Much to Greg’s dismay, Merritt insisted on an evening off. As much as she longed to spend every remaining second with Avery, she had to breathe too, and it was getting harder and harder to breathe near Avery. She couldn’t look at her without her chest tightening and her heart seizing in her chest. She was losing her. It was ending. She didn’t know what she would do when Avery left.
“We have six days!” he protested, standing in the newly lawn-carpeted hallway of the apartment that would soon be hers.
In the bathroom, Alistair and Avery were submitting to Tami’s expertise. The light in the Elysium was making Avery look bloated and had given Alistair dark shadows under his eyes. Gould, Tom, Setter, Colton, and Meg were standing in the bedroom waiting for their assigned tasks.
“We don’t take evenings off!” Greg said. “This is television. You mortgage your life to be on television. You don’t pop in at nine and leave at five.”
“You work the day after you’ve crashed your bike,” Merritt said bitterly.
Greg’s face softened. “I would never have put Avery on if Venner hadn’t insisted. We’re not like that. We’ve just got work to do.”
“I know,” Merritt said. “But I looked at the call sheet. I’m not on after filming replacing-the-kitchen-counter.”
“We might need you,” Greg said.
“You’re leaving in six days. There’s only so much you can do in six days. By now you’ve done it or you haven’t. If you’re late now, me staring at you staring at Gould staring at Alistair isn’t going to help.”
Six days. Six days. Had she done what she was supposed to do? Did she know what that was? She felt like she had at boarding school. First the principal would call her into the office, sympathetic but firm. Her parents were behind in tuition. Of course it wasn’t her fault, but they had found another school, with a payment plan, a better situation all around. She would count down the days until her departure, whatever little bit of comfort and security she’d developed at that school slipping away day by day.
Greg also seemed to be mulling over difficult thoughts. His dilemma, Merritt guessed, was whether to let her go despite the off chance they might need her or argue with her and lose valuable seconds.
The seconds counted more.
“Fine, fine, fine. Go. Be back here first thing tomorrow. Five a.m.”
Merritt had worked construction. Five a.m. in the summer was nothing, although her nights with Avery were taking their toll. Sex could substitute for sleep but only for so long.
* * *
“What are you doing?” Iliana protested when Merritt walked through the front doors of Hellenic Hardware a little while later.
“I know you’ve got everything under control,” Merritt said, “but I’ve been out of the shop for five weeks. There’s billing to do. We’ve got shipments coming in.”
Iliana grabbed her by the elbow and walked her past the interns who were sorting bolts. In the privacy of the lumber section near the loading bay, she said, “You’ve got a week left with your girl. Why aren’t you on set?”
Avery’s eyes had asked her the same question as Merritt nodded and walked out. Of course Merritt had wanted to stay. If she could stare at Avery all afternoon, she’d stay. But Alistair’s words and Avery’s departure hung in her heart like the last reverberations of a gong.
“I have to do something.” Merritt looked around for something out of order, but Iliana kept the shop like it was her own.
“You’re supposed to be making love to her every second you’ve got. You’re supposed to be walking around the Elysium like you’re going to take her on the floor. You’re supposed to tell her how you feel.”
“Iliana, I need my own life back. She’s leaving in less than a week, and no matter what we say, it will end.” She raised her palms to the ceiling of Hellenic Hardware. “And I need this place to matter more. I have to be able to get back to the shop and love it. This is enough for me.”
This all seemed a little dull. There would surely be a stack of unpaid invoices. One, maybe two, contractors who needed a little reminder from collections. A friend at the grange had texted her about an old farmhouse being deconstructed near Hillsboro. She could drive out and bid on the windows. It felt small while everything with Avery felt vast. She’d never been to Cincinnati, where King & Crown was going next, but she’d googled attractions. The oldest brick house in America was in Cincinnati. She’d like that…if Avery asked her to visit her in Cincinnati. And there was a museum of old signs that would be lovely...especially if Avery could forgive Merritt for taking her on the least romantic Cincinnati date ever.
“What’s this about really?” Iliana said, sitting down on a neat stack of railroad ties.
Merritt sat down beside her. “Alistair talked to me.”
“About what?”
“About what would happen if someone found out about us. I’d ruin everything.”
Iliana grabbed her knee and squeezed a bit too hard, looking Merritt in the eye. “And Alistair is the boss of you?”
“He’s her best friend.”
“So he has to say shit like that. You cannot mess this up. You’ve been happy for once in your life. I can tell. You look less like a bloodhound.”
“I do not look like a bloodhound.”
She had all of King & Crown to back her up. It was strange working with people forever telling her how beautiful she was in a way that made it sound like inventory on a shelf. She wondered what it was like for Avery to live in a world that told her she did not have that inventory, and she wished she could stay in Avery’s life to remind her not to listen.
“Just act like a normal person and tell her how you feel,” Iliana said.
“What if she says she’s done with me? What if I ask her to be my girlfriend and do…girlfriend stuff? Cook. Watch reruns. What if she says she was just in it for the sex? What if she realizes that I’m okay for a few weeks, but I’m not the kind of woman you’d want to—” She shrugged.
“What?”
Merritt traced a gash in the wooden railroad ties. “Stay with.”
“Why would Avery think that?”
“It’s my fate.”
“There is no such thing as fate.”
“What’s the chi, then? You say it’s the energy that moves through everything. What if you get the bad energy? If you read history you’d see. One person crosses the Oregon Trail, sets up an orchard, marries the only woman in town, has ten children, and writes a blissful memoir. Another person loses everything in a fire, and then their whole family dies of the flu.”
“Get a flu shot. We’re not on the Oregon Trail, and you’re not doomed. You’re a brat.” This was the old Iliana come back from the mists of pre-Lei-Ling history. “I had a shitty life,” Iliana went on. “I had a dad who beat me. I had to leave my house at sixteen and buy a fake ID so I could work. You had a fake ID so you could go to Darcelle’s drag club. Your parents didn’t beat you. Your stepdad didn’t molest you. He paid to send you to a dozen fancy boarding schools. Then your uncle willed you a business, which you happened to have a gift to turn into something really amazing.”
“And every time I like a girl, she text-dumps me because she says it’s the most I deserve.”
“Well, you’re old-fashioned.”
Iliana stood up. Merritt looked up at her. “It’s not old-fashioned to not want to get dumped on LinkedIn.”
“Get up,” Iliana said. “Everyone e-dumps. It’s less embarrassing. You dump someone over dinner, and you have to figure out whether you wait until dessert to tell her. Do you tell her right away? Who pays if you’ve already ordered? If the girl cries, what do you do?”
“I never cry.”
“So you’re perfect for a repressed TV star. Come on.” Iliana nodded toward the dojo. “Let’s work this out. If you practiced more, you might not have to agonize over everything,”
There was no resisting Iliana when she really wanted to practice. It was probably the strength of her chi pulling Merritt into the quiet dojo.
“If you meditated,” Iliana went on. “If you practiced regularly instead of just walking in here every so often to show off.”
“I don’t show off.”
“You show off all the time. It’s a form of deflection.”
Iliana took off her boots, set them by the wall, and bowed to the shrine. Merritt did the same.
“Come in from the left,” Iliana instructed.
Merritt performed a rusty side approach. Iliana clasped her arm, pulled her off-balance. Merritt dropped to the ground, rolled, and regained her stance. They repeated the move a few more times. Iliana’s long blond braid swung around her back, but of course no practitioner of aikido would ever yank it.
“Faster,” Iliana said. She threw Merritt again.
Finally, she lunged at Merritt. It was an easy opening. Merritt was supposed to use Iliana’s momentum to bring her to the floor, but she missed her chance. Iliana countered and flipped Merritt over her arm in a complete, airborne rotation. For a second Merritt saw the cloudy skylights overhead, and then she was back on her feet, her arms loosely raised because Iliana would never hurt her. She would challenge her. She would lay Merritt down on the ground with a flick of her wrist. But Iliana would always protect her as she fell.
They sparred for half an hour, and Merritt felt her muscles loosen and her body stretch. She tried to clear Avery from her mind. She tried to live in a place where there was only weight and counterweight. Fulcrum and arc. Fall and rise. The spirit of aki. Finally, they finished. Iliana bowed to Merritt.
“Now are you ready to hear reason?” Iliana sat down on the mat.
Merritt sat next to her, then flopped on her back. “What kind of reason?”
Iliana flopped down with Merritt, their heads almost touching. “I think you’re hiding from her. Right now. You’re telling yourself you don’t need her. You want to get back to the shop. You’re afraid to ask her how she feels, and you’re afraid to tell her how you feel.”
“I’m being realistic. I’m accepting change in the world. Isn’t that what you are always telling your students to do? Let the chi move through you? Don’t hold too tightly to things of this world?”
“Running away from the opponent you fear is not harnessing your chi.”
“I’m not running from Avery, and I’m not afraid of her.”
“I know,” Iliana said again. “You’re afraid of yourself.”