6
Seven years ago
Lilah woke up the morning after the season-one wrap party with a burning sensation on her hip and the worst hangover of her life. She blinked a few times, heavily, painfully, her whole body aching, her fuzzy teeth and rancid mouth making her stomach lurch. Shane’s warmth and weight around her, usually a comfort, felt smothering. As she shrugged out from under him and rolled herself upright, she heard a crinkling noise.
She stood, swaying a little as the pounding in her head intensified, and glanced down at the bed for the culprit. Judging by how terrible she felt, it wouldn’t surprise her if they’d been binge-on-junk-food-then-fall-asleep-on-the-wrappers wasted. The show had provided drivers to escort them to and from the party, and she knew Drunk Lilah wasn’t above asking them to stop at a gas station or take her to a drive-through. But there was nothing in the bed other than a prone and still-unconscious Shane.
Lilah pulled up the bottom of the oversized T-shirt she was wearing and did a brief inspection of her body, anticipating an Oreo wrapper stuck to her ass or something.
What she found was much, much worse.
“Fuck,” she croaked, dropping the hem and staggering to the bathroom to vomit. In between heaves, she heard Shane stir.
“Y’allrightinthere?” His voice was thick with sleep.
She responded by blindly kicking her leg out to shut the door the rest of the way. Once she felt capable of standing again, she rinsed her mouth out with water before brushing and mouthwashing thoroughly.
Her reflection was sobering: hair matted and greasy, skin blotchy, eyes raccooned with smeared makeup. She leaned in closer. Was that a hickey? Not just one, she realized, pulling her hair back to get a better look. A whole constellation of them. Thanks to her complexion, it was all too easy to mark her up with minimal effort, but by now Shane usually knew better than to leave them where they’d be visible. She couldn’t even bring herself to get mad about it, though. At least she didn’t have to worry about going into work today, facing the knowing smirks in hair and makeup. And, unlike the throbbing reminder at her hip, they were temporary.
She stumbled back toward the bedroom. Shane looked practically dead himself, sprawled across the bed diagonally, facedown, clutching her pillow to his chest the same way he’d been clutching her moments earlier.
He craned his head to look up at her, a lazy smile spreading across his face once he saw the state of her neck. “Damn, I really got you. Sorry.” His self-satisfied tone made it clear he was the opposite of sorry. Ordinarily, she might have thought it was kind of cute. In her current state, it infuriated her.
“Look at this.” She sat next to his head, and he automatically reached out to squeeze her butt. She swatted him away, lifting the edge of her shirt to reveal the small square of black plastic wrap taped over her hip.
“What’s that?”
“I think it’s a fucking tattoo,” she said, peeling the tape off slowly, wincing as it snagged on her skin.
Shane pushed himself upright, suddenly alert. Since he was naked, it didn’t take long for them to home in on the corresponding spot on his hip that was also taped and plastic wrapped. In contrast to her tentative approach, he ripped his off all at once, so they both revealed their mystery tattoos at the same time: tiny, matching cartoon ghosts, so sickeningly cute that Lilah thought she might need to run to the bathroom again.
They looked up at each other for a long, loaded beat. Shane’s expression was hard to read, like he was waiting for her to tell him how he was supposed to feel about it.
Lilah struggled to piece together the events of the night before, which were trickling through the fog of her hangover more slowly than she’d like.
The venue had specialized in “elevated” frozen cocktails, waiters circulating with trays of fluorescent rainbow shot glasses. She’d sampled three flavors in a row with Max, the head of the hair department, as soon as she’d arrived: cold and sticky and dangerously sweet.
She wasn’t normally a big drinker, especially during filming—it was unprofessional (not to mention unpleasant) to work hungover, plus it made her look puffy and tired on camera. With the summer hiatus looming and her alcohol tolerance in the gutter, it was no wonder she’d overdone it.
Anxiety sizzled through her. So far, she and Shane had somehow managed to keep their whatever-this-was under wraps, but there was a nonzero chance that the two of them had gotten a little too friendly in front of their co-workers last night. Both of them tended to get handsy when they’d been drinking. Months of sneaking around, taking separate cars, avoiding being seen in public together, politely deflecting gossip—all undone by a few too many frozen margarita shots.
She dropped her face into her hands, groaning. “Fuck. Do you remember anything that happened last night? We didn’t—when did we even do this?”
He scrunched up his forehead. “I don’t know,” he said. Lilah groaned again, even more dramatically this time.
“This is a fucking nightmare.” She knew even as she said it she was being way over the top, but she was so hungover she’d probably cry over a stubbed toe. She stood up, her fatigue suddenly overtaken by nervous energy, and began pacing. “Do you think we’re the only ones who got them? Can we even ask anyone? Or will it just seem suspicious?”
“I don’t know,” Shane repeated, closing his eyes.
“That’s all you can say?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know,” she said, and the corner of his mouth twitched.
“What are you worried about, exactly?” He sounded exhausted.
Lilah stopped pacing abruptly. “That people will know. About us.”
He rubbed his hand over his face. “I’m sure they already do. The ones we work with, anyway.”
“What? Really? You think?” Her voice got higher and higher pitched with each question.
“Probably. We’re in each other’s trailers all the time. I don’t think it’s that hard to put it together. Plus, you’re always undressing me with your eyes.”
She cast a sharp glance at him. He was grinning up at her mischievously, obviously trying to defuse the situation. How was he so fucking calm about this? She’d always had a hard time understanding people like him, the perpetually unruffled, who inspired envy and frustration in her in equal measure.
To be fair, that type never seemed to know what to do with her, either, other than inform her she was being neurotic or overreacting or thinking too much—as if she didn’t already know. Even his hangovers seemed to hit him differently, making him chill and cuddly, whereas she currently felt like her skin had been removed, the volume and brightness of the world turned all the way up.
She flopped back onto the bed next to him, unable to tell whether she was annoyed or grateful that he didn’t move to touch her again. She closed her eyes and dug the heels of her hands into them, trying to fight off the swirling visions of the two of them, wasted and sugar-high, cackling like idiots at the bar, Shane sucking on her neck in the bathroom, the ominous buzz of a tattoo machine.
Another dire thought settled over her. The possibility that they hadn’t just been sloppy in front of their co-workers—they’d been sloppy in public. All it would take was one picture. Then the constant, insistent drone of attention she’d just barely learned to live with would amplify into a roar, swallowing her whole.
Lilah propped herself on her elbow, leaning over to inspect Shane’s hip again. “How soon do you think we can get them removed? Probably not until they’re healed, right? Do you know how long that takes?”
His amusement faded. “You want to get them removed?”
“You don’t?” she asked, eyes widening.
He looked away. “I didn’t say that.”
“Why wouldn’t we get them removed?” She knew her voice was going all shrill again, in the way her worst high school boyfriend had told her made his dick feel like it was shriveling back up inside his body.
He shrugged, still unable to meet her eyes, his gaze drifting to her own exposed hip. “I dunno. I mean…a couples tattoo isn’t exactly the end of the world, right?” He reached out to stroke her thigh, and she jerked away.
“We’re not a couple,” she snapped, and it was like he turned to stone before her eyes.
It was only supposed to be one time.
But one time had turned into a dozen had turned into a hundred, and against her better judgment, she’d let things carry on way past their expiration date. It was just so easy. He was so easy.
Not in the sense that it was easy to get him naked, which, yes, there was that. But they had the same unpredictable schedule, he was laid-back and sweet, and, most important, she could trust him. He was the only person in her life who understood what she was going through, because he was going through it, too: the surreal, thrilling, terrifying, one-in-a-million experience of going from nobody to capital-S Somebody practically overnight.
After the year they’d both had, easy was all she could handle. And there were more than enough reasons why being in an actual relationship with him would be really fucking hard.
Maybe they’d blurred the lines by spending the night as often as they did, but that was just about logistics: they left work late, started early, and didn’t live particularly close to each other. They never slept together without sleeping together, though, a boundary Lilah had been careful to keep intact.
Until last night.
Looking down at his stricken expression, she was hit by a wave of something worse than nausea. Something closer to disgust, crested with despair. She hurt all over, inside and out, exhausted and weak and embarrassed enough that her most self-destructive impulses had wrestled free of their chains and clawed their way to the surface. She wanted to hurt him, too. To punish him for the unforgivable crimes of caring about her, of wanting more from her, of assuming he knew her.
“What do you think this is, exactly?” Her voice already didn’t sound like her own, caustic and sharp, a warning to herself that she was about five seconds away from saying something she’d deeply regret.
“I don’t—” He caught himself just in time, but she pressed on, unable to stop herself.
“Have I ever said anything to make you believe I would want a fucking couples tattoo with you?”
“No, but—”
“But what?” She wasn’t sure when she’d gotten to her feet, but she was standing again, arms crossed defensively, shifting her weight like she was seconds away from bolting out the door of her own damn bedroom. “You want to be my boyfriend now? Is that it?”
He met her gaze, his voice frustratingly calm. “Not when you’re acting like this, I don’t.”
She lifted her chin. “And how am I acting?”
He didn’t respond, just kept looking at her with those wounded golden retriever eyes.
Lilah sometimes felt like she was walking around with a snake coiled in her belly just waiting for her to open her mouth, ready to strike at the slightest provocation. She knew she was out of control—skin flushed, heart beating wildly, regret already brewing in the distant part of her mind that held her better judgment.
She was practically daring him to take the bait. To dump her, to call her a bitch, to give back whatever she deserved and then some. Plenty of men would—and had—with less.
But he didn’t. He just shook his head, casting his gaze to the ground. When he spoke, his voice was weary. “Maybe I should get out of here. We probably both need to cool off a little.”
“Or you could go, and we could just call it.” It was out of her mouth almost before she realized what she was saying. She still didn’t feel like she was fully inside her body as she continued. “I think this…whatever this is…has run its course.”
He raised his eyes back to hers. His brows were knit together, lips pursed, face hard and closed off. He’d never looked at her that way before. It felt wrong on him, somehow.
“So I guess that’s that, then.”
“That’s that.” She looked down at her feet as she said it.
There was no movement in her peripheral vision for several long seconds.
“Right,” he said at last. The mattress creaked as he eased himself off the bed and began hunting around for his clothes.
She didn’t know why she’d expected him to argue more. To try to fight for her, for them. That wasn’t really Shane’s style. He was easy, after all.
Still, his quiet acceptance was a punch in the gut.
She sat on the edge of the bed, watching him pull on his jeans, self-loathing curdling in the pit of her stomach.
Once he buckled his belt, he made his way back over to her. She just stared up at him.
“That’s my shirt,” he said.
Lilah looked down at the faded, unfamiliar logo across her chest.
“Oh. Right.”
She stood, pulling the shirt over her head and handing it over. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath it besides a thong, and she crossed her arms over her breasts self-consciously as he took it from her, leaving her exposed. She noticed his eyes flick down, his nostrils flaring slightly. For a brief, desperate moment, she considered trying to seduce him into goodbye sex. But she’d never felt less sexy in her life, and besides, if he rejected her, she’d probably shrivel up and die of humiliation on the spot.
She threw on a shirt of her own and a pair of leggings as Shane finished gathering his things; they both averted their eyes, giving each other a wide berth as they moved around the room. When he reached her bedroom door, he hesitated, looking back at her.
She met his gaze, her skin prickling with unease. The aggression had drained out of her almost as quickly as it arrived. All she wanted to do now was climb back under the covers and stay there, trying in vain to hide from the remorse that already threatened to overwhelm her.
She heard herself say, quietly: “I don’t want to lose you as a friend.”
He let out a short exhale through his nose, the ghost of a laugh, then shook his head resignedly before meeting her eyes again.
“We’ve never been friends, Lilah.”
She’d been wrong earlier. This was the punch in the gut.
Then he was gone.
After he left, she did her best to distract herself by pulling out her laptop and frantically searching their names over and over, trawling every social media platform and gossip site she could think of, her heart in her throat. Fortunately, to her shock and relief, it seemed like they’d managed to stay under the radar as far as the general public was concerned. Unfortunately, from what she could gather from her texts with Polly—her favorite writer on the show—and Max, it seemed like no one else had joined them on their little tattoo adventure. They had, in fact, gotten couples tattoos. She shut her laptop and curled up on her couch under a blanket, letting herself drift off into a sullen nap.
Later, after she was rested and showered and caffeinated and rehydrated enough to think straight, she allowed herself to replay the events of that morning, marinating in her guilt and embarrassment. But there was something else there that unsettled her most of all: the sharp sting of loss.
She’d tried to ignore the tiny intimacies that had piled up over time. The inside jokes. His toothbrush in her bathroom cabinet. The way he had her coffee waiting for her in the morning. The unfortunate fact that the best sleep she’d ever gotten was with him curled around her, his lips pressed to the nape of her neck.
He’d told her he loved her only once, four or five months ago. Almost inaudibly, into her shoulder, in the middle of the night, after they’d both inexplicably woken up at the same time and reached for each other, during sex that was half-dreamy and unusually tender. She was so overwhelmed she’d pretended she hadn’t heard him. If he’d said it again in daylight, looking directly at her like he actually meant it, that would’ve been one thing. But he hadn’t.
Mostly, though, she’d ignored it because she hadn’t believed him. Not that she thought he was lying or anything. They spent a lot of time together, obviously, but they were usually working or fucking, their conversations rarely delving deeper than banter or small talk. She believed that he loved the idea of her, he loved sleeping with her, he loved that she fit into his life in a way that was both seamless and undemanding. But he didn’t love her. He couldn’t. She hadn’t shown him enough of herself for that to be possible.
Sometimes she’d catch him looking at her in a way that made her chest seize, because she could tell he wasn’t actually seeing her but whatever flawless, impossible fantasy woman he’d invented long ago and superimposed her face onto. He deserved to be with the woman he thought she was—someone soft, like him, whom he could hold as tightly as he wanted without finding himself sliced to ribbons when he pulled away.
There was a sick sense of relief in that, too. At least now he finally knew who he was dealing with. She wouldn’t have to spend the next few months pretending not to notice him slowly growing disenchanted with her the more she opened up to him.
No matter what, though, they needed to find a way to put all this behind them, for the sake of the show. The worst thing they could do was allow their breakup to affect their working relationship.
Tomorrow. She’d call him tomorrow and apologize, and they’d figure it out.
The next morning, she woke up to a notification in the Hags group chat.
ANNIE: Did something happen with you and Shane?
Lilah felt her stomach drop.
LILAH: Why?
PILAR: Just trying to figure out if we need to kill him or not
Pilar’s next message was a link to a gossip site. When Lilah clicked on it, she was greeted with a series of pictures of Shane out at a club with his friends: a group of other up-and-coming twentysomething actors he’d fallen in with after Intangible had blown up, whom the press had semi-derogatorily nicknamed “The Poon Squad.”
The first time she’d met them, at a New Year’s party she and Shane had attended as “friends,” one of them had looked her up and down and then leaned over to ask Shane, without bothering to lower his voice, if the carpet matched the drapes. She hadn’t reacted, just turned on her heel and walked out. She’d heard it enough times that the unoriginality pissed her off more than the vulgarity.
Shane had run after her and coaxed her into staying, demanding an apology from his friend once they returned, which had been enough to placate her. By the time he pulled her into an empty bedroom just before midnight, she’d almost forgotten about it. Almost.
But now, it was all she could think about as she scrolled through the pictures of Shane wrapped around a Victoria’s Secret Angel so tightly it looked like they’d been welded together with a blowtorch. He was clearly trashed, sloppily making out with her as she stuck her hands up his shirt, the rest of the guys laughing, jeering, and raising their glasses in the background, their arms around modelesque women of their own.
Lilah felt her vision black out around the edges. She should’ve trusted her gut about them. Hating someone’s friends was never a good sign for the longevity of a relationship—birds of a feather, and all that. And it was no secret they fucking hated her, too. They’d likely been hounding him to dump her for months. Given what they felt comfortable saying to her face, she didn’t even want to think about how they talked about her behind her back.
But, of course, Shane was a grown man. No one was forcing him to stick his tongue down that woman’s throat. He was doing it because he wanted to.
He was doing it because now he could.
She stared at the picture for what felt like hours.
Finally, she willed her fingers into action, trying to compose a text that was much more chill than she felt.
LILAH: lol
Good start. She forced herself to continue.
You don’t have to kill him
We’re not a thing anymore
I might die of embarrassment from letting myself be associated with someone who would act that tacky, though
PILAR: omg wait what
ANNIE: Since when???
YVONNE: Are you okay?
LILAH: yesterday
I was the one who ended it
and no, I’m not really okay
But I will be
She assured her friends that they didn’t need to come over, assured herself that the devastation she felt was unjustified. It was her pride that was bruised, that was all. She’d forget about it by next week.
Except he didn’t stop.
For the next several days, Shane was photographed out and about with a different woman every night—some famous, some not. Even though the PDA got slightly more tasteful after that first night, it was obvious that they were purposely showing up where they knew there’d be paparazzi or hungry fans. There was no other way to interpret it: he was doing it to hurt her.
She visualized her heart hardening like a stone and tried to distract herself from how well it was working.
The worst part was, she couldn’t even do the same thing to him. If she was out with a different guy slobbering all over her every night, she’d be seen as trashy, branded a slut, her image and potentially her career irrevocably tarnished. And though a few feminist-skewing gossip outlets called out Shane’s behavior for what it was (pathetic, messy, try-hard), the biggest sources lauded him as a stud and an icon, a one-man Poon Squad all on his own.
On the fifth day, alone in the middle of the night, she finally allowed herself to cry about it.