a thin layer of his cotton boxer briefs and her silk robe.
He hums slightly with thoughtful hms as he pulls the tie of her robe and the bow comes undone quickly. He brushes the robe off her skin easily, like wrapping paper, and follows the path of his hands with his mouth.
She’s shivering, she realizes, even though it’s warm and his lips are hot.
“Do you miss me right now?” he murmurs against her stomach, and kisses softly down past her belly button, drifting maddeningly toward the tops of her thighs.
Her fingers tangle in his hair and she nods without thinking as she redirects him to where she wants him.
“Yes,” she gasps, as he laves attention to the soft, secret spots of her. “It’s so good, it feels so good.”
He builds a slow and steady rhythm, then suckles against the tiny, sensitive nub he’s become so familiar with, and she’s surprised by her own sudden orgasm.
“Fuck,” she gasps. “I didn’t know . . . I was so close.”
She looks down and he’s watching her with fevered eyes; he looks hungry and satisfied at the same time. She thinks maybe this is how she looks at him too.
He drops another kiss on her inner thigh, then moves up until he’s above her. Her hands drift down and she can feel a wet, sticky trail of precome against her leg, and the dampness of her own orgasm. It’s messy, the way they want each other, and she doesn’t seem to care.
“I’ve never wanted anything as much as I want you,” he gasps when she squeezes him, as if he can hear her thoughts.
He grips her by the hips then and rolls them over so that she’s perched above him, her hands on his shoulders. She sinks slowly onto him as he guides her down, reveling in the way he exhales and scrapes her skin with the force of his grip as she takes him farther into her body. She moves her hands up her own body because she knows he likes to watch her touch herself, and his eyes gleam with wanting as she cups and squeezes her breasts.
He grabs her hands then, and lifts them above her head as he leans forward to kiss her. There’s a strange kind of intimacy in being pressed against him like this, as her hips draw slow circles below them.
He gasps against her mouth. “I’m not gonna last much longer.”
“Me too,” she murmurs. “Can you wait for me?”
He makes a small, pained sound at the back of his throat, and nods. “What do you need?”
“Just this.” She squeezes him with her inner muscles, and his breathing goes ragged. “This, and you, and this, and you. . . .”
“Helen,” he rasps into her neck. “You have me.”
She falls over the edge then and feels him climax too. He comes in shaking waves, and she’s surprised to feel tremors still racking through him when she returns back to earth. She holds his face in her hands and kisses him then, loving the taste of salt and her on his tongue.
“You have me too,” she murmurs against his mouth.
He doesn’t say anything, but drops his head to press a reverent kiss to her shoulder, and she feels the strangest sweep of melancholy wash over her. He chuckles when he looks back up at her.
“Missing me?” he asks, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear.
She nods.
“But you’re right here, crackerjack,” he says, squeezing her ankle. “Happy birthday to me.”
She laughs then, and he scoops her up and carries her into the shower, and she doesn’t think about it again for the rest of the night.