Eliot Nash's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

The night after the diner, Eliot couldn't sleep. He kept hearing her say that one's real, though. The interview was two days out now. He needed to know if she meant it, or if she was just testing the story. So he texted her one line: Same booth. Tonight. And this time he brought flowers. He carried a loose bunch of prairie wildflowers, daisies and coneflowers gone soft at the stems. It was a stupid move and he knew it. The last bouquet had been a prop. This one wasn't, and that was the whole problem. He couldn't tell if he was buying flowers for the act or for her. She was already in the booth when he slid in. Across the aisle, a woman in a sleek bun spread a color-coded binder over the table, muttering to a couple about seating charts. A wedding planner, running some midnight session. She glanced at Eliot's flowers and smiled like she knew exactly what they meant. He looked away, ears hot. "Flowers again," his rival said. She didn't reach for them. "That's for the star. Good. Sell it." "No," Eliot said. The word came out before his nerve could catch it. "Not for him." She went still. The binder woman flipped a page. Eliot pushed the wildflowers across the table anyway. "I don't know where the story ends," he said. "I built a version of us so real I lost the seam. When you said the flowers were real, I couldn't tell if that was you or the script." He made himself hold her eyes. "So I'm asking plain. Not for the interview. Was it real?" For a long second she just looked at the flowers. The planner across the aisle had stopped talking. The whole diner seemed to lean in. "You could've blown the whole thing right now," she said quietly. "If I say no, we can't sit in that locker room and fake it. You know that." "I know." She picked up the bouquet. Her thumb moved over one petal. "Six years of yelling at you in press boxes," she said. "And you pick a diner at midnight to do this." She wasn't smiling, but her voice cracked at the edge. "Yeah, Eliot. It's real. It's been real for a while." Eliot breathed out. Something loosened in his chest that had been locked tight for three days. "Good," he said. "Because now I don't have to act." "Don't get comfortable." She set the flowers beside her coffee, careful. "We still have to walk in there like a couple who's got nothing to hide. And now we actually don't. That's harder." She was right. The lie was gone. The truth was real, new, and untested. In two days they'd stand in front of the one man who could smell a fake, and this time there was nothing to hide behind but each other.