Love Elimination (28 page)

Luke pushed his way into the room, stopping in front of Anna. Seeing her tear-stained face, he wrapped her up into a hug and leaned down until his lips brushed her ear.

‘Are you okay? Do you want to get out of here?’

‘Yes,’ Anna whispered back. ‘I need to leave.’

‘No one’s going anywhere. Luke, Anna—you are contractually obliged to take part in filming as and how we see fit,’ Joe said in a firm voice, ignoring the fact that he was listening in on a privately whispered discussion. ‘Now, everyone move back into the main room. It’s too small and crowded to film in here.’

Grabbing the bottle of wine and glasses she spied on Kate’s dressing table, Anna balanced the items and rushed from the room. Luke followed, never more than an arm’s-length away. Finally demonstrating the good sense to keep their distance, Kate and their mother took a seat on one side of the kitchen counter. Luke took the bottle from Anna’s shaking hands and poured her a glass. She downed it in three gulps and held out the glass again.

Luke raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything.

‘Please.’

When he hesitated, one of the crew members hurried forwards with a shot glass in hand. ‘Here, Anna. To take the edge off,’ the guy said by way of explanation for the tequila. It was the first time she’d accepted the strong liquor always on set and she immediately regretted it, despite knowing that she was imagining the fuzziness in her head—the alcohol couldn’t have hit her bloodstream the minute it touched her tongue.

‘Anna. Luke. Take a seat at the counter,’ Joe instructed as his team manoeuvred all the cameras into position. There was a camera per person—for close-ups, Anna presumed—plus a few others with their lenses twisted back, which appeared to be getting the wider group or couple shots. It was standing room only.

‘Now,’ Joe started, ‘do I have to script this scene or can you converse like a normal family? Talk about Anna’s life outside
Love Elimination
. Ladies, I want you quizzing Luke and Anna about their relationship. Action.’

‘What was Anna like as a kid?’

Luke played the doting boyfriend well. It was easy to pretend they were a happy couple. When he leaned over, putting his hand on her arm and whispering sweet nothings in her ear, some of the tension drained from her body. Of course, the alcohol might also have been helping.

‘Anna was adorable. She used to run around the house in Disney princess costumes twenty-four-seven. The funniest one was Ariel—complete with a mermaid tail,’ Kate said.

‘She always wanted to be in the kitchen. Her dad would balance her on top of a stool and she’d be drowning in an adult-sized apron. Do you remember, Anna? I don’t know where it went after … after …’ Her mum trailed off. The words had caught in her throat and it was clear that they weren’t coming out. Even after all these years, she couldn’t accept her husband’s death.

Anna shoved the burst of fury back down, until it was buried deep once more.

‘It’s here, Mum.’ Kate crossed to the pantry and pulled the door open. The apron used to be a dark blue-grey, but it had faded and frayed over the years. Anna’s dad had taught her how to sew when it first split. She was six years old. When the holes were too big to sew, they had covered them with bright fabric patches she’d picked out.

‘Why?’

‘Why what, Mum?’ Kate asked, smiling as she pulled the apron off the nail; they’d had to buy a hammer just to drive it into the door. She swished the fabric around Anna’s body and tied the straps around her neck. There was a brief moment when Anna forgave her older sister. Sentimentality washed through her.

‘What is your dad’s apron doing in this apartment? You can’t just take it. That was your
dad’s
apron,’ Leanne said, her eyes glazing over. ‘It belongs in his kitchen.’

‘You didn’t even notice it was missing,’ Kate murmured, even as Anna nudged her to shut up.

‘Give it back.’

‘No, Mum. Dad would’ve wanted Anna to have it. He always said he was just “keeping it warm” for her.’

‘He was my husband. You don’t get to decide. I decide.’ The woman’s whole body shook. She was seconds away from exploding. ‘Give. It. Back.’

‘You haven’t changed.’ Anna looked into her mum’s frantic eyes. Her hope slipped away, just as she realised it was there in the first place. She got out of her stool and made for the door, untying the apron and throwing it over the new couch as she went. The camera crew were too busy turning the cameras to catch her expression to realise that they should be trying to catch her before she made it out the door. By the time Joe started shouting orders, she’d crossed the room.

Anna ran past the limousine and the vans, then around the corner. Her hair whipped across her face and her feet slapped against the pavement. The muscles in her thighs burned. She ran until her breath raked through her throat and her stomach clenched. Her heartbeat in her ears was so loud that she didn’t realise she was being followed until she stopped to catch her breath.

‘Anna!’

Her body responded to Luke’s voice, but when she turned the crew member trailing just a metre behind Luke got a full body shot of her. He held his GoPro at eye level and watched her through its lens. Her red, swollen cheeks and bloodshot eyes would be all too clear from that distance. It was another betrayal. A second later a sleek black car pulled up next to them as if they were about to be abducted. A larger camera, one of the ones they usually prop up on tripods, poked out of the window.

Luke caught up to her and pulled her into his arms. Anna pushed him away, still gasping.

‘No. I don’t want them seeing this.’

He didn’t say anything. He just grabbed her hand and took off. Together they ran. Two alleyways, two shops, a supermarket. They lost the cameras. Luke ripped the microphone from her clothes, dumping it in the supermarket trash along with his own.

They slowed to a walk, and Anna found it easier to breathe. Eventually she started talking.

‘It’s like they both died.’ She looked up at the sky. ‘My mum switched off. She just opted out of life, only waking up to scream at me if I dared to move anything of Dad’s.’

Every word toppled over its predecessor, like they were trying to drown each other out. ‘When I left, I took a handful of photos, everything I wanted to keep from my room, and that apron.’ Luke took her hand, but Anna couldn’t deal with the kindness in his face. She kept her eyes on the sky, even as the tears threatened again. ‘She didn’t even say goodbye. I stood in front of her and begged her to look at me. But she wouldn’t. Couldn’t.’

Luke pulled her to a stop. He ran his hands along her shoulders and her throat. Then he kneaded her lower back. Anna arched her neck. Not because she was avoiding his gaze, but because of the warmth pooling inside her.

‘I remind her of him. Because of that, she pretended I didn’t exist for
years
. When my dad died, everything fell apart.’

‘Is that why you moved to Sydney?’

‘Yes.’

Luke dropped to the ground at the first patch of grass they found, and leaned against a tree trunk. He tugged on Anna’s hand so that she collapsed on top of him. With barely any effort, he pulled her between his legs. He wrapped his arms around her and held on tight until she relaxed into him.

‘How old were you when you moved out?’

‘Seventeen—just after graduating high school. As soon as I could.’ Anna inhaled. She’d never been to this park before. Working two jobs didn’t leave much time for frolicking. It was beautiful. Small, but spotted with large leafy trees and lush with grass. The explosion of green settled a feeling of peace within her.

‘Kate didn’t know?’

‘I told her parts. Not everything. There’s nothing she could have done. She was studying interstate. I didn’t want to worry her.’

A secret part of her had always wondered if Kate would have returned. Would her sister have rescued her if she’d known? If Anna had screamed and cried like she had today, would Kate have come back? And if she couldn’t have fixed their mum—and Anna knew, even back then, that she couldn’t—would she have whisked Anna away from that awful, empty house? It would’ve been a huge responsibility.

‘But they talk now. Kate and your mum, I mean.’

‘Yes. Kate was always Mum’s favourite. I was Dad’s.’ Closing her eyes, Anna recalled the last time she had seen her father. It was his body at the funeral that she remembered. How cold and pale his skin became in death. Only when that image faded did she see herself in the kitchen with him, baking, or him in the audience watching her school recitals, or just teaching her how to whistle.

‘Were you close back then?’

She would’ve cried if she dared let her emotions spill out without restraint. ‘She was my best friend. Then she moved interstate and I missed her so much. I didn’t have a lot of friends after Dad died.’ Anna whispered her answer.

‘That must have been really hard,’ he said.

‘Yes.’ Anna’s whole body concentrated on the feel of his breath against her neck, so close it intertwined with hers. She leaned her forehead into Luke’s neck and sighed.

‘Are you angry at her for leaving you?’

‘I didn’t think so. When I finished school, I moved straight into Kate’s apartment and she welcomed me with open arms. I never felt resentful. Today was the exception. Maybe I suppressed all those feelings? Maybe I just needed her by my side more than I needed to be angry at her?’

They stayed there for hours, talking about everything and nothing. The only topic they didn’t touch on again was Anna’s family life. Luke seemed to realise that she was emotionally spent. Every time the conversation drifted towards anything resembling her mother, father, sister or even high school, Luke shifted it.

Only when it started to get cold did he shift his weight and pull out his phone. It sprang to life with a never-ending series of messages and missed call notifications.

‘You’re popular,’ Anna remarked, unsure of whether it was invasive to look at the screen.

‘It’s the crew. Mostly Joe and Kate.’

‘I suppose they’re wondering where we are?’

‘Shit.’ Luke fumbled at the screen. ‘Anna, I’m sorry—but we have to go back.’

‘Can’t we just stay here a little longer?’

‘They’re threatening to sue you for breach of contract, Anna. They want the money back.’

Anna’s sense of calm cracked. Her almost complete renovations flashed across her mind. She was so close to having everything she wanted and now she was throwing it away. For what? For the man in front of her? It would never work. It didn’t matter that she loved him. Even if he loved her, they lived in separate worlds, miles apart.

‘Come on.’ Luke lurched to his feet, then grabbed Anna’s arm and pulled her to him. Her body slammed into his and only the threat of her impending financial crisis kept her from following up with her lips. She’d given up trying to fight the attraction long ago. If she was to go home, she wanted to take the memories of his lips, his hands, the tightness in his jeans when he pressed against her, with her.

The director shoved a script into Anna’s hands, then Luke’s, and took a seat opposite them in the limo. He gestured at the man next to him, who had a tripod propped on his lap and was holding it steady with his hands. The light on the camera flicked on and the driver started the car.

‘What’s this?’ Luke demanded as Anna bowed her head to read the first page. He had to tug his gaze from her eyelashes. Her beauty blew him away.

‘A script. You and Anna are going to follow it so we can save this episode from the train wreck it has become.’

‘The audience is not going to believe it when we look down to read every few seconds,’ Luke replied. He wanted to scrunch it up and throw it in the director’s face. The finale couldn’t come soon enough. He thought his experience with the media as an elite athlete would prepare him for filming. It hadn’t—this had been worse than anything he’d experienced back then. But despite the experience of the past few weeks, he certainly hadn’t needed a script to fall in love with Anna. If the crew couldn’t capture what was right in front of them, they weren’t very good at their jobs.

‘You’re going to memorise a line and say it to Anna; make it heartfelt. We’ll film a close-up of you and then you’ll say it again while we get Anna’s reaction on camera. Then we’ll do the same for Anna until you’ve made it through the whole goddamn script and I’m happy with your responses.’

‘We’re not actors, Joe.’

‘No, but you both signed contracts for this show and you will honour them.’

‘Just try suing me.’ Luke glared at the director. The man was an idiot to think he could challenge him. Anna squeezed his thigh. The only reason he didn’t walk away from the show now was because of her. He might be able to afford a lawsuit, but she certainly couldn’t—and he didn’t think she’d accept a cheque from him. Besides, he needed the time to convince her they could be together in the world outside
Love Elimination
.

‘What about Anna? She’ll probably lose her café if the show, and that cheque, fall through. You don’t want that to happen, do you?’

It wasn’t easy for him to concede. Luke was used to winning. The only person he’d ever bowed to was his father. To do it in front of Anna, first to his father and now to Joe, hurt his ego. He wanted to fight for her, not back down. But that’s what she needed him to do. The only way to protect her was to go through with the episode, play the game, and send her home.

‘Fine,’ Luke said. He pulled up the script and delivered the first line to Anna’s confused face.

The script forced Anna to explain the family date in a blow-by-blow style. The lines tugged at her emotions until there were tears in her eyes again. Luke was willing to bet they were from humiliation and frustration at their situation this time, and not her mother or sister. His fist grew tighter until his knuckles turned white and the muscles in his hand spasmed.

By page four, Luke had long stopped reading ahead, so he didn’t see it coming when she said, ‘I love you.’ His heart stopped and when it started again, it pounded twice as hard.

‘Great reaction, Luke,’ the director said, before turning his attention to Anna.