Fake Halo

by Piper Lennox

  And even if he did like me, I think, after I tell Georgia I’m going to nap for a while and go to my room, it wouldn’t last.

  It never does.

  “Will you stop staring at me? I told you, I’ll post it tonight.”

  I blink as Clara rises from her spot on the floor with Bowie. That’s not why I was staring at her. Her outfit today is some mash-up of her weird style and overall tendency to look so cute, it’s sexy.

  “Why does your dress have...” I lean closer and squint. “...bowls of ramen all over it?”

  “It’s the ramen from Ponyo,” she says, like I should have any idea what that means. Shyly, she adds, “I just like it.”

  I pretend to study the dress again. It’s a good excuse to get close.

  “Your eczema is healing well.” I nod at her legs. She’s been showing more and more skin lately. It’s not good for me.

  Red-faced, she takes a breath and nods at the door behind me. “Can I go now?”

  Hesitating, I step aside.

  Don’t say it. Don’t say it.

  “In a hurry to meet up with Ewan?”

  Clara freezes. Her hand grips the doorknob, but doesn’t turn it.

  Slowly, she looks at me. “So what if I am?”

  “Aren’t you curious how I know about him?”

  “I’m assuming you either saw my sketchbook,” she snaps, spinning to face me again, “or you’ve followed me at some point.”

  Hold up: she sketched him?

  “Sketchbook,” I say quickly, and grab my shoes and keys. Clara looks mildly horrified at the prospect of me joining her at the dog park, which solidifies my decision to do just that. “Is it serious?”

  “It’s none of your business. That’s what it is.” She seems to second-guess this answer—I guess thinking, if she downplays it, she’ll rob me of any satisfaction I’d get from following her—because as soon as we get in the elevator she shrugs, “We’re dating, but it’s still new.”

  “Exclusive?”

  “We haven’t said.”

  I snort. “So...no.”

  “This may come as a shock, but not every guy is a pig like you. Just because we haven’t said it’s exclusive, doesn’t mean he’s....”

  Her insecurity rings like a bell through the fading end of her sentence. I wait, then finish, “Doesn’t mean he’s balls-deep in a different cunt every night of the week?”

  Clara gags and laughs at the same time. “God, shut up. And don’t say that word.”

  “You don’t like it?”

  “I despise it.”

  “Disrespectful?”

  “Not sexy. It sounds like Bundt.”

  “Of all the reasons you could give to hate that word, I didn’t expect its similarity to ‘Bundt’ to be one.” I smile and shake my head. “You’re so weird.”

  “Both just hit my ear completely wrong. You don’t hear it? It doesn’t bug you?”

  “Not really.” I decide we need a joke. I decide I want to hear her laugh one more time before we’re out of this elevator, because I like how that quiet, small sound fills this space so completely. “I could put my dick in either.”

  She laughs. It goes straight to my brain.

  “Hmm. Your standards are even lower than I thought, then: I assumed you merely put your dick into anything that moved.”

  I crack up, then follow her as soon as the door opens.

  “Are you really coming to the dog park with us? What’s the point of me walking Bowie, then?” Clara tries to emphasize her anger, but I can tell she’s actually nervous.

  “Maybe I want to meet Ewan.” In the glare of the street, I slip on my hat and sunglasses. “Ask him where he got that God-awful name.”

  “You’re one to talk. ‘Westcott.’ It sounds like a ski resort.”

  “Family tradition. All Durham boys are subjected to some female ancestor’s maiden name as a first.” I pause. “At least Westcott shortens to something normal. I feel horrible for my cousin Bingham.”

  Clara laughs again. Out here in the open, it dissipates way too quickly.

  “What about you? Was your mom a huge fan of The Nutcracker or something?”

  “Surprised you knew that reference,” she smiles, but shakes her head. “My mom had great-aunts who were twins. Rose Clara and Elizabeth Georgia. So she just switched the firsts and middles. Nothing too interesting.”

  “Clara Rose,” I say softly, tasting it against every corner of my mouth. When she glances at me, I meet her eyes and smile. She looks away fast enough to give herself whiplash.

  “Your dad didn’t have any input on your names?” I ask. Dads aren’t my favorite subject, but I don’t like walking in silence. I want to make her laugh and smile again.

  And if Ewan happens to see me doing it—so much the better.

  “My dad...wasn’t the type to do that.”

  “What ‘type?’ A guy who actually gives a shit about his unborn kids?”

  I’m joking, but her expression tells me I struck a serious nerve.

  “He was really hands-off,” she explains, after a minute of tension that I use to silently kick myself. “Every day after work, he’d just go to bars or hang out with his friends, then come home early in the morning to shower and go back to the office.”

  “So your mom raised you both by herself, basically.” I exhale through flattened lips. “That sucks. I hope your mom’s given him a piece or two of her mind since then.”

  She folds her arms and shrugs. I know that look.

  “Fuck. He left, didn’t he?”

  “We were seven. It...it’s really not a big deal. The worst part was Mom having to get a full-time job, because he wasn’t paying child support or anything, so we had to stay with neighbors all the time after school. And I mean...if that’s the worst part? Then we were pretty lucky.”

  I know all too well that’s not the worst part.

  The worst part is being left.

  “Did he ever say why he took off?”

  Clara presses the back of her hands to her cheeks, I assume to cool the blush starting there. It’s not her usual cute blush; this is full-on shame. When she doesn’t answer, I elbow her. She flinches.

  “He just told Mom it was too hard. Having two kids when he didn’t really want any. One of us having ‘special needs.’ All that.”

  “To his credit, I can’t imagine a more taxing childcare routine than raising the Antichrist.”

  “Believe it or not, Georgia was quite docile as a child.” The smile I almost made her give fades, snuffed out before it can form. “It was me.”

  “Sorry, stupid question time: how were you, in any possible way, considered a special needs child?”

  “I actually wasn’t.” Now there’s distant anger on her face as she waves her hand. Good. I don’t like seeing her sad over him. Shitty fathers don’t deserve tears.

  “But as far as he was concerned, I was. Because of my…condition.”

  “The hair stuff?” I whisper this. Not just because it’s one of her secrets; in fact, I don’t even think of that aspect. But I know she’s embarrassed by it.

  After a beat, she nods. “I was afraid to tell the truth about it, so I told everyone it fell out, instead. For a while they treated me for alopecia, before a doctor figured out I was lying and told us what I actually had. So then I was in therapy for that, got put on all these medications....”

  “There are meds for that?”

  “Antidepressants. But they only help some people. For the rest of us...they either do nothing, or make things a lot worse. I fell into the ‘worse’ camp.”

  “How so?”

  “Crying and screaming all the time. Fits of rage, according to my report cards for that year.”

  “Rage? You?”

  “Not me. The pills.”

  At this, I tilt my head and nod. I certainly know how that goes.

  “Well, for what it’s worth? Your dad sounds like a shithead who just used you and your sister, but especially you, as a
convenient excuse to fuck off and do whatever he wanted, instead of being a responsible parent.”

  When she mutters her thanks, I can tell she’s not buying it. Maybe some source-citing will help.

  “My dad wasn’t around either. Same reason: never wanted a kid. He bailed on my mom while she was still pregnant with me.”

  “I thought you didn’t know who your dad was?”

  I watch, equally fascinated and weirded out, as she stoops to pick up a crushed soda can on the sidewalk and pitch it into a trash can. What’s the point? One down, 9,999,999 pieces of litter to go: cleaning the streets of New York is the biggest fool’s errand there is.

  Still—I like that she did it. Even if I never would.

  Especially because I never would.

  “You reading my interviews again?”

  She rolls her eyes. “It’s fairly common knowledge.”

  True. Mom’s pregnancy with me caused a mild stir in Hollywood, because there were at least ten A- and B-list candidates when it came to the father. The media loved that little guessing game.

  “I’m almost positive it was Jon LaSalle,” I tell Clara, pulling up a photo of him on my phone from decades ago, when he was my age. “I know Mom dated him for a few weeks, around the time I would’ve been conceived.”

  “Whoa.” She grabs the phone. Actually, she grabs my hand around the phone, which is wonderfully different. “You look just like him.”

  “Yep. Sing just like him, too.”

  “You wish,” she snorts. “Jon LaSalle had that country rock baritone thing going on. You’re...I don’t even know what.”

  “And you,” I retort, as we round the corner to the last street before our destination, “are rude. You just haven’t heard me in the right context. Catch me in the shower, you’ll see.”

  “I’d rather not.” She pretends to scratch the skin around her facial piercing, hiding her smile. “So do you think he’s Delaney’s dad, too?”

  “No, he died two years before she was born. Mom used a sperm donor for her. Don’t ask why, because I still haven’t figured it out. Some kind of mid-life crisis, I guess.”

  Clara laughs through her nose, then squints at our shoes thoughtfully. “Huh. I just realized we both use our mothers’ maiden names. Durham and Hurley.”

  We’ve got a lot more in common than that, I think. Similar taste in at least a few bands; fathers who wanted nothing to do with us; and siblings wildly different from us, yet who we’d still take bullets for without question.

  And, of course, a mutual disliking of each other. As far as she knows.

  The dog park appears. Clara’s suddenly breathing faster than Bowie, who practically chokes himself on his collar trying to run ahead.

  As soon as we’re past the gate, I see him.

  I couldn’t get a good look Saturday night when Delaney and I were coming back from the river, even though they were maybe ten feet ahead getting into a taxi. In the streetlights and sidewalk traffic, he hadn’t looked like much.

  He still doesn’t—too lanky. Soft jaw. His Vineyard Vines polo looks like he ironed it with actual starch.

  But Clara lights up like Times fucking Square the second she sees him, which makes me default into Asshole Mode.

  When he hugs her and goes for a kiss, I take comfort in the fact she turns her cheek to him, instead. Even if it’s only because I’m here.

  “Ewan,” she says, spine like a steel post as she motions to me, “this is Wes...tcott Durham.”

  I catch the smirk she hides.

  “Westcott,” Ewan says as he shakes my hand. “Nice to meet you. Are you a friend of Clara’s?”

  Yeah, I’m the friend who ate her out until her thighs shook.

  “I’m her boss, actually.” Clara elbows me as we sit on a nearby bench—then does it again, twice as hard, when I flop between the two of them and really spread out. “She’s my assistant.”

  Ewan hesitates, then leans around me to look at Clara. “I thought you were a YouTube personality.”

  “I am. He’s just—”

  “Ewan. Where the hell are you from, man? Your accent sounds like all the GPS navigators trying to talk at once.”

  “Durham.”

  “Uh...well, I was born in New Ze—”

  “Cool, cool. So, listen. I’m going to need you to stop these little rendezvous with my assistant when she’s on the clock. I assume you two meet up here every morning? And that’s a problem. If she’s on her own time, sure. But not when she’s on mine.”

  “Don’t listen to him, Ewan. He’s just being a jerk.”

  “I’m sorry, Hurley—was I talking to you? If you’ve got an issue with the rules of your employment...maybe we should just end the whole arrangement today.”

  Good old Ewan looks mildly panicked. “No talking to her on the clock, that’s...that’s easy enough. I don’t want her losing her job over it.”

  “Good call,” I tell him, winking and spreading myself out when he gets up from the bench. Clara rushes after him and grabs his elbow.

  “No, Ewan, don’t go. He’s not.... This isn’t my job.”

  I squint at her. “Then what would you call it, Hurley?”

  “A fucking nightmare,” she spits at me over her shoulder, but softens like butter when she looks back at him.

  He’s got a real punchable face.

  They chat under their breath. I check my watch and clear my throat every time he so much as fucking touches her shoulder or hand, until finally he leashes his dog and leaves.

  Clara spins back to me, absolutely fuming.

  Twenty

  I’m going to kill him.

  For now, in broad daylight with all these two- and four-legged witnesses, I’ll settle for slapping him across the face.

  He just laughs, rubbing his jaw like it tickled. I don’t care. I know it hurt, because my palm stings and my wrist aches like the start of a sprain.

  “You fucking asshole.”

  “Sorry I scared off your pathetic little boyfriend, Hurley. Guy can’t even take a joke.”

  “That wasn’t a joke, that was mean. And you’re not sorry. You’re never sorry for any damn thing.”

  I grab my bag.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Clocking out early, boss.”

  A strange look crosses his face. I’d almost call it guilt.

  Maybe if I were hallucinating.

  When I turn away, it registers with me: worry, with just a hint of desperation. He doesn’t want me to go. Is it actually possible he’s gotten attached to me, somehow?

  Before I can explore this thought, of course, he has to ruin it.

  “Maybe it’s time I post something else.”

  Ice fills my chest when I turn back. For all his hinting, Wes has yet to actually threaten me with the email.

  Breathing hard, I stalk back to the bench and throw my bag down between us when I sit.

  I put my face in my hands.

  I cry.

  He breathes a curse. In my periphery, I watch his hands rake through his hair and then slap his knees. He clenches them into fists. Almost like he wants to reach for me, but knows he shouldn’t.

  “Clara...come on. People are staring.”

  Another first: other than repeating “Clara Rose” during our walk here, I don’t think he’s ever called me by my first name. Not to my face.

  I try to remember if I’ve ever called him Wes...or just Durham.

  “I don’t care,” I hiccup. I’m sure they’ve seen much worse in this city.

  Whistling for Bowie, Wes stands and clips him into his leash, then taps my shoulder with the back of his hand. “Let’s go.”

  God, this can’t be worth it.

  Would it really be that bad? So Wes leaks one little email. So my secrets spill into daylight and crawl the internet like a bad rash. Who says it would be a total disaster, or any worse than six and a half more weeks of the emotional whiplash and trickling degradation that is “assisting”
Wes Durham?

  So Rue Royale might cancel our hair care line. Or all the lines.

  Our fans would know at least a quarter of our videos through the years feature me using fake lashes and penciled-in brows, but pretending they’re my own, or that I’ve used hats and extensions and spray-in fillers on my scalp every few months in a random rotation. So they’ll know I’m sick in the head. I must be, to keep doing it, unable to stop no matter what I try.

  Georgia would know I talk about her in therapy—that a tiny thread of resentment has woven itself into something larger, from the moment she revised her promise from years ago, turning our hobby into a brand, and all the fun into a life I’m sometimes not sure I want.

  Slowly, I rise from the bench, grab my bag, and follow Wes through the gate.

  “Is it official?”

  Wes hasn’t spoken since we left the dog park. He blurts this in the hallway outside his apartment like it was on his mind the entire time, though.

  As soon as he unlocks the door, I shove past him inside. I’m in desperate need of some tissues. “Is what official?”

  While I blow my nose in his bathroom, he lingers by the door, shoulder rolling back and forth on the frame. “You and Mr. Mystery Accent.”

  Every last thing in this bathroom is gray. I’ve used it before, but never noticed the monochromatic color scheme until now. Funnily enough, I like it. The cold gunmetal expresses exactly how I feel right now.

  I put down the lid of the toilet and sit. Wes rolls into view again and stays there.

  “No. We’ve only been on a couple dates. But I think he wants things to...progress that way, yeah.”

  “And what do you want?”

  “Why do you care?”

  I expect Wes to shrug. He’s always playing things too cool. Never lets himself get too happy or too excited about anything. What a sad, boring way to live.

  Instead, he twists his mouth and considers this.

  “I don’t like the idea of you with him,” he says.

  This is unexpected. Sure, we had a nice chat on our way to the dog park earlier...for about five minutes. Like every other nice moment we have together, he had to ruin it.

  I grab another wad of tissues. “How is it any of your business who I’m with?”