How to End a Love Story(15)

The day finally comes to an end sometime around five p.m. She hears Eve murmur to Tom, “Nice to have a room with shorter hours for once,” and Helen thinks short! as she packs up her own bag.

She lingers after everyone else has filtered out, and hovers awkwardly by the door as Suraya and the writers’ assistant review their board notes.

“Is there anything else you need from me?” Helen asks, trying to sound casual about it.

Suraya smiles in a slightly indulgent way.

“How do you feel about everything?”

“Oh, um.” Helen pauses, because she never knows what kind of answer people expect to that kind of question. “Fine. Good, I think. It was a good first day, right? You would know better than me.”

Suraya nods and starts packing up as well.

“It gets easier,” she says. “As you get to know the rhythms of the room.”

“Right, that makes sense,” Helen lies.

Suraya looks up and considers her for a moment.

“If you’re anything like me—and I suspect you are,” she says, with a wagging finger, “you’ve got enough instant replay tape going on in your brain right now to last through the weekend.”

“Ha,” Helen says weakly.

“Try not to spend too much time looking backward,” Suraya advises. “I promise no one’s thinking about anything you’ve said as much as they’re thinking about themselves and how they’ll impress everyone tomorrow.”

“Right,” Helen says.

Suraya hesitates for just a fraction of a second before she adds, “You did well today. See you tomorrow.”

Helen tries very hard not to replay that fraction of a second of hesitation over and over on her ride down the elevator.

She exits the building and collides immediately and gracelessly into the back of Grant Shepard, who’s standing near the door with his phone to his ear.

“—not the best use of my time,” he finishes into the phone, before he turns and catches sight of her. “Let me call you back.”

Helen squares her shoulders—I don’t care—and moves past him.

“Hey,” he says, and they’re walking side by side in a few short paces. “Helen, wait up.”

“I have a lot of work to do at home,” she says.

“Me too,” he says, and she thinks, crap, should I actually have homework to do? “I wasn’t talking about the room, on that phone call. My agent’s trying to get me to meet on this other show that’s not even for sure happening yet, and—”

“You should take the meeting,” Helen says, as if she knows anything about this industry. “You know I wouldn’t miss you.”

Grant falters a step, then he lets out a huff of air and redoubles his pace alongside her.

“Thanks for that,” he says dryly, an underlying note of fuck you too in his tone.

She knows she’s being an asshole, but some part of her feels grossly relieved to find she still has a voice that isn’t a stuttering string of nothings.

“You know, if you gave me half a chance, I could help you,” Grant says.

“I don’t need your help,” Helen snaps.

“Coulda fooled me,” Grant says as they walk toward the parking lot.

“I was just—being observant today,” Helen says. “I don’t feel the need to establish dominance in every room I walk into—you know what, I don’t need to explain myself to you. Fuck off.”

“Fuck you too,” he snaps, and she feels a thrill of vindication—I knew you were thinking it.

Grant freezes, as if just realizing what he’s said out loud. “Fuck, I don’t mean that—dammit, Helen, I hoped we could be friends.”

Did he really? Helen doubts that.

“We are friendly,” she says. “In the room. Don’t talk to me outside of it and we can keep it that way.”

“Helen,” he starts, in a painfully soft voice.

“Please stop,” she says in a gasping rush, and hopes her eyes aren’t as shiny as they feel. “Stop—stop trying to be nice to me, stop trying to explain things to me, stop calling us friends, stop trying to help. I don’t want your help, I’ve never wanted your help, and this would all go so much better if we could please . . . just have as little interaction as possible, outside the room.”

She stares at him miserably. Some unreadable expression flickers behind his eyes.

Grant swallows, then shakes his head.

“See you tomorrow, then,” he says in a low breath that sounds almost like a laugh, and walks off.

Helen watches him go and feels some frustrated mix of pride and misery and an overwhelming need to fix this. She thinks of her earlier discomfort in the room and tells herself all she has to do is get over it.

She remembers a dictionary of English aphorisms her parents kept in the house to learn the language of their American peers; her parents’ favorite phrase in it was mind over matter. “Mind over matter,” they recited to each other, the way Catholics recited the Lord’s Prayer. “Mind over matter,” when she was fighting back tears as Dad taped up her skinned seven-year-old knees. “Mind over matter,” when they were in that first cramped apartment that didn’t have any air-conditioning because they couldn’t afford it back then. Mind over matter, the entire funeral, when she was surrounded by so much parental grief, she couldn’t find any leftover place to put her own.