The View Was Exhausting by Mikaella Clements

Chapter Nineteen

Leo drifted in and out of vague sleep. They’d stayed up most of the night, hands clasped over each other’s mouths to keep quiet. He’d realized at one point that Win was panting high and sweet against his palm, wet mouth open and whining, and had to bite into her shoulder to keep down his own shout. She’d touched the marks he left later, running her fingers over the bruises and blinking at him, heavy-eyed.

“Sorry,” he said, tracing over them regretfully. His fingers ended up lingering, and Win shivered and pressed into his touch.

“How far away are your mums?”

“Please don’t bring up my mums when you’re naked.”

Win threw a leg over his hip, sliding up onto him, mouth at his neck, hand hot around him. Leo reached for her, and they fucked again with Win in his lap, moving slow and shallow. Afterward he hauled her up, helping her balance with her hand on the headboard and her knee slung over his shoulder, her hips bucking against his wet mouth as she cursed him out.

“Do you need a moment?” Leo said politely, though his voice was wrecked, his breath coming hard.

“I’ll kill you,” Win said, and they were laughing again as Leo toppled her beneath him, her fingers digging into the small of his back. A sharp inhalation and then moving like they wanted to crawl into each other.

They fell asleep. Leo woke up again to Win staring at him, the radio clock blinking 4:45. He said, groggy with sleep, “You’re not going to run out on me, are you?”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

She said it even and sure, the way she always did when she wanted something, and Leo ended up kissing her again, hands framing her face. Win was already wriggling against him, demanding and impatient.

“You are going to kill me,” he realized.

“That’s what I said.” Her legs were falling open for him again. This time when he smoothed a hand over her thigh, it started trembling almost immediately, like all her nerves had come to the surface. They pressed against each other, blind and thoughtless, not even sure what they could manage and unwilling to stop trying.

They slept again, sweaty and gross, messy with sex and exertion, sprawled over each other. Win’s nose was tucked against his armpit and he had a mouthful of her hair. It wasn’t a comfortable sleep. Fractured as it was, it felt more like a dream.

When he woke up next, it was to the gray light of a London morning and two phones buzzing on wood. It was almost six.

“Mrgh,” Leo said, and slapped out his hand. He knocked one phone off the bedside table. It buzzed, muffled now, into the carpet. Leo made a disapproving noise and rolled closer to Win.

“Oof,” she said.

“Shh.” Leo patted clumsily at her. “Sleep.”

“You’re on my bladder.” Win applied an elbow, making him groan. He rolled away but kept hold of her, urging her with him, and smoothed a satisfied hand down the long, bare warmth of her back when she followed. Win sighed, low and sleepy, and tucked herself in, her back against his chest. She ran her hand along his forearm, and he caught it in his. They twisted their fingers together, yawned.

The phone left on the bedside table paused, and then started buzzing again.

“That needs to stop,” Leo mumbled.

“I can’t get up,” Win said, voice slow and satisfied. “I can’t move. It’s your fault. You get it.” Leo started to move, and she grabbed at him. “No.”

“No?” Leo said.

Win squinted open an eye, peering back at him. “Don’t show off.”

Leo kissed her shoulder. He looked at the tired lines of her face. Sometimes she startled him like this, early in the mornings, sleep-deprived and grumpy: she looked ordinary. It was before her team got to her, the makeup and hair and armor Win wore when she faced the world, gleaming and calculated to catch the light. He loved both versions of her. But here she looked sleepy and she had a whitehead coming up in an awkward spot; she looked like someone who might, conceivably, stay here in bed with him, at least for a little while.

Win flexed her fingers in his, squeezed them. He swiped his thumb along hers.

Her phone buzzed itself right off the bedside table and next to Leo’s. Leo said, “Good.”

“Mm.” Win sat up.

Leo meant to stop her, but she kept hold of his hand, and it meant the blankets falling away, Win naked and sitting up in bed. He ended up just staring, the pointy slope of Win’s breasts, the sharp line of her collarbone. He reached out, trailing his hand over her, and Win sucked in a breath and looked at him. Her eyes were dark, her mouth swollen; Leo supposed his was, too. It felt frayed from kissing her. He wanted to do it again.

“Don’t you have an apartment in London?”

Leo tucked his face against her hip. “You don’t need to go home?”

“Ma’s doing better,” Win said. “Maybe if we go to your flat for a bit it would be a good test. See how she goes on her own for a day or two, and then I’ll know if I can go away and film.”

“Right,” Leo said. “It’s for your mother’s welfare?”

“It’s not—not for her welfare,” Win said.

“My flat’s like, a thirty-minute drive from here.”

Win lifted their joined hands to her mouth, touched his thumb to her lip. “That’s not far.”

“No,” Leo agreed. “And once we get there, we don’t have to leave for days.”

“Days,” Win echoed, looking a little stunned.

He nodded. They were bending into each other again, wilting like flowers.

“You have to go to France,” Leo murmured, catching her jaw in his hand, tilting her wide eyes up to him. “Tomorrow? Day after?”

“Yes.” Win swallowed, the first flicker of anxiety in her gaze. “It’s going to be a hectic month.”

“However I can help,” Leo said. They were kissing again; he’d almost missed the moment it started, soft, hungry presses of her mouth. “Whatever I can do—”

“You fancy France, this time of year?” Win said, and they both laughed, breathless, the kiss deepening. Leo thought he could probably be convinced.

On the floor, one or both of their phones buzzed fiercely enough to send it bumping against the wooden leg of the bed.

“For fuck’s sake.” Leo threw himself back against the pillows, and Win laughed and slipped her hand free.

“Oh, Christ,” she said as she picked up her phone. “Marie’s called me, like, ten times.”

Something uneasy slipped in Leo’s stomach. “About what?”

“I don’t know,” Win said, frowning over her phone, thumb skidding along the screen. “There’s a lot of texts about TMZ—”

“What?” Leo sat up.

“Hang on,” Win said, focused now. “God, there’s like six links— Okay, I’m just going to call her, hang on—”

“Win,” Leo said.

Win leaned back and kissed him. She caught him at a slant, their mouths almost missing. “It’s probably some new Paramount drama,” she said. “Don’t worry. We’ll sort it.”

“Whitman,” Leo said, and on the other end of the line, Marie picked up.

“Hey, Marie,” Win said. “Sorry, I just woke up. What’s the crisis?”

Leo couldn’t hear anything for a moment, just the buzz of static. Then Win’s face paled and she lowered the phone. Leo had a mad, panicked thought that something terrible had happened to Pritha, that Marie had somehow got hold of the information first.

Win put the phone on speaker, and Marie’s voice filled the room, tinny and brutally professional.

“—someone called Miriam Rosenblatt,” Marie was saying.

Leo startled, reaching out instinctively to grab Win’s wrist. A hot flush rose through him, prickling at his scalp.

“I haven’t spoken to her yet—it’s the middle of the night in New York, hopefully I’ll have some answers soon, but until then, you need to get out.”

“I don’t understand,” Win said. “How did it leak? I thought you said that you were going to track down the minister.”

Leo shot her a sharp look, and Win made a face at him.

“I did,” Marie said. “That’s the thing. It’s not that they’ve found out about his marriage. They’ve found out about the divorce.”

Win laughed, blank and confused. “There’s no divorce. What are you…” She looked at Leo, trailing off.

Leo rubbed his hands over his face. “I was going to tell you.”

“Is he there?” Marie said. “Leo, what the fuck is going on? You know this Rosenblatt woman?”

“She’s my brother’s lawyer. I was— Win, I was going to tell you, but we were fighting and then when we weren’t, I thought you’d be pleased. I thought you wouldn’t want to talk about it. I thought I’d just get it done, sort it out.”

“We need to know this shit, Leo,” Marie said, clipped over the speakerphone. “You know there are legal procedures involved in a divorce, right? People are always going to find the paper trail.”

“There’s a paper trail with a wedding, too,” Leo said. Win’s face was impossible to read, eyes huge with surprise.

“I know, that’s why we were all furious with you!” Marie yelled. “The answer to that fuckup wasn’t to go out and fuck up again!”

“Win,” Leo said, “Win, I thought it would be good. I didn’t want to be married to her. I wanted to be—I want to be with—”

“You have no idea how to be careful, do you?” Marie demanded. “You go out and do exactly what you want, when you want, and you don’t care about the consequences of your actions or who you’re going to hurt along the way!”

“Win,” Leo said. “I’m really, really sorry.”

Win put her hand up to the back of his neck, touched his earlobe in a gentle, almost automatic gesture.

“You didn’t know,” she said. “We don’t know what it’ll do—”

“Whitman,” Marie interrupted, “I’ve been trying to call you for hours.” She sounded grim. “We do know what it’s going to do.”

Win turned back toward the phone, visibly steeling herself. “What, then?”

“The first headlines were already reporting you broke up the marriage,” Marie said, clearly trying now to sound kind. She was mostly failing, voice still tight with anger. “That you’re a home wrecker, and that Lila has been heartbroken for months, and that Leo tries to return to her but you have—quote—‘an irresistible spell on him.’”

“Whitman.” Leo touched her knee. “Can we talk?”

She caught his hand and squeezed it but shook her head. She scooted over to the side of the bed to put on her underwear and the discarded Bulls T-shirt from last night. “Go on, Marie.”

“The timeline is too blurred, unfortunately,” Marie said. “There’s even some paparazzi photos of Leo with Lila that night in Saint-Tropez. It looks like the moment he could he went running back to her. The gossip sites have been having a field day, putting it all together. I think everyone on Twitter has been up all night.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Leo said. He went to find his own underwear, suddenly sure he didn’t want to be naked for this conversation. He dug out an old rowing sweater of Gum’s and wrestled it on.

“Look, we just need to clarify the timeline,” Win said. “It’s bad, but maybe if we can get Lila to say something…”

She looked at Leo apologetically, but Leo nodded, eager. “She will. I’ll call her and ask. She’s a good person, I promise, she’ll say something—”

“That’s the thing,” Marie said. “She already has.”

Leo paused. “What?”

“I sent it to you, too,” Marie said.

Leo scooped up his phone from where it was still lying on the floor. He opened one of the many links Marie had sent him and held it mutely out in front of them.

It was a video, jumping awkwardly every fifteen seconds, ripped from social media and posted on the front page of TMZ. Lila was leaning against a girl Leo didn’t know, with Alex slouched behind them. For a moment Leo felt the usual rush of warmth at the sight of her unruly blond hair, her smeared eyeliner, her brash grin. Then what she was saying sank in.

“Man, everyone needs to chiiiiiiill out,” she said, drunk but not wasted, clearly aware of what she was saying. Behind her was the buzz of an LA party, a coked-up guy rambling on, a high pitched shrill of laughter over the DJ set. Leo had been to parties like that with her. She liked to set up camp at a table and turn herself into the social hub of the room, making friends with everyone, telling passing drunk girls that they looked beautiful.

“Have you seen Twitter? It’s insane, like—Whitman Tagore broke up my marriage? God, as if, she and Leo are barely even friends. They’ve got their weird celebrity arrangement and then on the off days Leo can do whatever the fuck he likes—”

“Wait,” the girl behind the phone camera said, voice thick with glee. “What arrangement?”

“You know!” Lila waved her hands. The camera jumped; when it came back, Lila was halfway through a sentence, someone out of shot laughing hysterically. “—you suck my dick, I’ll suck yours, whatever.”

Behind her, Alex said, “What the fuck does that even mean?”

“Yeah, I guess it’s not applicable,” Lila said. “There’s definitely no dick sucking going on—come on, you know what I mean, pretending to date for the publicity and then not even being on speaking terms—”

“Lil,” Alex said over her shoulder.

“Whoops, whatever,” Lila said, and grinned, the cocky one that she used to get out of whatever trouble she found herself in. She held up a hand, nudging the camera aside, and the picture froze on her smile.

Leo and Win sat silent. Even Marie was silent. Leo’s heart was pounding; he felt trapped, like a bad dream where everything was spiraling out of control.

Win cleared her throat. “I’ll need to talk to Patrick. Is Emil up?”

“Yes,” Marie said.

“Great. Could you get him to send a car—”

“Wait,” Leo said. “Wait—”

“It’s a private street,” Win continued, “he’ll have to liaise with security,” and she rattled off the Mums’ address.

“Whitman,” Leo said, “listen to me—”

Win put her hand on his arm. She didn’t look angry; her face was clear and calm as the morning. “Marie, I’ll need to go to my mum’s to pack and then...”

Marie made an affirmative noise, crackling through the speakers. “I’ll look into flights and give you a call back.”

“What,” Leo said.

“Whitman,” Marie said, “you know this means—”

“I know,” Win said. “Thank you. Talk soon.”

She hung up.

They sat in silence. Leo’s gaze dropped to Win’s shoulder, where the T-shirt had slipped to bare her skin. The marks he’d left last night were still there, red and purple, even as the morning light grew stronger. When he looked back up at her, she was staring at him. Her face was all screwed up, mouth squinched to the side, and Leo realized with a jolt of horror that for the first time in years, he was about to see Win cry.

He cupped her cheek in his hand. “We’ll fix it.”

Win let out a burst of rough laughter that edged close to a sob. She turned her face in to his hand, breathing raggedly.

“We’ll fix it,” Leo repeated, determined. “Win. Look at me. We’ll work something out. I’ll say something.”

“They’ll think you’re lying, no matter what you say. They know we’ve been lying the whole time.”

“I’m not lying. I won’t lie. I’ll tell them it’s real. Win, it’s real.”

“Please don’t,” Win said, voice breaking. She evaded his hands and stood up, facing the door. Her shoulders heaved, but when she turned back to him, her face was dry, her chin tilted up. “I have to go.”

“You don’t have to go.”

Win shook her head. “The paparazzi know exactly where I am. They’ll already be out there, and the longer I hang around…it looks really bad. It looks like I’m stupid, like I haven’t even realized they all know it’s fake.”

“It’s not fake,” Leo snarled. He stood up, too, folding his arms. “Who cares what they think!”

“Leo.”

“Fine, okay, it matters what they think. So we’ll fix it. Why does Marie want to whisk you away? We just need to control the story.”

“Whisking me away is controlling the story,” Win said. She swallowed hard. “I’ll put out a statement, and then I’ll have to lie low for a while.”

“Okay, yes, you go find somewhere safe and I’ll issue a statement—”

“No,” Win said, voice jerking out like a slap. “No, you can’t. Don’t say anything. Marie will handle it, she’ll get in touch if we need you to say anything.”

“Fine.” He hated issuing statements. “Fine, I’ll just wait here in London then, and when you’re ready I’ll come and find you.”

Win put her jeans on, hands trembling on her belt buckle. She wasn’t looking at him. Leo stared at her, feeling as though he’d just missed something very important. Win wasn’t the way she normally got when a crisis broke out, and Leo had seen enough of them to know. She wasn’t calm and issuing orders, she wasn’t strategizing with Marie, she wasn’t even particularly angry. Her hands were shaking, and she was trying not to cry.

Leo repeated, very slow, throat sore, “And then I’ll come and find you. Right?”

Win took off Leo’s T-shirt, put on her bra.

“Whitman?”

“Leo,” Win said.

“What the fuck,” Leo said. “We just—”

“I know.”

“Are you breaking up with me?” Leo said, putting on a funny voice.

Win didn’t laugh. She couldn’t look at him, her eyes darting about like she was trapped. Her voice cracked when she said, “Really, I’m really sorry.”

“Don’t,” Leo said. He wanted her to stop.

“You and me together is going to be toxic now,” Win whispered. “It’s going to be a big deal. This is going to be…this is the kind of shit people like me lose their careers over. Break up a marriage, all right, I’d suffer for a bit, but I built my whole career on an—an epic romance, and now they all know we’re lying about it.”

“Are you lying?” Leo demanded. “I’m not.”

“I’m not lying.” Win closed her eyes, then picked up her sweater. “But no matter what happens, it’s going to look cheap. It’s going to look like we’re pandering, and also like we’re fucking morons, because everyone knows that it’s not real.”

“We’ll show them it is,” Leo said. “Let’s go dancing right now. Let’s go make out on the London Eye. Let’s—”

“You could fuck me on the six o’clock news and they’d just say that I was desperate for press attention and a slut,” Win said.

Leo shook his head, taken aback. “Marie said that a lot of people guessed it was fake anyway. It was about the narrative.”

“The narrative’s fallen apart,” Win said. “And now it looks like I broke up a marriage just to feed my publicity machine.”

“There has to be a way,” he said, pulse rabbiting in his throat, his chest. Part of him wanted to grab Win by the hand and run. “We’ll give an interview. We’ll explain, we can tell the exact truth, the whole story.”

“Who’s going to believe that?” Win checked her phone. Her hands were still shaking. “It doesn’t matter what we say now. This is the story. It’s done.”

“We have too many mutual friends, we’re going to end up being seen together at some point—what about Charlie’s wedding?”

Win shrugged, narrow thin shoulders and a blank expression that she was holding together only with a lot of effort. “I won’t go,” she mumbled. “Shift’ll understand.”

“Look, I won’t go,” Leo said. “If you think it’s going to be too soon, she’s your best friend, of course I won’t go. But I don’t understand how this is going to work. You’re just going to, what, avoid me for the next year?”

Win’s face fell.

Leo said, “Ah, fuck.”

“Listen—”

“I’m such a fucking idiot,” Leo said. “I just got it. You mean we’re done forever now, huh?”

Win moved like she was going to come over to him, and then thought better of it. They stood staring at each other over the mess they’d made of the bed.

“No matter what happens,” Win said, “no matter what we do, or how we do it, they’re going to say it’s part of my plan to fake date you for attention. That’s the story for as long as we’re even near each other. Every time we touch, every time I smile at you, it’s me doing it for my career, because I’m a bitch, or ruthless, or a slut, or brainless. Probably all of the above. That’s the new story.”

“Win,” Leo said. He knew his voice was too rough. “This is fucked.”

“I know,” Win said. She looked cracked open, ruined like he’d never seen her. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re just writing us off.”

“My career is important,” Win said, the first light of anger dawning on her face. “Don’t you get that? Don’t you—”

“I actually know perfectly well how important it is,” Leo snapped. “I’ve been a pretty major part of it for the last seven years, I’ve taken your career pretty fucking seriously. Why won’t you take me seriously? This is important, too!”

“I know it is.”

“Pick me,” Leo said. He felt sick. He didn’t think he’d ever experienced a moment like this in his life before. Everything was slipping through his fingers, and he couldn’t do anything except beg. “Fuck. I haven’t—I haven’t asked you for anything in a long time. Pick me.”

“We fight all the time,” Win said.

“So what?” Leo said. “So what?”

“I’d have to be an idiot,” Win said, “to throw everything away on…We slept together last night. I don’t know how this is going to turn out—”

“I don’t, either,” Leo said. “Pick me.”

“You can’t ask me to choose you over my career.”

“Why not?” Leo said. “I know it’s important. I’ll help you however I can. But this is important, too. You and me.”

“I know that.” Win’s phone buzzed in her hand and she looked down at it, tired, almost absent.

This was what she’d meant, the whole time; this was the way the world worked differently for her. There was no carefully written apology, no cutesy who, me? smile that could fix it. For once, Leo couldn’t flex his position and have the media fall into line. God, the gibes about arranged marriages alone, Leo thought, and had to bite down a hysterical laugh. Win had been trying to tell him all along, and he, selfishly, only understood it now when it applied to him, now that he was, for the first time, going to suffer from the rules she’d been maneuvering herself around for years.

“Listen.” Leo folded his arms so his hands didn’t shake. He couldn’t let her walk out of the room. He knew, from the resolute set of her exhausted, sad face, that if she left, she wouldn’t come back. “I know I’ve been an asshole. I didn’t understand and I didn’t listen to you, I’ve been acting like you live in the same world as me and you don’t. I get it now. I’m really sorry. But I can’t, I can’t lose you.”

“Leo,” Win said, her face shocked, blown open. “I’m not doing this to punish you.”

“So stay. It’ll be bad, but we’ll manage it. It’ll be okay. We can move to some shithole in the Midlands and you can act in community theater—” Win laughed, watery, and Leo went on, “—and introduce your mum to my mums and—and have roast dinner at the pub, and we’ll be so boring everyone will stop paying attention to us.”

“I love my job,” Win said, “and you and me have never made it work. Not once.”

“We’ve never tried,” Leo said.

“Maybe this will be easier for you,” Win said, voice wavering. “You won’t have all my shit dragging you down, or me yelling at you about how you don’t understand.”

Leo wanted to laugh and couldn’t. “That sounds awful.”

“It’s good for you,” Win said. “You can do what you want now.”

“Fuck you,” Leo said. “I only want one thing.”

Win looked at him. She looked like someone going into battle for the last of several frays, weary and travel-stained. Her hair was messy from his hands in it. When she took a step toward him, Leo jerked backward. He didn’t want her to touch him like this, didn’t want to watch her say goodbye. He turned around, shoulders tight, hot misery building in his chest like a howl, and he didn’t see her leave, though he heard the door close behind her.