RPF: now in technicolor
now in technicolor diane kruger; ensemble-esque, r.
they never warn you about friends in the business. they say that these are just different rules. 3,025 words.
notes: for falseeeyelashes. ♥ this took an unexpected turn, although it very well be the fault of yesterday’s wine and company. but that’s a separate story? *laughs* anyways, i feel like i've unintentionally set myself up for an entire universe so we'll see what crazy thing might happen next. there's also a mix to the story: berlin. now to the gym, yo. enjoy!
-
There are things that you will never know:
1. Diane loves Rose and Rose loves Diane. They have known each other longer than most; it’s a rite of passage, one of them will say, when friends are really friends and you get to say things like, “she’ll be there, I know it -” and actually get to mean it. This does not change.
2. There was Michael before Josh, long before Guillaume, in an odd sort of way. You can ask them, but neither of them will remember properly. Maybe it was Berlin, maybe it was Paris - there’s a story, of course, but most stories are small pieces of a lie. They were only kids. This is just unfortunate.
3. Being actors doesn't mean you can keep a secret. This is just a fact of life.
Neither of them tells this right.
Rose calls Diane just as she is walking to her apartment.
“I’m pregnant,” she says sharply, and the first thing Diane thinks of is a party, the next is Italy and how she should really learn how to stay longer than she needs to.
But her apartment is dark, illuminated by the interest of a few shadows. She kicks her suitcases to the corner by the door before she answers.
“What are you going to do?” she asks.
Rose laughs. Diane sighs. Both sounds are heavy with some form of hysteria. It’s in her best interest to be reasonable.
“I mean,” she tries again, “do you want me to come over? I’ll take a cab.” She pauses to and drops her keys. They hit the table hard. “Have you made an appointment with a doctor? I can see if I can pull some recommendations.”
“No.”
There is a rustle of clothing. The sound is a whisper. She imagines Rose as she straightens. Rose gets to work in the city. Rose barely leaves the city unless she has to. She wonders if the other woman is alone.
Diane drops her keys and tries not to think about the problem of other people. She is soft with concern. Her hand presses against the back of her neck and rubs slowly, as she tries to manage a response.
“No,” Rose says first. “I don’t know. I don’t even know if the tests I took - fuck, I don’t know if I want this baby.”
Diane is quiet.
“Is it Brendan’s?”
Michael remembers when they were younger.
“It’s a bit odd,” he tells her nervously, “as I reckon I forget about it more than I should, knowing you more now than then - m’awful at making sense.”
Diane forces a smile. They are having lunch. He is in New York, has been longer than she has since she’s been back. There are shadows under his eye and he’s talking about them not work; she can’t help but wonder, which makes this stranger than it needs to be.
“Can I ask you something?” she says then, and leans into the table. She puts her cigarette out in her water glass. The ice is melted. They have been here longer than they need to be as well.
“Sure.”
Her mouth tightens and then she sighs. She looks off to the side to watch the people pass their table. They are outside today and with sunny skies, the weather is fading into mid-afternoon. She is wearing sunglasses too big for her face and catches the light from one of the parked cars.
“Did you think we’d be here, now?” she asks.
He looks away when she turns to watch him. He slides his sunglasses on and reaches for his beer. He brings it to his mouth and swallows, her eyes following the long arch of his neck.
“I reckon don’t understand,” he says. “What you’re asking,” he clarifies.
She’s quiet, thinking. She reaches for her purse and pulls out a pack of cigarettes. Her fingers wrap around the last one and slide it into her mouth. Her phone is at the bottom of her purse. At some point she has to call Josh back. She reaches for her lighter too.
She looks at him then.
“Oh,” he says quietly.
Diane nods and lights her cigarette. “Clarification,” she says.
“It’s not Brendan’s,” Rose says.
Diane takes her coat off as she moves to the kitchen. She reaches for the light but decides not to turn it on.
The coat drops against a chair. “Will you tell him?” she asks gently, and then swallows to breath in. There is a small pile of mail on the counter and empty bottle of wine. There is a note too on the refrigerator, under a picture of her and Josh and their summer in Australia.
“I have to work tomorrow. I have to be on set all day. I’m fucking losing it and I don’t know - I don’t know. I should know but I don’t. I don’t.”
“Take a deep breath,” Diane tells her.
“Fuck off,” Rose says. It’s half-hearted now.
She ignores her and moves to the refrigerator. Her fingers curl around the picture and she gently tugs it away. She stares at Josh and his smile, her own smile flashed in kind.
“Do you want me to come over?”
Rose sighs.
4. It was really an accident, Diane and Michael; Michael at a party that he wasn’t supposed to be in. She was a model then, young and with wide-eyes as he passed her a cigarette and said, “Glad to meet you.”
“There was a dinner,” he says finally, and slides his fingers under his sunglasses to rub his eyes. “I went because I was in the city and figured that I should start making nice, I suppose.”
“You suppose,” Diane echoes.
They pause. Their waiter enters their small corner. Diane waves him away with a tight smile, and points to Michael’s beer with two fingers and a motion to the two of them. She might as well.
“Do you remember,” he asks then, “when we first met?”
“Yes,” she says.
He leans forward then. The gesture is too quick but she meets him halfway and he reaches for her, sliding his fingers along the line of her jaw. She doesn’t flinch but merely watches him curiously.
“I have a secret,” he says.
“We all do. We wouldn’t be good at what we do for a living if we didn’t have secrets, or we weren’t some kind of liar - I just want you to be honest with me. I think I’ve at least earned that.”
He stares at her. Her throat is dry.
A few months before Rose is laughing.
The sound is odd and uncanny. It should seem familiar but it’s really been that long, or a really long time - the two are different, sometimes.
She is sitting with Diane in the kitchen. There is an open bottle of wine between them. This is the familiar part.
“Again?” she asks, and then rolls her eyes, “You mean, you’re actually in love with this guy - what were you, sixteen?”
“It’s not funny,” she mutters.
There’s an odd smile on her face as well. Diane lets her fingers circle the mouth of her glass. She is studying a small pile of mail by her elbow. She leaves for Los Angeles soon.
“He’s handsome,” Rose says.
It’s easy here. Outside they are two different people, associated by certain credits and decisions. She doesn’t want to talk about Michael or being a basterd, whatever that means these days.
But the truth is somewhere between there, and she really doesn’t want to talk about Michael with Rose; there is this extension of privacy and property, each interchangeable with an unexpected face.
“I was sixteen,” she says, and then decides to be careful, “and the details are a little fuzzy. He was there. I was there. It’s kind of a coincidence.”
Rose does smile with her teeth.
5. She likes to tell herself that she let him kiss her in Cannes, back when there was a party for everything and a drink for everything else.
6. When he kisses her again, in Los Angeles, in alley where they were supposed to be sharing cigarettes, he uses his teeth and she moans, fisting a hand through his hair as he presses her against the wall and slides his hand under her dress because they are not sixteen anymore, seventeen or eighteen for him, and her memories are completely gone as she’s wet and hot and slick and he tells her, “fucking hell, I want you,” as he slides his mouth along her throat and her fingers twist hard in his hair.
7. Rose tells her that they’re funny. Rose has Matthew. Rose has Timothy. Rose has a boyfriend who is a writer in the business, or a producer, or a director even. Rose, Diane tells her, would have made a better Helen.
Josh calls in the cab.
“New York’s gonna have to be next week, babe,” he says. “We’re doing re-shoots because of some crazy location that we’re trying to get and it’s a mess and a headache and I’m sorry because I know we were supposed to go away then, just us and I feel -”
Her eyes close.
“It’s okay,” she says.
8. Rose knows Matthew because of Diane. Michael knows Matthew because of Diane. Matthew tells a friend once, “I get a bit bored every once in awhile, I suppose it comes hand in hand with trying to be a proper dad.” Matthew throws a party.
Rose opens the door. Her eyes are smeared with bits of eye powder and mascara. Her lids are blue and black.
“It happened once,” she says.
The waiter forgets her beer. Michael pushes his forward. The bottle scrapes against the table, and she picks it up as he starts to hand it to her. Their fingers brush but neither of them shifts back.
“It happened twice,” he says.
There is a bottle of wine on the counter.
Rose pours herself a glass of water. Diane sits on the edge of the couch. She does not take her jacket off as she drops her bag at her feet.
“It’s not Brendan’s,” she says quietly.
“No,” Rose says. “It’s not Brendan’s.”
She doesn’t look at the other woman. Diane thinks that this is some weird play on how everything is ultimately connected. It could be New York. It could be Los Angeles or London, Sundance or even Toronto and it wouldn’t matter; there is a state and a way to play the state, it’s how you service the business.
“I don’t want to know.”
She looks at her hands. They open and close. Her fingers flex in the air. There is a cut on her palm from Italy, from holding a railing the wrong way or hitting her hand on her way out to shake too many.
She thinks she wants to leave the city. Diane loves the city.
“Because if I know,” she says and then smiles at Rose. It’s a heavy smile. She steals it from Rose. “If I know,” she repeats, “I don’t think that I could really sit here and be what you need me to be and be what he needs me to be - because he’s going to need me to be something, regardless if it’s his or not his or you’re not going to tell him or I’m going to have to tell him because you’re going to crack.”
She pauses and looks around the apartment.
“Is it Matthew’s?” she asks, and it’s just to be sure. The colors of the apartment are shy and coarse, hard lines that walk into bookcases and lamps. It’s the most like Rose.
Rose sits on the coffee table in front of her.
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t know,” she repeats.
Michael sighs. His mouth splits into a narrow smile and then he barks a laugh, it’s hard and soft. He’s confused and pulls his sunglasses off, tossing them to the side. They hit the table, near her beer.
“I shouldn’t be drinking,” she adds.
Her head is heavy and she reaches for her water. There is ash swimming over pieces of ice, tiny waves in her water. The water is still flat.
He sighs again. “You’re right, love,” he says, and does say you’ve earned it because it makes there relationship nothing more than layers of a film set. Sometimes she thinks she’d rather be in that bar.
She runs her fingers against his jaw, over the line that he touched and watched and waited for her to react to. She doesn’t know what to say, say to him other than what he needs to hear. She doesn’t know how to react to this possibility. There is Josh in Vancouver. There should be Josh in Vancouver, a reminder if anything else.
“I was thinkin’ of you,” he says too.
“Fuck you,” she murmurs.
He takes her hand, twisting his fingers over her palm. She wants to pull back but she doesn’t.
“It’s not fair, I know. It’s the sort of thing that I’m not particularly proud of either, and we’ve had this mess, as it is more than mess, since - well, I don’t know. It’s always been here.”
“You missed me?”
It’s fucked up, she wants to say, and she wants to scream at Rose, and then at Matthew and then at Josh. She wants to go back to business. She wants to work. She wants to hide the most too.
“I reckon we’re still those kids.”
Her gaze meets his sharply. Her eyes are wide, large but covered by her sunglasses. She swallows first. She thinks he’s going to kiss her next.
“You wish,” she whispers.
She forces herself to squint.
9. Michael tells Rose about Diane, and in the most impossible way, as their legs are tangled mid-morning and they are half-listening to Matthew, outside their door and his lady friend from the night before. He says, “I love her,” and means it, and Rose is wise to understanding this little leap as she’s been in love and loved the ones that she cannot have. But it’s Michael that continues, “I love her and she’s going to hate me - it’s bit ironic, in the end.”
10. Matthew buys Rose a pregnancy test. He doesn’t stay. He won’t tell Diane. Rose won’t ask him to either.
The room is painted a pale green. Diane kicks her heels off into the carpet and joins Rose and her water on the bed, her fingers wrapped around a glass of wine. They sit in silence. Rose has her knees tucked into her chest and Diane, older now, curls her legs primly to the side.
Neither wants to talk first or should. Diane studies the room. The curtains to the window or the balcony, she cannot remember which is which. Instead she presses her lip over the rim of the glass and takes a small sip.
“I need you,” Rose says.
“I know,” Diane replies. She rests her wine glass over her knee. “I’ll be here,” she says too. “I’ll always be here.”
Her mouth contorts into a smile. Her eyes close and she lets her back press against headboard. Rose shifts closer.
“I have to work tomorrow.”
“The show?”
“The show,” the other woman says. “I have scenes with Glenn and then Tim and then Glenn again - it’s going to be one of those days.”
“We’re going to be okay.”
Rose doesn’t hear her. “And I read one of those awful articles again,” she murmurs, “and it hurt, I fancy myself as shy but I really don’t know how to get beyond that. God, it makes my head spin.”
Diane slides an arm around her shoulders. Her ears are ringing. Rose tucks herself into the crook of her arm and sighs as they both stare ahead.
“It’s not supposed to be simple,” Diane says.
11. Rose has Michael’s number in her phone. After she takes the first pregnancy test, she deletes it. She stares at Matthew’s next. She could tell a small lie. Rose will hope.
Michael walks her home.
It’s a few blocks. When they’re closer to her apartment, he takes her hand.
Diane remembers she’s missed three of Josh’s calls.
“I remember what you told me.”
He frowns. “You do?”
She nods. “We sat on that balcony and I had a show the next night, and you wouldn’t tell me why you were in Paris. I thought it was funny. You said something about being worried about your parents.”
He does laugh. The sound seems sad. Her building is in the distance, taller and waiting, a doorman watching the traffic from the side. She leans closer to Michael, promising her habit.
“I wanted to kiss you,” he tells her then.
12. Diane doesn’t know that Rose knows.
13. “And would it matter,” Matthew asks as he pauses, and lights a cigarette as Rose slides into her blouse. Rose watches him in the mirror, her eyes narrowed as he draws a hand over his cock. He grins, “No, I suppose not - you like casting the first stone, love, but you’re ready to be self-righteous when it’s you.”
14. The first time Michael says fraulein, it’s strong enough to be in perfect German. It’s the first time in years Diane smiles at him. The others are just too surprised.
15. In the coming year, Josh will know how to leave Diane.
The party is loud. Rose turns to Diane and takes her hand. They laugh because they’re younger here. Rose takes a long sip from the bottle of champagne and spins with a delighted laugh.
“Holly-wood!” she laughs again, and then takes Diane into a spin. They stumble forward, and Rose kisses the inside of her jaw letting Diane press them against a wall.
“This is really happening.”
It’s Diane and then there are fireworks off in the distance, downstairs and with a row of cheers on the grass by the pool. This is someone’s house.
It’s Rose that says it first though.
“It’s not all that bad.”
they never warn you about friends in the business. they say that these are just different rules. 3,025 words.
notes: for falseeeyelashes. ♥ this took an unexpected turn, although it very well be the fault of yesterday’s wine and company. but that’s a separate story? *laughs* anyways, i feel like i've unintentionally set myself up for an entire universe so we'll see what crazy thing might happen next. there's also a mix to the story: berlin. now to the gym, yo. enjoy!
-
There are things that you will never know:
1. Diane loves Rose and Rose loves Diane. They have known each other longer than most; it’s a rite of passage, one of them will say, when friends are really friends and you get to say things like, “she’ll be there, I know it -” and actually get to mean it. This does not change.
2. There was Michael before Josh, long before Guillaume, in an odd sort of way. You can ask them, but neither of them will remember properly. Maybe it was Berlin, maybe it was Paris - there’s a story, of course, but most stories are small pieces of a lie. They were only kids. This is just unfortunate.
3. Being actors doesn't mean you can keep a secret. This is just a fact of life.
Neither of them tells this right.
Rose calls Diane just as she is walking to her apartment.
“I’m pregnant,” she says sharply, and the first thing Diane thinks of is a party, the next is Italy and how she should really learn how to stay longer than she needs to.
But her apartment is dark, illuminated by the interest of a few shadows. She kicks her suitcases to the corner by the door before she answers.
“What are you going to do?” she asks.
Rose laughs. Diane sighs. Both sounds are heavy with some form of hysteria. It’s in her best interest to be reasonable.
“I mean,” she tries again, “do you want me to come over? I’ll take a cab.” She pauses to and drops her keys. They hit the table hard. “Have you made an appointment with a doctor? I can see if I can pull some recommendations.”
“No.”
There is a rustle of clothing. The sound is a whisper. She imagines Rose as she straightens. Rose gets to work in the city. Rose barely leaves the city unless she has to. She wonders if the other woman is alone.
Diane drops her keys and tries not to think about the problem of other people. She is soft with concern. Her hand presses against the back of her neck and rubs slowly, as she tries to manage a response.
“No,” Rose says first. “I don’t know. I don’t even know if the tests I took - fuck, I don’t know if I want this baby.”
Diane is quiet.
“Is it Brendan’s?”
Michael remembers when they were younger.
“It’s a bit odd,” he tells her nervously, “as I reckon I forget about it more than I should, knowing you more now than then - m’awful at making sense.”
Diane forces a smile. They are having lunch. He is in New York, has been longer than she has since she’s been back. There are shadows under his eye and he’s talking about them not work; she can’t help but wonder, which makes this stranger than it needs to be.
“Can I ask you something?” she says then, and leans into the table. She puts her cigarette out in her water glass. The ice is melted. They have been here longer than they need to be as well.
“Sure.”
Her mouth tightens and then she sighs. She looks off to the side to watch the people pass their table. They are outside today and with sunny skies, the weather is fading into mid-afternoon. She is wearing sunglasses too big for her face and catches the light from one of the parked cars.
“Did you think we’d be here, now?” she asks.
He looks away when she turns to watch him. He slides his sunglasses on and reaches for his beer. He brings it to his mouth and swallows, her eyes following the long arch of his neck.
“I reckon don’t understand,” he says. “What you’re asking,” he clarifies.
She’s quiet, thinking. She reaches for her purse and pulls out a pack of cigarettes. Her fingers wrap around the last one and slide it into her mouth. Her phone is at the bottom of her purse. At some point she has to call Josh back. She reaches for her lighter too.
She looks at him then.
“Oh,” he says quietly.
Diane nods and lights her cigarette. “Clarification,” she says.
“It’s not Brendan’s,” Rose says.
Diane takes her coat off as she moves to the kitchen. She reaches for the light but decides not to turn it on.
The coat drops against a chair. “Will you tell him?” she asks gently, and then swallows to breath in. There is a small pile of mail on the counter and empty bottle of wine. There is a note too on the refrigerator, under a picture of her and Josh and their summer in Australia.
“I have to work tomorrow. I have to be on set all day. I’m fucking losing it and I don’t know - I don’t know. I should know but I don’t. I don’t.”
“Take a deep breath,” Diane tells her.
“Fuck off,” Rose says. It’s half-hearted now.
She ignores her and moves to the refrigerator. Her fingers curl around the picture and she gently tugs it away. She stares at Josh and his smile, her own smile flashed in kind.
“Do you want me to come over?”
Rose sighs.
4. It was really an accident, Diane and Michael; Michael at a party that he wasn’t supposed to be in. She was a model then, young and with wide-eyes as he passed her a cigarette and said, “Glad to meet you.”
“There was a dinner,” he says finally, and slides his fingers under his sunglasses to rub his eyes. “I went because I was in the city and figured that I should start making nice, I suppose.”
“You suppose,” Diane echoes.
They pause. Their waiter enters their small corner. Diane waves him away with a tight smile, and points to Michael’s beer with two fingers and a motion to the two of them. She might as well.
“Do you remember,” he asks then, “when we first met?”
“Yes,” she says.
He leans forward then. The gesture is too quick but she meets him halfway and he reaches for her, sliding his fingers along the line of her jaw. She doesn’t flinch but merely watches him curiously.
“I have a secret,” he says.
“We all do. We wouldn’t be good at what we do for a living if we didn’t have secrets, or we weren’t some kind of liar - I just want you to be honest with me. I think I’ve at least earned that.”
He stares at her. Her throat is dry.
A few months before Rose is laughing.
The sound is odd and uncanny. It should seem familiar but it’s really been that long, or a really long time - the two are different, sometimes.
She is sitting with Diane in the kitchen. There is an open bottle of wine between them. This is the familiar part.
“Again?” she asks, and then rolls her eyes, “You mean, you’re actually in love with this guy - what were you, sixteen?”
“It’s not funny,” she mutters.
There’s an odd smile on her face as well. Diane lets her fingers circle the mouth of her glass. She is studying a small pile of mail by her elbow. She leaves for Los Angeles soon.
“He’s handsome,” Rose says.
It’s easy here. Outside they are two different people, associated by certain credits and decisions. She doesn’t want to talk about Michael or being a basterd, whatever that means these days.
But the truth is somewhere between there, and she really doesn’t want to talk about Michael with Rose; there is this extension of privacy and property, each interchangeable with an unexpected face.
“I was sixteen,” she says, and then decides to be careful, “and the details are a little fuzzy. He was there. I was there. It’s kind of a coincidence.”
Rose does smile with her teeth.
5. She likes to tell herself that she let him kiss her in Cannes, back when there was a party for everything and a drink for everything else.
6. When he kisses her again, in Los Angeles, in alley where they were supposed to be sharing cigarettes, he uses his teeth and she moans, fisting a hand through his hair as he presses her against the wall and slides his hand under her dress because they are not sixteen anymore, seventeen or eighteen for him, and her memories are completely gone as she’s wet and hot and slick and he tells her, “fucking hell, I want you,” as he slides his mouth along her throat and her fingers twist hard in his hair.
7. Rose tells her that they’re funny. Rose has Matthew. Rose has Timothy. Rose has a boyfriend who is a writer in the business, or a producer, or a director even. Rose, Diane tells her, would have made a better Helen.
Josh calls in the cab.
“New York’s gonna have to be next week, babe,” he says. “We’re doing re-shoots because of some crazy location that we’re trying to get and it’s a mess and a headache and I’m sorry because I know we were supposed to go away then, just us and I feel -”
Her eyes close.
“It’s okay,” she says.
8. Rose knows Matthew because of Diane. Michael knows Matthew because of Diane. Matthew tells a friend once, “I get a bit bored every once in awhile, I suppose it comes hand in hand with trying to be a proper dad.” Matthew throws a party.
Rose opens the door. Her eyes are smeared with bits of eye powder and mascara. Her lids are blue and black.
“It happened once,” she says.
The waiter forgets her beer. Michael pushes his forward. The bottle scrapes against the table, and she picks it up as he starts to hand it to her. Their fingers brush but neither of them shifts back.
“It happened twice,” he says.
There is a bottle of wine on the counter.
Rose pours herself a glass of water. Diane sits on the edge of the couch. She does not take her jacket off as she drops her bag at her feet.
“It’s not Brendan’s,” she says quietly.
“No,” Rose says. “It’s not Brendan’s.”
She doesn’t look at the other woman. Diane thinks that this is some weird play on how everything is ultimately connected. It could be New York. It could be Los Angeles or London, Sundance or even Toronto and it wouldn’t matter; there is a state and a way to play the state, it’s how you service the business.
“I don’t want to know.”
She looks at her hands. They open and close. Her fingers flex in the air. There is a cut on her palm from Italy, from holding a railing the wrong way or hitting her hand on her way out to shake too many.
She thinks she wants to leave the city. Diane loves the city.
“Because if I know,” she says and then smiles at Rose. It’s a heavy smile. She steals it from Rose. “If I know,” she repeats, “I don’t think that I could really sit here and be what you need me to be and be what he needs me to be - because he’s going to need me to be something, regardless if it’s his or not his or you’re not going to tell him or I’m going to have to tell him because you’re going to crack.”
She pauses and looks around the apartment.
“Is it Matthew’s?” she asks, and it’s just to be sure. The colors of the apartment are shy and coarse, hard lines that walk into bookcases and lamps. It’s the most like Rose.
Rose sits on the coffee table in front of her.
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t know,” she repeats.
Michael sighs. His mouth splits into a narrow smile and then he barks a laugh, it’s hard and soft. He’s confused and pulls his sunglasses off, tossing them to the side. They hit the table, near her beer.
“I shouldn’t be drinking,” she adds.
Her head is heavy and she reaches for her water. There is ash swimming over pieces of ice, tiny waves in her water. The water is still flat.
He sighs again. “You’re right, love,” he says, and does say you’ve earned it because it makes there relationship nothing more than layers of a film set. Sometimes she thinks she’d rather be in that bar.
She runs her fingers against his jaw, over the line that he touched and watched and waited for her to react to. She doesn’t know what to say, say to him other than what he needs to hear. She doesn’t know how to react to this possibility. There is Josh in Vancouver. There should be Josh in Vancouver, a reminder if anything else.
“I was thinkin’ of you,” he says too.
“Fuck you,” she murmurs.
He takes her hand, twisting his fingers over her palm. She wants to pull back but she doesn’t.
“It’s not fair, I know. It’s the sort of thing that I’m not particularly proud of either, and we’ve had this mess, as it is more than mess, since - well, I don’t know. It’s always been here.”
“You missed me?”
It’s fucked up, she wants to say, and she wants to scream at Rose, and then at Matthew and then at Josh. She wants to go back to business. She wants to work. She wants to hide the most too.
“I reckon we’re still those kids.”
Her gaze meets his sharply. Her eyes are wide, large but covered by her sunglasses. She swallows first. She thinks he’s going to kiss her next.
“You wish,” she whispers.
She forces herself to squint.
9. Michael tells Rose about Diane, and in the most impossible way, as their legs are tangled mid-morning and they are half-listening to Matthew, outside their door and his lady friend from the night before. He says, “I love her,” and means it, and Rose is wise to understanding this little leap as she’s been in love and loved the ones that she cannot have. But it’s Michael that continues, “I love her and she’s going to hate me - it’s bit ironic, in the end.”
10. Matthew buys Rose a pregnancy test. He doesn’t stay. He won’t tell Diane. Rose won’t ask him to either.
The room is painted a pale green. Diane kicks her heels off into the carpet and joins Rose and her water on the bed, her fingers wrapped around a glass of wine. They sit in silence. Rose has her knees tucked into her chest and Diane, older now, curls her legs primly to the side.
Neither wants to talk first or should. Diane studies the room. The curtains to the window or the balcony, she cannot remember which is which. Instead she presses her lip over the rim of the glass and takes a small sip.
“I need you,” Rose says.
“I know,” Diane replies. She rests her wine glass over her knee. “I’ll be here,” she says too. “I’ll always be here.”
Her mouth contorts into a smile. Her eyes close and she lets her back press against headboard. Rose shifts closer.
“I have to work tomorrow.”
“The show?”
“The show,” the other woman says. “I have scenes with Glenn and then Tim and then Glenn again - it’s going to be one of those days.”
“We’re going to be okay.”
Rose doesn’t hear her. “And I read one of those awful articles again,” she murmurs, “and it hurt, I fancy myself as shy but I really don’t know how to get beyond that. God, it makes my head spin.”
Diane slides an arm around her shoulders. Her ears are ringing. Rose tucks herself into the crook of her arm and sighs as they both stare ahead.
“It’s not supposed to be simple,” Diane says.
11. Rose has Michael’s number in her phone. After she takes the first pregnancy test, she deletes it. She stares at Matthew’s next. She could tell a small lie. Rose will hope.
Michael walks her home.
It’s a few blocks. When they’re closer to her apartment, he takes her hand.
Diane remembers she’s missed three of Josh’s calls.
“I remember what you told me.”
He frowns. “You do?”
She nods. “We sat on that balcony and I had a show the next night, and you wouldn’t tell me why you were in Paris. I thought it was funny. You said something about being worried about your parents.”
He does laugh. The sound seems sad. Her building is in the distance, taller and waiting, a doorman watching the traffic from the side. She leans closer to Michael, promising her habit.
“I wanted to kiss you,” he tells her then.
12. Diane doesn’t know that Rose knows.
13. “And would it matter,” Matthew asks as he pauses, and lights a cigarette as Rose slides into her blouse. Rose watches him in the mirror, her eyes narrowed as he draws a hand over his cock. He grins, “No, I suppose not - you like casting the first stone, love, but you’re ready to be self-righteous when it’s you.”
14. The first time Michael says fraulein, it’s strong enough to be in perfect German. It’s the first time in years Diane smiles at him. The others are just too surprised.
15. In the coming year, Josh will know how to leave Diane.
The party is loud. Rose turns to Diane and takes her hand. They laugh because they’re younger here. Rose takes a long sip from the bottle of champagne and spins with a delighted laugh.
“Holly-wood!” she laughs again, and then takes Diane into a spin. They stumble forward, and Rose kisses the inside of her jaw letting Diane press them against a wall.
“This is really happening.”
It’s Diane and then there are fireworks off in the distance, downstairs and with a row of cheers on the grass by the pool. This is someone’s house.
It’s Rose that says it first though.
“It’s not all that bad.”