RPF fic: idaho
idaho
rpf ; jones/redmayne and assorted surprises ; 2,853 words.
let’s talking about being grown ups; the less expectations you have, the better you learn how to surprise.
notes: For falseeeyelashes. MICHELLE. I feel like this is the brink of an entire universe that I might capitalize on at some point, but this is for YOU and I love you and the crazy ideas that you let me have and work on and support. TO OUR COMMUNE LOL. And back to work for me.
-
They have mutual friends. She finds it sort of ironic and calls it “intimate nonsense” when others ask.
Know the following: MARY* who lived accidentally with Eddie for a year, calls him “dispassionately passionate” and says, “ideally, him and I were trying to prepare for one of those films, as a rather terrible pair that got into all sorts of terrible moments because terrible things. Perfect, really, considering how fucking terrible I am.”
At this point, know too: MARY* and Felicity often have lunch, as friends often do, and they are the sort of friends that happen on accident, and when it’s necessary and all about survival. MARY* has been back from New York for a year and lately, tends to discuss Frenchmen and affairs over cigarettes and a liquid lunch; this is nothing new either. She expects Felicity to understand when she says, “he was a lovely fuck, you know.”
It still starts here. Felicity pays too much attention.
For now Felicity stays in London. The city is halfway into fall and she prefers the company of her leather jacket to the rest of the world, cigarettes not include.
When Eddie calls, she comes, she comes late too, wandering into the pub without a care and script under her arm, slouching as slides into the seat across from him. Felicity does not smile.
“What is this?” she asks, seriously, dropping her bag. It hits the floor hard with the strap kicking her boots. He scoffs and shrugs, waving two fingers before standing and going to grab a second pint for her. She studies him curiously but hides it when he sits back done.
“I missed you,” he says.
She scoffs, shaking her head. “Right.” When she pauses, she rubs her eyes. “You don’t call, you don’t write, you go around calling you and I - well, we won’t talk about that.”
She’s cautious, Felicity, and rightfully so. She looks up and he flashes a smile, leaning forward, over his beer and reaching to take her hand. She draws it back, slowly, and then curls it around the edge of the table. The side is cold.
“No one writes letters anymore, Jones.”
“I was being vague and dry,” she says.
“Horribly, so,” he says. He grins too. The corners of his mouth split wide. Felicity rolls her eyes.
They’re interrupted, sort and brief. The music comes over the pub. Off the corner, two men sit at the bar both bent their drinks. Felicity turns away from them, before she starts to stare. It’s a habit.
She stays quiet too. Eddie is talking, and she’s not really paying attention, trying not to think about the first or second time they met. It had something to do with a party, off in a kitchen somewhere with mutual friends laughing and losing at fast, ironic rate. This is what happens to actors: you hide in films; in plain sight, you do plays; with parties, everyone’s a child.
“Why haven’t we had sex?” she asks then. It’s abrupt. Eddie stops. The last time she saw him was on screen, a random interview at a hotel stop, between films. There was the girl that does all those vampire things, waxing poetic about character this and character that, and Eddie sitting there as per usual, charming even bored.
“Do you want to have sex?”
“No,” she murmurs.
He flashes his teeth, laughing. “You do,” he says, delighted. He feigns seriousness. “I mean, understandably so, Jones - you and I, on the off-chance that we work together, will capitalize on our long-term history. We’re non-traditional, of course.”
“You’re an idiot.”
Eddie leans forward. He doesn’t smile yet. His hands cover hers and they pull them away from her drink.
“I’ll write you a letter, darling, if that’s what it takes,” he says.
(At this point, there needs to be an interjection. MARY* is actually a household name. She has discovered the stage again, hides in Chanel, and tells friends that if they use her real name, she will cut them out without blinking. If you ask anyone, they will tell you that MARY* is a bitch. This is not her story, but there’s a lesson that Felicity keeps because of this: no actor lies well-enough.)
Her flat rests at odd corner on the road. It’s a walk to the park and the corner store when it’s late and the light dims too much. The pub is a walk away and Felicity’s jacket is buzzing with her phone. It’s her agent, she thinks, job, work, and all interchangeable.
“I’ve been thinking about your letter,” Eddie says. Three drinks in, he walks too close to her and his hand sways over her elbow. They are too close and it could be terribly funny. “The first one,” he says, “what I’d say to woo you. You would be my first love letter.”
“Charming,” she says dryly.
He chuckles and spins in front her. He starts to walk backwards. He studies her and shakes her head.
“Dear Jones, Jonesy, beautiful girl,” he hums. “You and I, well, we haven’t been proper mates. I mean, I see you at the odd festival, film thing, party where the lot of us are nothing but a bunch of rioters, murders, and all around drunks.”
“Murders?”
“In the figurative sense, love.”
Felicity laughs. “You need to get new friends.”
He stops. She stumbles forward, surprised and catching herself against his chest. Her hands press into his jacket and it’s all sort of abrupt; he turns to steady them and she’s bent backwards, halfway, looking up at him with her hair spilling everywhere.
“We’re a screwed up lot,” he says, “and you, Jones, Jonesy, seem to manage what very few of us do.”
“And that is?”
“I haven’t decided yet,” he says.
“Well, that’s rather useless. And I thought you were writing me a love letter,” she says. When he laughs, closely, she catches the wrinkles at the side of his eyes and mouth and falls in such a way where her heart starts to race and she hates herself. They are not in a bar, she thinks. “A terrible love letter,” she tries, sighing. “But one none the less.”
“I would have to confess,” he murmurs.
Felicity is startled. There’s a breeze, light. It picks up and presses into her hair and over her skin, as she manages to straighten. They stand to close together and she cannot help but wonder if this all that there is, him and her and this odd sort of relationship.
But to know more about this, they would have to talk about the first time, party or not, in passing, at a film, at pub, accidentally or through the friends that she hates to have. It is all the same in the end. You should need to know how they met.
Eddie is the one that doesn’t talk about it.
A year ago, this is New York. MARY* is actually shy and still hides out as Keira. Felicity is with her when she meets the Frenchmen. They are repeat offenders and Felicity hasn’t had a proper girlfriend for a while. She is tired, if you can believe it.
The flat belongs to a Diane and Josh, the Diane and Josh, but it is not their party and the crowd is too big for Felicity to marvel. She loses Keira somewhere at the door and stumbles in between a couple arguing, one who she knows later, and the other that prefers to watch everyone else from far away.
“You’re a hypocrite, Rose,” one says tiredly. He wears a ring, but hides it. A year before this, there was a baby announcement.
Felicity does not stay for Rose’s response.
She wanders though. The flat is covered in whites and bright windows and the night sky sort of stumbles in as well, cast in buildings and traffic sirens. They stare at the party and Felicity is ridiculously uncomfortable: her dress is silk, her heels too high, and her hair is loose ready to curl.
When she finds an open spot, away from the windows, there is music that comes on. The drum machine is obvious and she sighs, unable to sit. There is a large portrait of a faceless man in front of her, odd, then appropriate when someone across the room yells, “Quentin, darling!” and makes her laugh just a little.
“You’re not new, Jones.”
From behind her, there is Eddie. She recognizes him, but doesn’t let him know that. Instead, she falls into a half-smile.
“M’not trying to be,” she says, and he laughs, stepping to her side. Eddie, Eddie Redmayne, she remembers. Someone earlier mentioned that he found God. Someone else said: “oh but he’s an actor, they’re supposed - he’s a handsome guy.”
His gaze is sharp though when he leans over her. Her brows furrow and he dips forward, sniffing her drink.
“House wine,” he says.
“You’re a snob,” she chides.
“So I am,” he hums, and it’s strange, so strange to hear him talk to her this way. Or anyway at all, she thinks. She suddenly is too aware of how she stands, or slouches, the tightness in her shoulders standing heavily against her.
She sighs first. “Right,” she tells him, and decides to leave it there too.
Later Eddie finds her, or she stumbles onto him, and there is already too much going in the small kitchen in the flat. They never quite introduce themselves. This is the nature of the beast; the reality of it is more simple than this too, actors and their lies.
Felicity runs into Sienna just before, and after her “cheers, darling!” Eddie catches her by the arm, his hand at her elbow. Someone turns the music up a little louder.
“I was -” but Felicity cuts him off, “You were,” she says, “rude and obnoxiously unapproachable.”
His mouth shits. “No chances, eh?”
She shakes her head. Not interested, she almost says. There is a quiet laugh behind her and she turns, halfway, to see the fighting couple cornering themselves. She recognizes the back of the man’s head; it’s Goode, she guesses finally.
But Eddie leans into her space, catching her off-guard. Somewhere on the counter next to them, her wine glass is resting. Her fingers wiggle and she looks up at him.
“Well, I wanted to say something to you,” he says, and she can’t tell if he’s serious, or if it’s because everyone else in this room seems to be pairing off. She studies him too and his eyes are dark, thoughtful even; she’s struck by color and tries not to be pulled in.
“So say it,” she says finally.
When he bows over her, his mouth touches her ear. She feels him exhale and she freezes.
“You’re beautiful,” he says.
This is how Felicity learns.
They are not inseparable. This is something you should know about the two about them, as actors and as reactors.
Felicity says, every so often, “He happens to be there. It’s not me, it’s not how I choose to live my life, or how he chooses to live his. The two of us, we happen to be really simple in how we connect.”
Eddie decides not to touch it. There are some secrets too.
“I’ve written you a love letter,” he calls before she leaves. Felicity is due on set, weeks later, and it’s about writing herself into Shakespeare and so forth, the kind of film that she enjoys doing, not that she expects to keep.
“A love letter?” she asks.
“Yes,” he says. There is a pause and a rustle. The corners of her mouth quirk and she shakes her head. It’s only because he can’t see her like this.
“Well,” she says.
He chuckles.
This happens often, standing in her own kitchen. There is the way the sun hits the windows and spills into the counter. She lets it write across her hands as she flattens them into the tile. It’s entirely too romantic, she thinks, how she sees all of this.
“Well,” she says again. “Read it to me?”
“It’s a letter.”
“I won’t be around. I’m off to work for a couple weeks, you know.”
“Tell me where?” he asks, and it almost sounds sincere. It’s the thing that she marvels most about him, the ability to sound like he actually cares. Felicity is eternally suspicious, and of fault, having the friends that she has and walking into scripts as she does.
“No.”
She’s hesitant too. “I’ll working,” she says. “And if I were to tell you, that would mean something, and I’m sure - remarkably so - that we’ve had this conversation too many times to count.”
“And if I were to show up?” he asks.
“You wouldn’t,” she half-dares. “It’s not in you.”
She waits for him to answer. Because he would, or will, and it’ll be some smartly put together response that is too heavy but too soft, as if he were to test the proverbial waters. Felicity tries not to place them into a relationship because that’s dangerous and sex, still, is a looming issue. She thinks about this too much.
“Honestly,” she says and it’s careful, “are we there yet?”
“It’s late and you could come over,” he says.
She scoffs.
“I mean it,” he says. “I’m here for weeks, maybe longer depending a few things here and there. This is not about you living with me, or quite frankly, an issue that I even care the slightest about. We’re messy, you and I, and I like it. I like the mystery. I like you as a mystery. Do I want to change it? No decision has been made.”
“Is this your letter?” she asks.
She walks away from the kitchen too, deeper into her flat. There are suitcases by the door, ready for the late morning tomorrow. On her coffee table, there is tea she hasn’t touch yet.
“No,” he says. His voice seems to tighten. She wonders if he’s cross with her. She imagines him in some strange sort of fashion: lounged over some chair, draped and fitted, the sort of way she’d expect him to be. She’s not sure if this is the way it’s supposed to go.
“Then we’re done,” she says.
“We’re done,” he says.
The line falls into this awkward silence. Her eyes close and this, she thinks, this is why she doesn’t walk into relationships with her own kind. Actors are more than the sordid sort; they’re hard and not soft, intentionally cruel and prone to disasters. You learn fast and hard and he, for whatever reason, makes her lose sight so easily.
“All right,” she says.
For whatever reason, this is not about the last word.
(There is a kiss. This happens at Keira’s, ironically, over two bottles of wine and a band on the radio that sings to the couple in the bedroom, the ones fucking, not making love; “It’s not her,” Eddie half-slurs into her throat, chuckling against her skin, and his hand seems to slip down her hip to between her thighs, something Felicity cares not to notice. “I know her,” he says to her, and Felicity laughs, “I know her too,” she mumbles back. But he kisses her next, and they’re pressed into some low window, covered by a heavy painting, an expense painting because of the other woman’s ability to transition into these phases, and it makes Felicity wonder, wonder why he’s picked her and why she’s kissing back. She swallows his scotch.)
Felicity does not have lunch by herself. The location is unnoticed, and she prefers it this way: there is something to be said about the quiet. There is also the fact that MARY* is late.
“One more?” the waitress asks again, when passing. There is a water glass in her hand and she smiles at Felicity with her teeth. In turn, Felicity finds herself slouch and reaching for her sunglasses. They are inside the restaurant.
“One more,” she says in kind. She makes a point to look behind her, at the entrance, and catches the mix of people littered through out the room. No one recognizes her. “She’s running late -”
When she stops, she spots MARY* and MARY* is followed by the Frenchman, both bowed together with short smiles. Felicity groans softly, unnerved. She rubs her eyes.
MARY* slides into the seat across from her first, before spotting her. The Frenchman may or may not say hello to her, but passes and disappears to the back of the restaurant. When MARY* smirks at her, Felicity shakes her head.
“I don’t want to know,” she says.
“I haven’t said anything,” the other woman counters. “But I have something for you.”
She digs into her bag and Felicity desperately wishes for a cigarette and a real drink, pushed into something all over again.
“I’m not interested,” she murmurs.
“Of course, you are.”
There is a letter that falls onto the table. Felicity does not reach for it. She only knows how to stare.
Part of it is jealousy.
rpf ; jones/redmayne and assorted surprises ; 2,853 words.
let’s talking about being grown ups; the less expectations you have, the better you learn how to surprise.
notes: For falseeeyelashes. MICHELLE. I feel like this is the brink of an entire universe that I might capitalize on at some point, but this is for YOU and I love you and the crazy ideas that you let me have and work on and support. TO OUR COMMUNE LOL. And back to work for me.
-
They have mutual friends. She finds it sort of ironic and calls it “intimate nonsense” when others ask.
Know the following: MARY* who lived accidentally with Eddie for a year, calls him “dispassionately passionate” and says, “ideally, him and I were trying to prepare for one of those films, as a rather terrible pair that got into all sorts of terrible moments because terrible things. Perfect, really, considering how fucking terrible I am.”
At this point, know too: MARY* and Felicity often have lunch, as friends often do, and they are the sort of friends that happen on accident, and when it’s necessary and all about survival. MARY* has been back from New York for a year and lately, tends to discuss Frenchmen and affairs over cigarettes and a liquid lunch; this is nothing new either. She expects Felicity to understand when she says, “he was a lovely fuck, you know.”
It still starts here. Felicity pays too much attention.
For now Felicity stays in London. The city is halfway into fall and she prefers the company of her leather jacket to the rest of the world, cigarettes not include.
When Eddie calls, she comes, she comes late too, wandering into the pub without a care and script under her arm, slouching as slides into the seat across from him. Felicity does not smile.
“What is this?” she asks, seriously, dropping her bag. It hits the floor hard with the strap kicking her boots. He scoffs and shrugs, waving two fingers before standing and going to grab a second pint for her. She studies him curiously but hides it when he sits back done.
“I missed you,” he says.
She scoffs, shaking her head. “Right.” When she pauses, she rubs her eyes. “You don’t call, you don’t write, you go around calling you and I - well, we won’t talk about that.”
She’s cautious, Felicity, and rightfully so. She looks up and he flashes a smile, leaning forward, over his beer and reaching to take her hand. She draws it back, slowly, and then curls it around the edge of the table. The side is cold.
“No one writes letters anymore, Jones.”
“I was being vague and dry,” she says.
“Horribly, so,” he says. He grins too. The corners of his mouth split wide. Felicity rolls her eyes.
They’re interrupted, sort and brief. The music comes over the pub. Off the corner, two men sit at the bar both bent their drinks. Felicity turns away from them, before she starts to stare. It’s a habit.
She stays quiet too. Eddie is talking, and she’s not really paying attention, trying not to think about the first or second time they met. It had something to do with a party, off in a kitchen somewhere with mutual friends laughing and losing at fast, ironic rate. This is what happens to actors: you hide in films; in plain sight, you do plays; with parties, everyone’s a child.
“Why haven’t we had sex?” she asks then. It’s abrupt. Eddie stops. The last time she saw him was on screen, a random interview at a hotel stop, between films. There was the girl that does all those vampire things, waxing poetic about character this and character that, and Eddie sitting there as per usual, charming even bored.
“Do you want to have sex?”
“No,” she murmurs.
He flashes his teeth, laughing. “You do,” he says, delighted. He feigns seriousness. “I mean, understandably so, Jones - you and I, on the off-chance that we work together, will capitalize on our long-term history. We’re non-traditional, of course.”
“You’re an idiot.”
Eddie leans forward. He doesn’t smile yet. His hands cover hers and they pull them away from her drink.
“I’ll write you a letter, darling, if that’s what it takes,” he says.
(At this point, there needs to be an interjection. MARY* is actually a household name. She has discovered the stage again, hides in Chanel, and tells friends that if they use her real name, she will cut them out without blinking. If you ask anyone, they will tell you that MARY* is a bitch. This is not her story, but there’s a lesson that Felicity keeps because of this: no actor lies well-enough.)
Her flat rests at odd corner on the road. It’s a walk to the park and the corner store when it’s late and the light dims too much. The pub is a walk away and Felicity’s jacket is buzzing with her phone. It’s her agent, she thinks, job, work, and all interchangeable.
“I’ve been thinking about your letter,” Eddie says. Three drinks in, he walks too close to her and his hand sways over her elbow. They are too close and it could be terribly funny. “The first one,” he says, “what I’d say to woo you. You would be my first love letter.”
“Charming,” she says dryly.
He chuckles and spins in front her. He starts to walk backwards. He studies her and shakes her head.
“Dear Jones, Jonesy, beautiful girl,” he hums. “You and I, well, we haven’t been proper mates. I mean, I see you at the odd festival, film thing, party where the lot of us are nothing but a bunch of rioters, murders, and all around drunks.”
“Murders?”
“In the figurative sense, love.”
Felicity laughs. “You need to get new friends.”
He stops. She stumbles forward, surprised and catching herself against his chest. Her hands press into his jacket and it’s all sort of abrupt; he turns to steady them and she’s bent backwards, halfway, looking up at him with her hair spilling everywhere.
“We’re a screwed up lot,” he says, “and you, Jones, Jonesy, seem to manage what very few of us do.”
“And that is?”
“I haven’t decided yet,” he says.
“Well, that’s rather useless. And I thought you were writing me a love letter,” she says. When he laughs, closely, she catches the wrinkles at the side of his eyes and mouth and falls in such a way where her heart starts to race and she hates herself. They are not in a bar, she thinks. “A terrible love letter,” she tries, sighing. “But one none the less.”
“I would have to confess,” he murmurs.
Felicity is startled. There’s a breeze, light. It picks up and presses into her hair and over her skin, as she manages to straighten. They stand to close together and she cannot help but wonder if this all that there is, him and her and this odd sort of relationship.
But to know more about this, they would have to talk about the first time, party or not, in passing, at a film, at pub, accidentally or through the friends that she hates to have. It is all the same in the end. You should need to know how they met.
Eddie is the one that doesn’t talk about it.
A year ago, this is New York. MARY* is actually shy and still hides out as Keira. Felicity is with her when she meets the Frenchmen. They are repeat offenders and Felicity hasn’t had a proper girlfriend for a while. She is tired, if you can believe it.
The flat belongs to a Diane and Josh, the Diane and Josh, but it is not their party and the crowd is too big for Felicity to marvel. She loses Keira somewhere at the door and stumbles in between a couple arguing, one who she knows later, and the other that prefers to watch everyone else from far away.
“You’re a hypocrite, Rose,” one says tiredly. He wears a ring, but hides it. A year before this, there was a baby announcement.
Felicity does not stay for Rose’s response.
She wanders though. The flat is covered in whites and bright windows and the night sky sort of stumbles in as well, cast in buildings and traffic sirens. They stare at the party and Felicity is ridiculously uncomfortable: her dress is silk, her heels too high, and her hair is loose ready to curl.
When she finds an open spot, away from the windows, there is music that comes on. The drum machine is obvious and she sighs, unable to sit. There is a large portrait of a faceless man in front of her, odd, then appropriate when someone across the room yells, “Quentin, darling!” and makes her laugh just a little.
“You’re not new, Jones.”
From behind her, there is Eddie. She recognizes him, but doesn’t let him know that. Instead, she falls into a half-smile.
“M’not trying to be,” she says, and he laughs, stepping to her side. Eddie, Eddie Redmayne, she remembers. Someone earlier mentioned that he found God. Someone else said: “oh but he’s an actor, they’re supposed - he’s a handsome guy.”
His gaze is sharp though when he leans over her. Her brows furrow and he dips forward, sniffing her drink.
“House wine,” he says.
“You’re a snob,” she chides.
“So I am,” he hums, and it’s strange, so strange to hear him talk to her this way. Or anyway at all, she thinks. She suddenly is too aware of how she stands, or slouches, the tightness in her shoulders standing heavily against her.
She sighs first. “Right,” she tells him, and decides to leave it there too.
Later Eddie finds her, or she stumbles onto him, and there is already too much going in the small kitchen in the flat. They never quite introduce themselves. This is the nature of the beast; the reality of it is more simple than this too, actors and their lies.
Felicity runs into Sienna just before, and after her “cheers, darling!” Eddie catches her by the arm, his hand at her elbow. Someone turns the music up a little louder.
“I was -” but Felicity cuts him off, “You were,” she says, “rude and obnoxiously unapproachable.”
His mouth shits. “No chances, eh?”
She shakes her head. Not interested, she almost says. There is a quiet laugh behind her and she turns, halfway, to see the fighting couple cornering themselves. She recognizes the back of the man’s head; it’s Goode, she guesses finally.
But Eddie leans into her space, catching her off-guard. Somewhere on the counter next to them, her wine glass is resting. Her fingers wiggle and she looks up at him.
“Well, I wanted to say something to you,” he says, and she can’t tell if he’s serious, or if it’s because everyone else in this room seems to be pairing off. She studies him too and his eyes are dark, thoughtful even; she’s struck by color and tries not to be pulled in.
“So say it,” she says finally.
When he bows over her, his mouth touches her ear. She feels him exhale and she freezes.
“You’re beautiful,” he says.
This is how Felicity learns.
They are not inseparable. This is something you should know about the two about them, as actors and as reactors.
Felicity says, every so often, “He happens to be there. It’s not me, it’s not how I choose to live my life, or how he chooses to live his. The two of us, we happen to be really simple in how we connect.”
Eddie decides not to touch it. There are some secrets too.
“I’ve written you a love letter,” he calls before she leaves. Felicity is due on set, weeks later, and it’s about writing herself into Shakespeare and so forth, the kind of film that she enjoys doing, not that she expects to keep.
“A love letter?” she asks.
“Yes,” he says. There is a pause and a rustle. The corners of her mouth quirk and she shakes her head. It’s only because he can’t see her like this.
“Well,” she says.
He chuckles.
This happens often, standing in her own kitchen. There is the way the sun hits the windows and spills into the counter. She lets it write across her hands as she flattens them into the tile. It’s entirely too romantic, she thinks, how she sees all of this.
“Well,” she says again. “Read it to me?”
“It’s a letter.”
“I won’t be around. I’m off to work for a couple weeks, you know.”
“Tell me where?” he asks, and it almost sounds sincere. It’s the thing that she marvels most about him, the ability to sound like he actually cares. Felicity is eternally suspicious, and of fault, having the friends that she has and walking into scripts as she does.
“No.”
She’s hesitant too. “I’ll working,” she says. “And if I were to tell you, that would mean something, and I’m sure - remarkably so - that we’ve had this conversation too many times to count.”
“And if I were to show up?” he asks.
“You wouldn’t,” she half-dares. “It’s not in you.”
She waits for him to answer. Because he would, or will, and it’ll be some smartly put together response that is too heavy but too soft, as if he were to test the proverbial waters. Felicity tries not to place them into a relationship because that’s dangerous and sex, still, is a looming issue. She thinks about this too much.
“Honestly,” she says and it’s careful, “are we there yet?”
“It’s late and you could come over,” he says.
She scoffs.
“I mean it,” he says. “I’m here for weeks, maybe longer depending a few things here and there. This is not about you living with me, or quite frankly, an issue that I even care the slightest about. We’re messy, you and I, and I like it. I like the mystery. I like you as a mystery. Do I want to change it? No decision has been made.”
“Is this your letter?” she asks.
She walks away from the kitchen too, deeper into her flat. There are suitcases by the door, ready for the late morning tomorrow. On her coffee table, there is tea she hasn’t touch yet.
“No,” he says. His voice seems to tighten. She wonders if he’s cross with her. She imagines him in some strange sort of fashion: lounged over some chair, draped and fitted, the sort of way she’d expect him to be. She’s not sure if this is the way it’s supposed to go.
“Then we’re done,” she says.
“We’re done,” he says.
The line falls into this awkward silence. Her eyes close and this, she thinks, this is why she doesn’t walk into relationships with her own kind. Actors are more than the sordid sort; they’re hard and not soft, intentionally cruel and prone to disasters. You learn fast and hard and he, for whatever reason, makes her lose sight so easily.
“All right,” she says.
For whatever reason, this is not about the last word.
(There is a kiss. This happens at Keira’s, ironically, over two bottles of wine and a band on the radio that sings to the couple in the bedroom, the ones fucking, not making love; “It’s not her,” Eddie half-slurs into her throat, chuckling against her skin, and his hand seems to slip down her hip to between her thighs, something Felicity cares not to notice. “I know her,” he says to her, and Felicity laughs, “I know her too,” she mumbles back. But he kisses her next, and they’re pressed into some low window, covered by a heavy painting, an expense painting because of the other woman’s ability to transition into these phases, and it makes Felicity wonder, wonder why he’s picked her and why she’s kissing back. She swallows his scotch.)
Felicity does not have lunch by herself. The location is unnoticed, and she prefers it this way: there is something to be said about the quiet. There is also the fact that MARY* is late.
“One more?” the waitress asks again, when passing. There is a water glass in her hand and she smiles at Felicity with her teeth. In turn, Felicity finds herself slouch and reaching for her sunglasses. They are inside the restaurant.
“One more,” she says in kind. She makes a point to look behind her, at the entrance, and catches the mix of people littered through out the room. No one recognizes her. “She’s running late -”
When she stops, she spots MARY* and MARY* is followed by the Frenchman, both bowed together with short smiles. Felicity groans softly, unnerved. She rubs her eyes.
MARY* slides into the seat across from her first, before spotting her. The Frenchman may or may not say hello to her, but passes and disappears to the back of the restaurant. When MARY* smirks at her, Felicity shakes her head.
“I don’t want to know,” she says.
“I haven’t said anything,” the other woman counters. “But I have something for you.”
She digs into her bag and Felicity desperately wishes for a cigarette and a real drink, pushed into something all over again.
“I’m not interested,” she murmurs.
“Of course, you are.”
There is a letter that falls onto the table. Felicity does not reach for it. She only knows how to stare.
Part of it is jealousy.