RPF Fic: what makes this uncertain
what makes this uncertain byrne/goode, pg13.
they believed in beginning and ends. this doesn’t mean anything now. there is no such thing as buying a house together. 2,123 words.
notes: MICHELLE AND YOUR TUMBLR THIS IS YOUR FAULT. no really. it is. this also proves how easily persuaded i am when you put shiny, aesthetically people in front of me. so for falseeeyelashes! and hopefully, now it’s time for a glass of wine.
-
Rose keeps a list of three stories. She can never remember which is the lie.
1. She was young once and this business was full of nothing but lights and opportunity; she was read to love being an actor, to want and need to come to work everyday and be surround by people who felt the same way. She was ready to be about her craft, to wear an idol like Glenn or Meryl as the perfect homage. She met him next.
2. He was the one that started this first, started the whole idea of them being young and impossible and untouchable as if they were a novel in their own right - Diane tells this story better because Diane is still filled with that sense of idealism that Rose isn’t anymore, something too easy to stay in love with and too hard to leave without any sort of trouble.
3. They slept together once. He ripped the hem of her skirt. She came faster because he used his mouth and not his hand. Together, they might have believed something like, “maybe this could work.”
“You’re unhappy, Rosie. I can tell,” Matthew says first. This is a spring day in the middle of December where there is coffee and cake and a table of people around them; he sits across from her with a cigarette and smiles like he knows her best, better than anyone else.
This is how he gets the girl. She met him like this.
They had the conversation. It was New York and Diane’s birthday.
“Sophie’s pregnant.”
He tells her and hands over a glass of wine in the kitchen. They watch Diane laugh with Josh and Michael enters the room from the entrance, flowers in hand and some sort of smile. Rose frowns and shakes her head.
“Congratulations,” she says too.
“We’re having a girl,” he says and says it as if she weren’t even in the room with him; he stares off to the side, studying the city through the window. The reflection wears Rose and she meets Matthew’s gaze over his shoulder, watching the lights as they start to swallow them.
“Wonderful,” she says.
She’s not here for him, she wants to say or add; it seems rather contrite to her though and something that would give him what he wants. But his news hasn’t really hit her yet. She’s aware of it and what it means, but it hasn’t hit and she wonders if it ever will.
“Why won’t you say anything?”
He looks at her. She puts her wine down and reaches for a strawberry on one of the platters. Diane hates platters. Diane hates parties too. It’s the kind of thing that amuses Rose. She’s not a lone in her misery.
“I said congratulations,” she says.
“You did. But I can see -”
Matthew catches her hand as she reaches for another berry. She looks up at him in surprise and he frowns. Tugging her hand away, she pops the berry and her mouth and licks her fingers.
“There’s nothing to say. Because if I say it, it means you’re going to look at me like that and I just can’t. I can’t have you look at me like I’m supposed to say the right thing when I want to be ridiculously and irresponsibly selfish when it comes to you and I hate it. I hate myself for it.”
He sighs. “Rose.”
She shakes her head. She reaches for her wine. Michael joins Diane and Josh. Diane looks away and over at her and Matthew.
Diane doesn’t smile. “I hate you too,” Rose says to him.
It was always too early or too late for Rose. It never bothered her. She simply starts things and ends things, wearing her decisions with a clear conscious.
There is a set interview. She sits next to Glenn. Glenn drinks her coffee with her glasses buried back in her hair. They share a script between their chairs and it seems too comfortable. This is work.
“How close are you to your character?”
Startled, Rose looks at the man across from her. There is a camera and a smile. Her agent told her this morning that these things are usually taped for live review. This is something she should know.
“Oh, um. I -” she stops in the middle of the interview and stares at her hands, her mouth twisting with some amusement. “I never know what to do with these questions, I think. There is the easy answer, sure, and the answer I could potential give you - she’s got a closet that I want, she walks better in heels than me, is more shrewd then me … but I -”
“She’s modest,” Glenn finishes.
She studies her. Rose tries not to be aware of her own embarrassment.
Lunch is a piece of her life that is an easy return. Diane comes becomes she never likes leaving New York.
“His baby is going to be a year old.”
Her finger curls around the straw in her drink. The ice cubes click and sigh. Diane shakes her head, sliding a pair of sunglasses over her eyes.
They sit closest to the window. “Daughter,” she murmurs, looking outside.
“Hmm?”
Rose doesn’t mean to think of him and most days, it’s the sort of thing that happens and happens without cause. But she looks at Diane and Diane stares back, the corners of her mouth settling into a frown.
“He has a daughter. Not a baby. A little girl - a beautiful little girl that you’re sitting and thinking about, a little girl that you’ve never met because the two of you are just as fucked up as the rest of us, Rosie.”
“Fuck you.”
It’s half-hearted. It was Rose and Diane and Diane and Matthew before this became a mess. The introduction is blamed on her friend, their friend, and Diane’s seriousness makes her shift in her seat.
“Sweetheart,” she says and Diane sighs too, churning the words into something that wears guilt. She presses her hands over the table and Rose watches as her fingers slowly curl, one by one, into fists.
She isn’t angry. But she doesn’t think. There is a whole story that nobody really knows. This is the problem too.
“Sweetheart,” Diane says.
“I know you’re worried.”
The other woman shakes her head. Rose curls a hand around her drink.
“I’m not planning on doing something stupid,” she mutters and picks out the straw. It hits the table and splashes against the window. The straw slides off the table. “If that’s what you’re trying to say - just say it. Rose, please don’t do anything stupid.”
Diane leans back. Her hand curls around her neck, sliding down and then wraps around her necklace.
“You’re a terrible drunk.”
Rose lifts her glass. Her mouth twists and she nods.
“You have a great guy,” she says.
Events take her out of the city. Rose never feels right leaving New York.
There is a dress and an open back, no date that wears her thin with his hand against the base of her spine. She drinks her champagne sparingly and sneaks herself outside for air.
She follows a set of stairs that overlooks the gardens and sits over the railing, bent slightly with her drink. The party inside is dim with murmurs and she checks her wrist for a watch, her fingers brushing over a set of bracelets instead.
“Do you remember?”
Her gaze turns to the door. Matthew stands a few feet away, hands in his pockets and his gaze wandering off to the side.
“I try not to,” she says and turns away too, looking into the expanse of the gardens. She can’t remember why she was invited or how she fits in here; these things surprise her, it seems, how people try too hard to anticipate where she might settle into place.
But it’s Matthew, really, that can move in between parties and meetings with nothing more than smile and pieces of conversation. Her jealously is strange as she thinks about it and looking back, she watches him lean against the wall and smile at her too.
“Don’t that.”
“What?”
“This,” she nods, waving between them.
Her arms fold over her chest. Her glass rests against her skin, cool and wet with some sort of condensation. She presses her tongue against the back of her teeth and makes a slight, soft clicking sound. Matthew snorts and steps forward, joining her against the railing.
“You can’t be angry at me forever, Rosie.”
“We were drunk,” she says. “It happened once,” she says too. “You were always Diane’s friend. Not mine, never mine - this is what you should be thinking. This is what I should be thinking.”
He scoffs. She’s quiet, watching him. He takes her glass from her hand, their fingers brushing. He finishes off her champagne.
“You never answered my question.”
Somehow in her head, the story goes like this: perhaps, they slept together. There was a party (there is always a party) and her glass was half-full; it’s a metaphor that she should find funny, that she always finds funny when it isn’t her and isn’t this. Or perhaps they didn’t sleep together, that they met through mutual friends and it was one of those meetings that sticks with her, that stuck with her, and all this time she’s been in love with a man that she could never bring herself to even grasps.
But the best choice, the reasonable choice, is this: assume she knows nothing about it either.
Rose takes back the glass and puts it next to her. “I don’t remember what happened,” she says slowly. “I remember Diane introducing us. I remember you being an ass. I remember -”
She stops. He reaches over and brushes his fingers against her face. They slide against her jaw and then her mouth, running lightly over her lip. Her mouth parts and he smiles, just slightly.
“You could just say you don’t want to talk about it.”
“I could,” she murmurs, turning her head away. His fingers slide over her face again and he cups her check, turning her gently to face him again. “I could,” she says again, “but you wouldn’t listen. You never listen. You never want to listen. You just come and take and take again. You have your life but that’s nothing more than a safe niche, a place that you know is always going to welcome you back. You have liberties, Matthew. You have the kind of liberties that the rest of us don’t, that the rest of us would kill for. You have a life, Matthew, and what I don’t understand is why you don’t want it.”
Rose has started to tremble. She shifts and knocks over her champagne glass, jumping too as it crashes onto the ground. But there’s no one around, and the glass in pieces goes unnoticed.
He says nothing though and pulls away. He stands too and his hands shove into his pockets, as he sort of sways and rocks on his heels. She tries not to watch him but pulling away means some sort indifference to him and that’s nearly impossible. This much she does accept.
“Sophie wants you to come to the party. The birthday party - our girl’s going to be a year now, shit.”
Rose freezes. Her eyes close.
“I told her I’d ask. She likes you, Rosie. Why? I cannot imagine. But Sophie’s my girl too and I told her I’d follow through.”
He says it earnestly and thoughtfully and it makes her heart twist with too many different things. She thinks about Diane and almost wishes for some sort of friend, here and now, just to tell her this is stupid. And it is stupid, stupid enough for her to still feel like she’s involved.
She stands without a reply though. Her hands run against her sides and she steps over the glass. He stays by the door and watches her, waiting for her. His eyes are dark and she almost says something like you could’ve picked me. She’s not that woman, nor will she ever be. This isn’t the kind of story and she refuses to let him have more of her.
She refuses to let herself give in. He knows that much.
When she passes him, Matthew looks away.
Rose keeps a list of three stories.
She told him once in a hotel room, somewhere in Paris. They were supposed to be visiting Josh and Diane. They never made it to the party and her dress was lost to the floor.
Matthew laughed. His daughter was on the way.
“Congratulations,” she says.
(It happened.)
they believed in beginning and ends. this doesn’t mean anything now. there is no such thing as buying a house together. 2,123 words.
notes: MICHELLE AND YOUR TUMBLR THIS IS YOUR FAULT. no really. it is. this also proves how easily persuaded i am when you put shiny, aesthetically people in front of me. so for falseeeyelashes! and hopefully, now it’s time for a glass of wine.
-
Rose keeps a list of three stories. She can never remember which is the lie.
1. She was young once and this business was full of nothing but lights and opportunity; she was read to love being an actor, to want and need to come to work everyday and be surround by people who felt the same way. She was ready to be about her craft, to wear an idol like Glenn or Meryl as the perfect homage. She met him next.
2. He was the one that started this first, started the whole idea of them being young and impossible and untouchable as if they were a novel in their own right - Diane tells this story better because Diane is still filled with that sense of idealism that Rose isn’t anymore, something too easy to stay in love with and too hard to leave without any sort of trouble.
3. They slept together once. He ripped the hem of her skirt. She came faster because he used his mouth and not his hand. Together, they might have believed something like, “maybe this could work.”
“You’re unhappy, Rosie. I can tell,” Matthew says first. This is a spring day in the middle of December where there is coffee and cake and a table of people around them; he sits across from her with a cigarette and smiles like he knows her best, better than anyone else.
This is how he gets the girl. She met him like this.
They had the conversation. It was New York and Diane’s birthday.
“Sophie’s pregnant.”
He tells her and hands over a glass of wine in the kitchen. They watch Diane laugh with Josh and Michael enters the room from the entrance, flowers in hand and some sort of smile. Rose frowns and shakes her head.
“Congratulations,” she says too.
“We’re having a girl,” he says and says it as if she weren’t even in the room with him; he stares off to the side, studying the city through the window. The reflection wears Rose and she meets Matthew’s gaze over his shoulder, watching the lights as they start to swallow them.
“Wonderful,” she says.
She’s not here for him, she wants to say or add; it seems rather contrite to her though and something that would give him what he wants. But his news hasn’t really hit her yet. She’s aware of it and what it means, but it hasn’t hit and she wonders if it ever will.
“Why won’t you say anything?”
He looks at her. She puts her wine down and reaches for a strawberry on one of the platters. Diane hates platters. Diane hates parties too. It’s the kind of thing that amuses Rose. She’s not a lone in her misery.
“I said congratulations,” she says.
“You did. But I can see -”
Matthew catches her hand as she reaches for another berry. She looks up at him in surprise and he frowns. Tugging her hand away, she pops the berry and her mouth and licks her fingers.
“There’s nothing to say. Because if I say it, it means you’re going to look at me like that and I just can’t. I can’t have you look at me like I’m supposed to say the right thing when I want to be ridiculously and irresponsibly selfish when it comes to you and I hate it. I hate myself for it.”
He sighs. “Rose.”
She shakes her head. She reaches for her wine. Michael joins Diane and Josh. Diane looks away and over at her and Matthew.
Diane doesn’t smile. “I hate you too,” Rose says to him.
It was always too early or too late for Rose. It never bothered her. She simply starts things and ends things, wearing her decisions with a clear conscious.
There is a set interview. She sits next to Glenn. Glenn drinks her coffee with her glasses buried back in her hair. They share a script between their chairs and it seems too comfortable. This is work.
“How close are you to your character?”
Startled, Rose looks at the man across from her. There is a camera and a smile. Her agent told her this morning that these things are usually taped for live review. This is something she should know.
“Oh, um. I -” she stops in the middle of the interview and stares at her hands, her mouth twisting with some amusement. “I never know what to do with these questions, I think. There is the easy answer, sure, and the answer I could potential give you - she’s got a closet that I want, she walks better in heels than me, is more shrewd then me … but I -”
“She’s modest,” Glenn finishes.
She studies her. Rose tries not to be aware of her own embarrassment.
Lunch is a piece of her life that is an easy return. Diane comes becomes she never likes leaving New York.
“His baby is going to be a year old.”
Her finger curls around the straw in her drink. The ice cubes click and sigh. Diane shakes her head, sliding a pair of sunglasses over her eyes.
They sit closest to the window. “Daughter,” she murmurs, looking outside.
“Hmm?”
Rose doesn’t mean to think of him and most days, it’s the sort of thing that happens and happens without cause. But she looks at Diane and Diane stares back, the corners of her mouth settling into a frown.
“He has a daughter. Not a baby. A little girl - a beautiful little girl that you’re sitting and thinking about, a little girl that you’ve never met because the two of you are just as fucked up as the rest of us, Rosie.”
“Fuck you.”
It’s half-hearted. It was Rose and Diane and Diane and Matthew before this became a mess. The introduction is blamed on her friend, their friend, and Diane’s seriousness makes her shift in her seat.
“Sweetheart,” she says and Diane sighs too, churning the words into something that wears guilt. She presses her hands over the table and Rose watches as her fingers slowly curl, one by one, into fists.
She isn’t angry. But she doesn’t think. There is a whole story that nobody really knows. This is the problem too.
“Sweetheart,” Diane says.
“I know you’re worried.”
The other woman shakes her head. Rose curls a hand around her drink.
“I’m not planning on doing something stupid,” she mutters and picks out the straw. It hits the table and splashes against the window. The straw slides off the table. “If that’s what you’re trying to say - just say it. Rose, please don’t do anything stupid.”
Diane leans back. Her hand curls around her neck, sliding down and then wraps around her necklace.
“You’re a terrible drunk.”
Rose lifts her glass. Her mouth twists and she nods.
“You have a great guy,” she says.
Events take her out of the city. Rose never feels right leaving New York.
There is a dress and an open back, no date that wears her thin with his hand against the base of her spine. She drinks her champagne sparingly and sneaks herself outside for air.
She follows a set of stairs that overlooks the gardens and sits over the railing, bent slightly with her drink. The party inside is dim with murmurs and she checks her wrist for a watch, her fingers brushing over a set of bracelets instead.
“Do you remember?”
Her gaze turns to the door. Matthew stands a few feet away, hands in his pockets and his gaze wandering off to the side.
“I try not to,” she says and turns away too, looking into the expanse of the gardens. She can’t remember why she was invited or how she fits in here; these things surprise her, it seems, how people try too hard to anticipate where she might settle into place.
But it’s Matthew, really, that can move in between parties and meetings with nothing more than smile and pieces of conversation. Her jealously is strange as she thinks about it and looking back, she watches him lean against the wall and smile at her too.
“Don’t that.”
“What?”
“This,” she nods, waving between them.
Her arms fold over her chest. Her glass rests against her skin, cool and wet with some sort of condensation. She presses her tongue against the back of her teeth and makes a slight, soft clicking sound. Matthew snorts and steps forward, joining her against the railing.
“You can’t be angry at me forever, Rosie.”
“We were drunk,” she says. “It happened once,” she says too. “You were always Diane’s friend. Not mine, never mine - this is what you should be thinking. This is what I should be thinking.”
He scoffs. She’s quiet, watching him. He takes her glass from her hand, their fingers brushing. He finishes off her champagne.
“You never answered my question.”
Somehow in her head, the story goes like this: perhaps, they slept together. There was a party (there is always a party) and her glass was half-full; it’s a metaphor that she should find funny, that she always finds funny when it isn’t her and isn’t this. Or perhaps they didn’t sleep together, that they met through mutual friends and it was one of those meetings that sticks with her, that stuck with her, and all this time she’s been in love with a man that she could never bring herself to even grasps.
But the best choice, the reasonable choice, is this: assume she knows nothing about it either.
Rose takes back the glass and puts it next to her. “I don’t remember what happened,” she says slowly. “I remember Diane introducing us. I remember you being an ass. I remember -”
She stops. He reaches over and brushes his fingers against her face. They slide against her jaw and then her mouth, running lightly over her lip. Her mouth parts and he smiles, just slightly.
“You could just say you don’t want to talk about it.”
“I could,” she murmurs, turning her head away. His fingers slide over her face again and he cups her check, turning her gently to face him again. “I could,” she says again, “but you wouldn’t listen. You never listen. You never want to listen. You just come and take and take again. You have your life but that’s nothing more than a safe niche, a place that you know is always going to welcome you back. You have liberties, Matthew. You have the kind of liberties that the rest of us don’t, that the rest of us would kill for. You have a life, Matthew, and what I don’t understand is why you don’t want it.”
Rose has started to tremble. She shifts and knocks over her champagne glass, jumping too as it crashes onto the ground. But there’s no one around, and the glass in pieces goes unnoticed.
He says nothing though and pulls away. He stands too and his hands shove into his pockets, as he sort of sways and rocks on his heels. She tries not to watch him but pulling away means some sort indifference to him and that’s nearly impossible. This much she does accept.
“Sophie wants you to come to the party. The birthday party - our girl’s going to be a year now, shit.”
Rose freezes. Her eyes close.
“I told her I’d ask. She likes you, Rosie. Why? I cannot imagine. But Sophie’s my girl too and I told her I’d follow through.”
He says it earnestly and thoughtfully and it makes her heart twist with too many different things. She thinks about Diane and almost wishes for some sort of friend, here and now, just to tell her this is stupid. And it is stupid, stupid enough for her to still feel like she’s involved.
She stands without a reply though. Her hands run against her sides and she steps over the glass. He stays by the door and watches her, waiting for her. His eyes are dark and she almost says something like you could’ve picked me. She’s not that woman, nor will she ever be. This isn’t the kind of story and she refuses to let him have more of her.
She refuses to let herself give in. He knows that much.
When she passes him, Matthew looks away.
Rose keeps a list of three stories.
She told him once in a hotel room, somewhere in Paris. They were supposed to be visiting Josh and Diane. They never made it to the party and her dress was lost to the floor.
Matthew laughed. His daughter was on the way.
“Congratulations,” she says.
(It happened.)