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She went into her contacts and called Harper. She noticed the foreign dial tone, another sign that they were far apart. It rang out for a minute, and Mia was about to hang up when Harper picked up.
“Hello?”
Mia didn’t say anything.
“Hello, Mia? Can you hear me?”
She let out a single sob, realizing she had no idea what to say. She could hear music and shouting in the background. Harper was at a party.
Somebody on the other line called Harper’s name, and she said, “Mia, I’m needed right now but call me back if it’s urgent.”
Was it urgent? When you haven’t spoken to someone for over two weeks but you’re not even sure if they’ll want to talk to you, is “I miss you” urgent?
Somebody was knocking on the door.
“Miss Cortés? Is everything alright?”
She wiped her eyes.
I can’t afford to cry anymore.
Harper was her representation. She was her agent. She was a foot in the door to opportunity, someone who coordinated events, nothing more, nothing less.
It was easy, at first. Mia had a lot to keep herself occupied. Sure, the shine had worn off. Interviews felt less like a novelty and more invasive than they used to. Photoshoots had become her least favorite part of press days. She wanted input, control over her image and how she presented herself. None of that mattered right now. They could ask her to pose naked behind a giant cactus and she would agree because it meant that she was busy.
Busy was good. Busy kept her occupied. If she had questions, she could direct them to Carson, and after answering several more she would get an answer. It dawned on her from the tone he used while talking to her that he didn’t like Mia all that much. That was alright. Mia had become very good at keeping things professional.
At least, she was very good at keeping things professional until one night in a strange hotel in Joshua Tree National Park. Sleeping naked under nothing but a sheet, the night was dense with desert heat and Mia just couldn’t settle down. She hadn’t been allowed to think about anything but work, hadn’t been allowed to think of anything period. Now that she wasn’t distracted, or being yelled at by paparazzi, or recording a third line of backing vocals, her once-quiet brain had become loud.
Harper was in Italy, partying with her rich friends, and Mia was alone in a strange town surrounded by people she didn’t really know. She wanted to go home, wanted to figure out where on Earth home was. She was far from the Indigo Lounge, further from Spain, and even further from Harper.
That was too much for her to handle. Knowing she was alone, knowing nobody but the wildlife could hear her, Mia allowed herself to cry. This was her first moment of real privacy in a while, and all she could bring herself to do was cry. She wanted Harper back in her orbit. She felt like a child, selfish and upset, but she couldn’t help it.
Time passed slowly that night. Mia would sob in bursts, then sit up in bed in silence. The screens on the windows kept bugs out, so she got up and allowed the desert wind to fill the room. She knew she didn’t have the heart to sleep, so she allowed herself to think clearly. She was being honest with herself for the first time in weeks. The truth was simple, and had been looking her in the face for a while.
The truth was that she wasn’t happy. She wasn’t. She could fool her co-workers, she could lie to her friends and family, but she couldn’t lie to herself anymore.
She rolled over and grabbed her phone from the bedside locker, looking for something to listen to so she could pass the time. She had spent so much intense time in the trenches of the industry that her own love for music had subsided, but she knew it would make her feel…not better, exactly; it wouldn’t make her feel better, but it would make her feel less alone.
As she was scrolling through her phone, she saw that she had an email from the label with a schedule update. She was tempted not to read it at all, to save it until the morning, but the temptation passed. She opened it. She had a small, intimate show the following week, followed by a questions-and-answers session. She smiled. Though sometimes they would be invasive, Mia had attracted a fanbase of understanding, kind people, made up particularly of other lesbians. Suddenly, a detail at the bottom of the email stopped her in her tracks.
It had been sent from Harper’s email address, and her out-of-office message wasn’t attached to the email.
She must be back in the country.
And then, the unavoidable.
I need to speak to her.
12
Harper would normally have somebody else do the unpacking for her. Especially after a long work trip like this, she would like nothing more than to curl up on the sofa with a glass of wine and rewatch something comforting like Bound.
She needed to think, and that meant having something to do with her hands. Italy was wonderful, but travelling for business was never the same as a vacation. Harper couldn’t afford to walk around the Milan airport in sweatpants and a t-shirt when two hours later she would be guiding a press group to a boardroom in Verona. She was always put together, always on high alert and always in control, at least, until Mia had called her while she was in Verona.
A few months earlier, before Harper had even met Mia, she had gotten incredible news; one of her artists, a New Jersey-based singer-actress-dancer, had gotten a role in a new film version of Romeo and Juliet. She already had a huge following and experience on Broadway, but this would be her film debut. Now that filming had wrapped and the news had been made public, the press tour had spanned the length and breadth of Northern Italy and taken her far away from Mia. She hadn’t stepped back completely, instead handing off most of the work to Carson. He was a hard-working kid, always seemed to be in the right place at the right time, and very eager to learn. He would treat Mia well.
So, she had been able to focus on the logistics of a bilingual, multimedia press tour without worrying too much about what was going on at home. It was lucky that they had translators, otherwise she would have been completely out of her depth. Italy had been just as beautiful as when she had last visited, and her brief stopover in Verona had been nothing short of magical—cobbled streets and starry night skies straight out of a fantasy.
