So then, with no grace, or skill, or sense of delivery, Audrey stopped kissing Harper and pulled her head away.
To their enormous credit, the people in the room did not polite clap. If they had, Audrey might have started crying. She was already on the brink of it. But everyone assembled understood her shame in those moments. Some of them offered kind smiles. Some of them looked away, pretended to take notes or read things on their phones. Somehow she managed to avoid looking at Merritt, but Noel’s attempt to not look mortified on her behalf, to look caring if not cheerful, wasn’t at all successful.
“So that’s it, right?” Heather eventually said to Bo. “We’ve got what we need?”
“Got what we need,” Bo said. He looked at Audrey. She looked away first.
And then Heather, now talking like synthetic sunshine, said, “OK! Great. Lots more food in the back, everybody.” She had a smile on her face and her hand out as she approached Audrey. “Thanks so much for trying this out with us last minute.”
Audrey scurried out from under the table and found words to say as they shook hands. “Of course,” she said. “Thank you so much for asking me to.”
Heather nodded her shimmery bob once in this very final yep, really didn’t work, don’t ever, ever call us kind of way. So before she could escape the room along with the other people hurrying out, Audrey asked her, quietly, “Is the other part? I mean—is Eleanor—have you cast somebody else in that role?”
“Yesterday,” Heather said. “Esme Oates. Do you know her? She’s great.”
“I don’t know her,” Audrey lied. “But thank you.”
After that it was just a not-that-prolonged shuffle through uncomfortable goodbyes to get out of there. People were busy navigating the awkwardness of professionally stepping around so stunning a failure, while also not going overboard with phony cheer. It was, in a word, Readers: weird.
Harper gave Audrey a one-armed hug and said something like It was so great to finally meet you. Merritt managed to shake hands, a better greeting than she’d given Audrey out front, and even said, quietly, “Sorry again about earlier. I genuinely didn’t mean to doubt your queer cred.” She seemed earnest enough about this, but even still: fuck Merritt Emmons, Readers.
Soon enough it was only her people—Gray and Caroline and Noel—and Bo and his assistant left in the room. And Bo and his assistant were deep in quiet conversation. So Audrey had to wait.
She knew she wasn’t good enough for this part. She had known it right away, the day before at the table with Gray and Noel, there in the green-seed rain. But it still sucks, a lot, to have that kind of knowledge—your sense of your own inadequacy—confirmed for you. And in this case confirmed for you in front of an audience.
Shame burned in Audrey’s chest and behind her eyes. Really all she wanted to do now was get out the door to the privacy of Noel’s car, where she could cry. But Bo and his fucking assistant were blocking her exit path. So she waited, trading glances with her people, trying not to cry, not to cry, not to cry. At some point she locked onto that stupid House Mother poster and had a stare-off with the fake-bloodied Caroline, the one who had been about her age. Why did any of this ever seem like a good idea? she wanted to ask that version of her mom. And has it ever really been worth it?
Eventually, not soon enough, Bo finished his conversation and his assistant left, shutting the door behind her.
He didn’t make Audrey wait. “Well, that was very bad,” he said, leaning up against the edge of his desk where Harper had been earlier. “Quelle horreur!” He gestured for everyone left in the room to sit as well. “I mean you went for it, didn’t you? Can’t say otherwise.”
“I know,” Audrey said. She didn’t want to sit. She wanted to make with the pleasantries and get the hell out of there. “I don’t even—”
“You really let Merritt get under your skin, huh?” he said. Was he smiling? He was smiling. “Or was it your mom showing up?”
She felt off-balance. Wind-knocked. “No, it wasn’t—”
He cut her off again. “Either way, it’s what we want. And what we’ll want more of.” He again gestured for them to sit.
Audrey didn’t think she’d heard him right.
But then Gray said, “I think so, too,” as he settled himself, comfortably, in the seat Merritt had