“Lavender marriage?” Elise asked, frowning slightly. Was that some new-age slang? Then she remembered a TikTok she’dscrolled past a few weeks ago about a man and woman in a relationship where only one of them was straight. “Oh,” she added.
“It was the first time I had heard of it,” Harper said. “I would never have referred to our marriage as a lavender marriage, but neither would Harry until one of his colleagues brought it up.” She sighed so heavily that Elise felt it vibrate through the blanket between them. “I guess he started connecting the dots.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Harper said. “It was about time, I think. I was always traveling and in the beginning, Harry came with me a lot of times. But he stopped in the last few years. I should’ve seen it coming.”
Elise wanted to know why Harper was here, in Positano, working on this show, but she had a feeling she knew the answer already. An answer she didn’t want to hear.
“What happened withNational Geographic?” Elise asked instead. Obviously, she hadn’t been following Harper that closely in the last year because she had no idea Harper had leftNational Geographic. She was far too busy working and, most recently, trying to make absolutely sure no one ever called the showThe Never Rose Showagain.
“It’s a long story,” Harper said, quieter than before. In fact, she looked entirely distracted. “You probably don’t have time for it.”
This was true. Elise didn’t have time for a long story. She had to get back to work. But the very nature of her being leaned toward curiosity. She was so curious, she even leaned a little forward, like she was trying to yank the story from Harper’s throat. “Just give me the summary. What happened?”
But Harper didn’t answer her; she just changed the topic. “Do you really believe these dating shows actually lead people to finding love? Or is it all just smoke and mirrors?”
Elise shrugged and pretended she wasn’t bothered by the change in subject. “Honestly?” she said, glancing down at her crossed legs. It was a miracle she’d managed to sit down on the ground considering how stiff her jeans were. Now she wondered how she was going to stand up without either making a fool of herself or needing Harper’s help. “I guess it depends on who you ask,” she said. “Technically, the bachelorettehasfound love.”
“ELISE! ELISE!” someone called from the terrace. “WHERE ARE YOU!?”
It was Monica.
Elise shot up so quickly she nearly kicked over all three ceramic plates. It seemed her jeans weren’t as tight as she thought. “I have to go,” she said just as quickly. “Thanks for the picnic.” Then she bolted before Harper could even say something or do something to keep her there. And frankly, Elise shouldn’t have been there in the first place.
Chapter Nine
Harper had never attended a rose ceremony before, and she was glad for it. The whole setup was far more stressful than she had ever imagined. There were lighting checks, mic checks, and Fiona was blotting some kind of anti-shine powder on Megan’s cheeks. A PA was obsessively adjusting the bright yellow Banksia roses—nine long-stemmed beauties with perfectly shaped petals resting on a carved limestone pedestal shaped like a massive Amalfi citrus branch. A sound tech was crouched behind a potted lemon tree, fiddling with a cord which Harper couldn’t even begin to understand where it came from. Somewhere to her left, someone shouted for ‘last looks,’ and someone else was begging for just sixty more seconds to fix whatever was wrong with camera B.
The entire place felt like a hive about to collapse under its own anxiety.
At least Harper had managed to keep a level head. A reality TV show based on a staged scramble for one woman’s heart never stopped being ridiculous to her. Over the last fifteen minutes or so, she had taken several slow, roaming shots, a few tight close-ups as well as a couple of wide, sweeping frames of the villa’s gold-lit foyer.
Now her camera was aimed at the contestants. Instead of photographing skittish wildlife, Harper was photographing skittish women. Same wide eyes. Same stiff posture. Same sense that one wrong move could be the end.
All of them were lined up on the stone steps that led down from the villa. Harper lifted her camera just in time to catch Kira tugging at her canary yellow body-con dress that not only lookedtoo tight butwastoo tight. Harper had spotted her earlier, shimmying her way to the steps. She then captured a shot of Elena pulling out a small tube of lip gloss, which she smeared all over her lips, and then Mara cracking her knuckles. She caught a shot of Jasmine shaking out her shoulders while she leaned over to whisper something in Amelia’s ear, whose gaze kept skittishly scanning the driveway. Frankly, Harper had seen painted dogs in Okavango look calmer than this. And those poor animals had to continually defend their prey from the lions.
“We’re five minutes behind!”
Harper whipped around so suddenly she nearly tripped over an extension cord snaking along a section of the driveway. But it wasn’t Elise, only someone who sounded like Elise, and Harper felt a hole open up in her stomach.
It had been more than twenty-four hours since the picnic, and Harper hadn’t seen Elise since. Not even a blur of her blonde curls. Then this morning, Harper had popped by Elise’s house, hoping she could slip in and surprise her again, but alas, the door was locked. She’d considered knocking but had reached the conclusion that Elise would in fact ignore her no matter how hard she knocked. So, she’d given up prematurely and spent the rest of the morning photographing the small group date. Megan had chosen five contestants—Kira, Tori, Elena, Jamie, and Nadia—to do a limoncello-making workshop with a local Nonna, who had shown them how to press the peels into small glass jars and use the correct ratio of sugar, water, and neutral grain vodka. After that, they had gone on a scenic Vespa ride through the winding roads, which had nearly taken an ugly turn when Kira and Megan’s scooter had wobbled for some unknown reason as they slipped into the small town of Nocelle.
Harper hadn’t had a second to breathe, let alone track Elise down. And now, at the rose ceremony, she was nowhere in sight. Which was disappointing. Harper had even dressedup for tonight, despite thankfully not appearing anywhere on camera. She was wearing an ivory suit with short sleeves and black, clunky ankle boots. Her hair was up in a low bun and parted sleekly in the middle. A delicate gold chain peeked at her collarbone, and thin gold loops glinted from her ears.
She wanted to impress. She wanted Elise to swallow her breath and choke on her life choices. And so she gave one last glance around the driveway before giving up and heading inside. There she scanned past the camera crew and lights, past the heavily decorative foyer where Megan was standing under a grand arched window filtering in the last of the sunlight. Around her feet were small, barely there markers showing where the contestants should stand when they received a rose. The console table with the flower arrangement was gone, and ivy adorned the dark wood balustrades of the sweeping staircase.
“Everyone ready?” Monica asked, stepping down onto the travertine floor wearing a plum-colored dress that brought out the brown tones of her skin. She walked toward Megan and smiled, and Harper captured the moment with a quick 85mm portrait lens. “Your first rose ceremony,” she said. “How are you feeling?”
“Nervous,” Megan said, rubbing her palms together. She wore a ring on practically every finger. Her nails were short and lacquered in a metallic sage green, and her dress matched perfectly. “I don’t think I’ve given the bachelorette on the previous seasons enough credit. It’s hard to send someone home. Especially so early.”
“It is,” Monica agreed, giving just the right amount of sympathy. “Anyone with a heart feels it. Nerves just mean you care about getting it right. It’s a good thing.”
Megan nodded and took a deep breath as if she were preparing to take the bar exam. Seriously, why was this sostressful? She put on a brave smile that Harper caught with a tight, intimate close-up.
“Okay, people.” Elise appeared out of nowhere. “We’re going to bring the contestants in. I want soft lighting across the front.”
Harper remembered thinking once upon a time that Elise had the ability to appear as if she could walk through walls. Which she technically had seconds before they had first met. It was the second day of shooting, and Harper was taking photos of an abandoned kitchen in the ghost town of Kolmanskop. One minute she was adjusting the angle of her lens, and the next Elise was climbing through a crumbling gap in the wall, dust puffing up behind her like a mini sandstorm.