The View Was Exhausting by Mikaella Clements
Chapter Twenty-One
Win didn’t really sleep. She exhausted herself with her crying jag, passing out almost immediately afterward with her face wet and her chest still pulsating with anger, but she woke up at midnight feeling cold, and cruel, and alone. She sent Marie a short message explaining that Leo would be at the wedding. She spent some time composing awful, cutting speeches about all the things Shift did that annoyed her: never being able to remember time zones and calling Win in the middle of the night, going absolutely insane every album cycle and acting as though nobody else had ever gotten a lukewarm review, leaving an unbelievable mess in her wake whenever she visited Win. When they were kids, Win constantly had to shake her out of daydreams, and she still had a tendency to zone out in the middle of conversations.
The hour after that, Win stared at the ceiling thinking numbly that none of those things were as bad as what Shift had thrown at Win. That Win was selfish. That Win was cold.
Leo had edged uncomfortably close to those accusations, too, more than a few times. Win couldn’t bring herself to think about their fight that morning before she’d left. It hadn’t been enough of a fight. It had felt like a breakup, like she was being torn apart, like Leo was sinking out of her reach.
But she thought about Saint-Tropez, when she’d found out about Lila. Both at the time and afterward she’d been too angry and hurt about the secret marriage to pay much attention to the content of what he’d said. Now she couldn’t stop thinking about the astounded fury dawning on his face. Not everyone lives their life based on what it’s going to look like on the fucking internet! Shift had accused her of that, too. Like the glittering machinery of Win’s life was something she was hiding behind, instead of something she was living inside.
Win had to live her life like that because it did end up on the internet, or in magazines, or in the supercilious mouths of talk show hosts. She wasn’t being arrogant or self-obsessed; she was being realistic. Win couldn’t just hope that people would see her best side. She had to carefully curate her best side so that they couldn’t miss it. If she wanted producers to cast her, it wasn’t enough just to read the lines well. Win had to make herself impossible to dismiss. She had to make herself so shiny and smooth that all the old excuses—too demanding, too intense, too brown—couldn’t stick.
That’s not cold, she thought. It’s clever. Actually, she supposed, it was both.
She tossed around in Shift’s spare bed. Other memories came back without invitation. That night in London felt as though it was burned into her brain, or worse than that, her muscle memory, her skin.
If she closed her eyes, she could feel his hands on her, his mouth, the easy way he shifted her about until her limbs felt hot and malleable, like he could just mold her into the shapes he wanted. She’d been avoiding looking at the marks on her hips, her décolletage. In the dark, she pressed her thumb against the bruised remainder of his kisses and hissed. It was such a sharp, perfect little sting; it made warmth pool in her stomach. It made her want to cry.
She felt strangled with the truth of it. She loved him. She wanted him with all the fierce desperation and possessiveness of a child. She wanted to sit in a corner and yell his name and refuse to do anything until he was brought to her.
Leaving him felt like the hardest thing she’d ever done, but she still felt sure that it was easier than the overwhelming nightmare that her life would turn into if she stayed. Her career would probably be over. If it wasn’t, it would have to be clawed back bit by bit, three steps back for every step forward. She would have to explain herself or, worse, have to stay silent in the face of a jeering audience, with no opportunity to manage her image. Prior to this her critics had viewed her as a controlling and high-strung talent, the Indian girl who had to have things her way. Now they could call her the scam artist who had snagged the most susceptible man she could find and tricked or coerced him into a life sentence of a relationship. Pritha would be drawn further in as either another of Win’s victims or a potential coconspirator, the mother-in-law slash jailer, trapping Leo for all those months in her hideaway mansion on the coast.
Things were bad now, but she wasn’t the first public figure to be wrapped up in a scandal of their own making. She had faith in Marie; she had faith in her image and her work. If she turned her back on everything, if she apologized, she could still recover. There was no precedent for staying with Leo, though. Nobody had ever been caught so definitively in a lie and then just continued as if it hadn’t happened. Nobody ever said, I don’t care what you know about us. And there was no guarantee, after all, that she and Leo would last, that they wouldn’t have one of their explosive fights, that they wouldn’t find they weren’t made for a real relationship after all. Pritha’s house was a bubble and Win had been frantic, pacing like a caged animal, pushed into telling Leo things she wouldn’t have tried to explain before. Alone with her, he had stopped searching for the perfect thing to say, given up on his crusade to fix her life, and offered something more like sanctuary. But eventually things had to go back to normal. Normal meant scrutiny, pressure, wave after wave of outsiders beating against their door.
Even imagining it made her heart speed up, her breath stuttering, panic crawling over her skin. It would have been the most frightening, most dangerous thing she had ever done. And it didn’t matter now; it was gone with that clouded dawn in London when she could have made a different decision. She had chosen her career, not Leo. She’d seen the fury and disbelief on his face, the way he’d turned away from her with a violent shrug of his shoulders, as though he was giving her up for good, as though he’d held out some hope that there was something true left in her and been disappointed. He’d laughed when she left the room. She’d heard it echoing behind her as she set off down the hallway, screwing her face up so she would be calm when she faced the photographers. His laughter had sounded low and rough and unsurprised.
At five in the morning she gave up on the possibility of sleep. She padded out to the kitchen and stopped in the doorway. There was a pool of yellow light, and Shift was sitting in it, a cup of green tea in her palms, her face small and pale like a little girl’s, her gaze resting on the dark shapes of trees out the window. It was snowing outside.
Win didn’t think she made a noise, but Shift looked over anyway. Her face changed in a way that Win couldn’t completely track, some realignment of feeling or resolve.
“Can’t sleep?” Shift said, before Win could say anything.
Win shrugged. She felt stupid and embarrassed. She felt as though she’d been fighting with everyone for months. She was exhausted.
“Thought I might have a cup of tea,” Win said, and put the kettle on. The kitchen was dim and quiet, but she noticed, with a dull flush of embarrassment, that Shift had taken down the photo of Win and Leo from the fridge.
“Yeah.” Shift set aside her cup and stood up. “Look, I—I was really angry and—”
“Shift,” Win said, voice small. Shift bolted across the kitchen and they clutched each other, Shift’s face shoved up against Win’s collarbone.
“You’re too fucking tall,” Shift said.
Win said, with all the fervor of a night spent staring down her ghosts, “I’m really, really sorry—”
“I’m sorry! I completely overstepped the line—”
“I was being such a bad friend but I’m going to do better—”
“Oh my god, you’re the best friend in the world, I’m such an idiot I shouldn’t be allowed to speak,” Shift said.
“This is why we’re bad at fighting,” Win said. “We go right back to being sixteen.”
“I know,” Shift said. She smiled, a little watery, and tapped Win on the nose. “It’s how I know you’re still in there.”
Win flinched, and Shift began to apologize again, but Win shook her head.
“Look,” she said, “I—I don’t keep you around to prove anything—”
“I was angry—”
“No, but I need you to know,” Win said, because her throat was still tight with misery, and because the idea that Shift didn’t know was terrifying. “You knew me before everything happened. Sometimes it feels like you’re the only person who actually does know me, who doesn’t fall for…” She flapped her hand uselessly at herself. “But you’re right. I think…my work takes up everything in my head sometimes.”
“It’s like it’s been rewired,” Shift said. “I know why it had to be. I wish— You can be hurtful, Win.” Win felt her mouth twist down. Shift reached out and caught her forearm. “But listen, you’re right. I know you. If you think I didn’t know you could be a massive bitch before all of this, you’re kidding yourself.”
Win laughed, and sniffled so that she didn’t actually start crying again.
“If it was just about you being mean now and then, okay, I can yell at you,” Shift said. “But I worry that you’re hurting yourself.”
“I…” Win shook her head, dazed. Her eyes were blurry from the lack of sleep; the light kept fracturing in them.
“It’s okay,” Shift said. “I’ve got you. Everything will be okay.”
Win couldn’t talk about it, couldn’t think about it. She said, “I shouldn’t have said that. The ultimatum. That wasn’t fair. Of course the profiler should come. And of course—of course he can, too, if that’s what Charlie wants. I’ll just stay out of his way.”
“Win.” Shift pulled back so they could see each other’s faces.
Win looked at Shift’s warm, steady gaze, the kindness written into her, and said, in a rush, “What if I made a mistake?”
Shift paused. “Mistakes can be fixed.”
“God, sorry. I was meant to be apologizing, not spiraling.”
“But if you want to—”
“No.” Win shook her head. Her throat felt like it was closing up; she spoke before it could. “No, really, let’s not talk about it.”
Shift squeezed Win’s hand. “I know it’s not easy. I’m sorry. But I’ll be there. It’s just going to be shit, and we’re going to deal with it.”
Win smiled. She felt horribly guilty. “You don’t have to deal with it. You just have to get married and then get drunk. Those are your two jobs.”
Shift held up three fingers, counting off her own list. “Get married, get drunk, keep Leo away from you. It’ll be fun.”
Win put her hand in a loose fist against her mouth. Something hot was rising in her. She hoped it was vomit; that would be better than the weird howl she kept tamping down on, something lost and desperate like a desert wind trapped in her throat.
“I don’t think you’ll have to keep him away from me.” She saw Leo’s face again in that pale dawn, the disgust and exhaustion rising, his sharp jawline as he turned away. “I think he’s had enough.”
“Well, maybe that’s good, too,” Shift said. “You couldn’t keep this going forever.”
“I know,” Win agreed, because it was true. “Right, I know, except I think...” She paused, unwilling to say what she was thinking. Shift stayed perfectly still against her. “I think maybe I need him.”
“Oh, come on,” Shift said, gripping Win’s shoulder and shaking her a bit. “I’m pretty sure your career is built on a lot more than one relationship.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Win said.
It wouldn’t get light outside for hours. They both watched the snow slowly covering the too-long grass. Shift was quiet for a long time.