“So,” Henry finally says after he’s given me a moment to collect myself. “What’s going on, Jac?”
I swear I could kill him then, kill them all. The camera is on me, the panic is rolling through me, I am frayed nerves and sleeplessness and worthlessness. And still he is doing this to me, finding and deconstructing me. I hate him so much.
I drink my water again. I swirl it around in my mouth, tilt my head back, and just focus. Focus on that rage. Let it consume me. I swallow and resettle my gaze on him. “Were you engaged?” I ask.
He flinches. For the first time ever, since we’ve been on set together, he flinches. It makes me see past all the rest of it, the way it’s all been fake, all been faked to make me comfortable. He’s uncomfortable for that brief moment of time, and I see who he was, see who he is not here, without this power.
He saw me see it.
The camera guy briefly glances at Henry, sensing the dynamic shift. It’s quiet in the room for a moment, the kind of quiet I crave, where we all want to die.
Then Henry asks, “Shailene tell you that?” his mask carefully sliding back into place.
“What’s it like?” I fling back at him. “To be doing all you can to help two people fall in love when your own relationship is falling apart?”
“Cliché,” he answers, and I see him. I see him, I see him, I see him.
It shouldn’t give me such a thrill.
I lean forward, putting my elbows on my knees. “What was her name?”
The moment he thinks about whether he will answer or not flashes across his face. He says, “Evanna.”
I smile. “Of course.” I glance over at the cameraman, still watching me for something, back to Henry. “You wouldn’t propose to a woman not named something like Evanna, would you? That would just be beneath you.”
“I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean.” He fidgets with his phone. It buzzes and buzzes, the way it always does.
“Sure you do. Evanna sounds like someone special, and you feel like someone special, don’t you?”
“Who’s interviewing who here?”
“Come on, Henry.” I lean forward even farther. “Turnabout is fair play. If you’re producing my love story, I want to know what you know about love.”
Henry swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “We met at an industry party. Dated for two years and then I proposed.”
“She was a model?”
He chews on that for a minute before he says, “Yes.”
I smile at him. “What happened?”
“We weren’t right for each other.”
“Why?”
“Because sometimes people aren’t.” He sighs. “Is there a point to this, Jac? Why did your last relationship end?”
I sit back up and glance toward the camera. “Because I’ve got a bad habit of breaking everything I touch.”
“Hmm,” he mumbles.
“What did you like most about Evanna?”
His eyes are narrowed at me. “She didn’t ask many questions.”
I laugh softly at that. “No fun.”
“You seem okay now,” he says, going to stand up.
“I’m not,” I tell him. “Wait,” I say, grabbing for his arm. He stares at the spot where I touched him, shakes me off.
“What do you want, Jac?” he asks through gritted teeth.
“We get along because we both fuck things up, right? Charlotte’s told you to attach yourself to me because she sees it. I’m giving you what I won’t give her.”
“Yes,” Henry tells me point-blank. “Obviously. Congratulations to you, you’ve figured me out.” He looks at the cameraman again, and I can practically see him sweating.
“And you hate it,” I say. “You hate that. You hate looking at me and knowing I know.”
“I don’t know what that means,” he says.
“You don’t want to know.”
“Are you getting off on speaking in riddles?”
I stand up. “Evanna saw the you you wanted her to see until that you got to be so much, it weighed you down. And then you hated everything Evanna did and everything you did. You had to break it somehow or you might’ve ended up with Evanna for the rest of your life. You might’ve ended up being that Henry for the rest of your life and fuck, you hated that guy.”
We stand there, squared off at each other, both tensed up to the point of breaking, two arrows notched in unsteady bows.
