Merritt headed for the staircase that led to her office apartment and slammed the door. They swept in at night. Avery had seduced her so her minions could steal the Elysium. That almost made her angrier than losing the Elysium itself. The thought would have startled her if she’d had an eighth of her brain to devote to reason. She had wanted the Elysium for years! Now she just wanted her sweet memories back: Avery’s face surprised by pleasure, Avery’s arm across her chest. But they weren’t sweet memories anymore. She’d been a fool. Avery hadn’t held her. Avery had held her down, lest Merritt experience a surge of psychic power telling her to run to the Realtor’s office in the middle of the night.
“You didn’t have to sleep with me,” she said to the empty apartment. “You could have faked an emergency. You could have had some decency and just roofied me.” She paced the room, her footsteps slamming into the floor. “How could you do it?!”
For one sensible moment, she considered not going. Then she marched out of her bedroom and into the stifling heat of the day.
* * *
When she arrived at the Elysium, the street was already lined with trailers. A sawhorse bore a sign reading FILM CREW BARRICADE. THRU TRAFFIC ONLY. A security guard lingered by the trailers. A dozen men in pocketed vests hurried about. One of them broke away and came over with a clipboard in hand.
“Are you with Warren Venner?” He looked like a kindly uncle who had suddenly been asked to appear in court.
“I have to talk to Avery Crown.”
“Are you with the TKO contingency? I’ll just need to get you a badge.”
“I’m not with anyone.”
“A fan? We love fans. But we’ve got a team of people visiting from our network. Our boss, you know.” He looked apologetic. “Avery and Alistair will be visiting with fans on July nineteenth at the Bagdad Theater. They’d love to see you then.”
“I’m not a fan.”
Merritt caught the man glancing at security. The kindly uncle looked like a pushover, but in that glance Merritt saw all the best contractors she had worked with. He could see the whole scene with his eyes closed. Merritt pushed past him. CROWN was written on green masking tape on one of the trailers. She pounded on the door. The security guard was at her side. He grabbed for her, but her hours in Iliana’s dojo were good for something and she slipped out of his grasp. A second later Avery opened the door, froze, her hand clutched to her chest.
“Merritt,” she said. “I was going to come find you.”
“Get away from her.” The guard grabbed Merritt’s shoulder.
“I know her. I know her,” Avery said. “She’s my friend.” She pulled Merritt inside.
“I am not your friend,” Merritt said. “How could you?”
Inside, the trailer contained a tiny fake fireplace, a vase of fake lilies, and fake wood veneer. But the mirror was covered in real photographs, some faded, some crisp. In each picture, Avery and Alistair stood in front of a different vista, their curved fingers held together to make two sides of a heart.
“I didn’t do it.” Avery’s words poured out. “I was going to see you. I wanted to see you. I could have died when Alistair showed me. I would never have let them buy the Elysium if I’d known. I told them we had to give it back, but I don’t have any control over anything.”
Avery hurried to the window and closed the venetian blinds. Avery wore a ruffled white dress that looked like what the Kardashians thought people had worn on the Oregon Trail. Her hair was plaited in a beautiful wheat-sheaf down her back. She looked pretty and vulnerable. Merritt tried not to notice.
Merritt trailed her fingers along the wood paneling. “This place is shit,” she said.
“I had no idea. You have to believe me.”
“Don’t even.”
“I don’t have anything to do with the property selection,” Avery pleaded.
“I’ve seen your show. You pick every property by hand, and then you stick a sombrero on it and pretend you understand Texas. You’re not going to make the Elysium look like Portland. You’re not going to make it better. You’re going to slap some paint up and then sell it to a developer who’ll tear it down and put up a hundred condos. You show up somewhere for two hot seconds and pretend like that means something. You don’t know anything about the places you leave. Your show is meaningless. It’s a waste.”
It was cruel, and Merritt wasn’t a cruel person. Cold but not cruel. She’d barely even seen an episode of King & Crown. Somewhere deep inside she knew she couldn’t bear watching Avery, even after fifteen years. But sometimes it was on at the Mirage, so she understood the setup. Buy a building. Renovate a bit. Decorate with the icons of the city. Leave.
Avery’s whole face trembled. “I love those places. That’s not what we do. We make people happy.”
Merritt couldn’t look at Avery who was trying not to cry.
“You have to believe me. Please, please believe me.”
Avery touched her arm, trying to turn Merritt toward her. Merritt snatched her arm away.
“We have an acquisitions department, and we have this woman, Pam. I don’t think anyone has ever seen her in real life. But if right now I said, ‘I wish I had a Bluetooth speaker in the shape of a bulldog,’ I would open my door and there it would be. She makes Amazon look incompetent. She buys properties and rents trailers and gets cars and vans and food and bottles of water and equipment. Sometimes she buys houses years in advance.”
“You just bought the Elysium.”
“There was a fire. We had to buy something on the fly.”
“We.” Merritt felt her face twist into a knot of anger. “The Elysium wasn’t listed.”
“Pam isn’t a mom with 2.5 kids searching on HomeFinder. I’ve been doing this show for fifteen years. I never choose a building, and I don’t care which one we work on. I would never mean to hurt you.”
Outside, a man called out, “Where’s Avery? Venner wants to talk to her.”
“I can help you buy another building.”
“I don’t want anything you’ve touched.”
Out of nowhere, Merritt felt a lump in her throat. She looked around the tiny room. She could smell Avery’s perfume. Merritt stepped forward. Infinitesimal particles of glitter sparkled on Avery’s cheeks. Merritt wiped the sheen with her thumb. Avery’s skin felt feverish.
“Body glitter, really? Are we twelve? Is that the quintessential Portland?”
“I thought it was pretty,” Avery said miserably.
And more than half of Merritt’s soul wanted to throw her arms around Avery and hold her close. Of course it’s pretty. You’re pretty. You’re beautiful. You can cover me in glitter. Just don’t cry. Avery was so beautiful. Merritt’s body was a traitor. She wanted to wipe away the gloss on Avery’s lips. She wanted to kiss the tears that slid down her cheeks. Even now. As soon as Avery had left the Jupiter Hotel, Merritt had gone to the window and watched her Uber pulling away, consumed with tenderness and worry for every possible thing that might happen to Avery. Now she was the thing that was happening to Avery. Avery’s face tightened, and she took a couple quick, sharp breaths. Then something in her seemed to break. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, but her tears flowed freely. But these tears were a ruse.
Outside a man said, “Lock it up. We’re filming in two.”
“What would you do if I walked out there and told all your precious producers we were fucking?” Merritt said. “What if I say, ‘Avery is my lover. We just had sex. Take a DNA swab. She’s all over me.’”
“You can’t. The crew knows and Greg, but not the Portland hires and not the new guy from L.A.”
“I’ll tell them.”
Even as she said it, Merritt knew she wouldn’t. She was so angry. And Avery was so wrong. But she could imagine Avery crumpling to the ground outside her trailer as her life crumbled around her. She could imagine Avery sobbing into her folded knees. Despite everything that had happened, Merritt knew she couldn’t do that to Avery.
“You can’t do that.” Avery rallied the way she had in the courtyard of the Elysium, like a shy girl mustering courage no one expected.
As quickly as they came, her tears were gone. She’s an actor, Merritt thought.
“If you want a DNA swab…” Avery said, each word calculated.
You can’t. We’ll arrest you. We’ll sue, Merritt filled in.
“You’d have to fuck me,” Avery finished.
Merritt’s surprise left her speechless.
Outside, footsteps shook the stairs and the trailer. Someone knocked the door. A man called, “Sorry, Aves, you’re on.”
“In a minute,” Avery shot back with such ferocity even Merritt froze.
Outside, someone said, “She’s got a friend in there. Give her ten.”
Merritt knew it would take less than ten minutes for her to come under Avery’s touch.
“I want you, Merritt.”
Merritt wanted her too. Damn it, she wanted her so much. Before Merritt realized what she was doing, she had pressed Avery up against the door. Avery gripped fistfuls of Merritt’s hair with a delicious force that bordered on pain and sent a current of desire down Merritt’s spine. They kissed, and the kiss felt like crying and fighting and racing down an empty freeway at midnight when they were eighteen and their car was the only one on the road.
“Give me an hour.” Avery clutched Merritt’s back. “I’ll make up an excuse. I’ll come find you.”
Merritt pushed up Avery’s dress. The delicate fabric bunched at Avery’s waist. The wall of the trailer creaked. Their legs intertwined. Merritt felt Avery’s ass through lace underwear. She pressed her thigh into the apex of Avery’s legs.
“Please,” Avery whispered.
Iliana said make-up sex was the best. Girls never stuck around long enough for Merritt to find out. Now she understood. The urge to cry had turned into a kiss. Avery’s arms comforted the same heartbreak they caused. And Merritt felt full of tenderness and rage, and touching Avery, arousing her gently and forcefully at turns, was the answer to all the feelings storming inside her.
“I’ll get us a room at the Jupiter Hotel,” Avery said.
She grazed her teeth along Merritt’s ear. Merritt heard herself sigh in a way she never did with other women.
“Meet me there.” Avery pulled away a little bit. “There’s just one thing. I have to text you a contract. I don’t care about it, but I owe it to Alistair and the crew. Everyone gets an NDA if they have sex. It’s like using a condom for us. It’s just safe. Please, it’s nothing in my world. I know it sounds weird.”
“An NDA?”
“A nondisclosure agreement.”
Merritt untangled herself from Avery’s embrace.
“It just means you won’t tell anyone…officially.”
Avery took her phone out of some invisible pocket in her dress and called something to the screen. She handed it to Merritt. Merritt tried to control the tremor in her hand as she scrolled to the bottom and back up. Forfeiture of assets, it read. Agree to forgo legal recourse…amount of damages…The number was more than she could conceive.
“Is this a trick?”
She had fallen for it again. She couldn’t breathe. The lump in her throat was going to strangle her.
“You want my shop too? Is this how you win, Avery? This gives you everything if someone sees us.”
“No! It’s standard. Please, Merritt. In the industry this is nothing.”
Merritt pressed her hand to Avery’s chest, holding her at arm’s length. She could feel Avery’s heart racing.
“How are you still in the closet?”
“My fans trust me, and they feel like they know me. I can’t let them down.”
Avery kissed Merritt before she could protest. It was the kind of kiss that said, This is more than sex, soft and slow. The kind of kiss Merritt longed for and avoided because hope felt like a punch to the gut. But now she was melting into Avery’s arms, letting her lead, giving in to Avery’s caressing, and…
“No!”
She shook herself free. This kiss came along with a twelve-screen nondisclosure contract that, if she’d read it correctly, promised she’d relinquish her home, truck, business, and assets to King & Crown if she so much as called Iliana and said, Guess what? I’ve got a crush on this new girl.
“Don’t touch me,” Merritt said. “Don’t find me. Don’t come into my life again. I never wanted you to come back to Vale.”