Page 56 of The Faking Game

Her heartbeat picks up—I can see it in the way she shifts, the way her breath changes. “It’s not like… I mean, I don’tlikearguing.”

“People usually don’t like doing things they’re not good at.” I grab her water bottle and hand it to her. It feels like she needs something to do, something to hold. She gets nervous even at the thought of this. “But that’s where practice comes in. Repetition. Just like with you saying no to men.”

She uncorks the bottle. “Who made you an expert at fighting?”

“I can handle conflict,” I tell her. “Everyone fights with the people they’re close to. My parents did a bit too much. Rafe and I, and Alex and James, well… you think four teenage boys always saw eye to eye?” I lean back against one of the weight machines. “What do you want to fight about?”

“There’s nothing on my mind right now.”

“Nothing? I doubt that very much.”

“Fine. Maybe there are lots of things, but nothing that we can argue about.”

“I’ve met your mother. I met your father, too,” I say. “They don’t strike me as people who never fight.”

“I never said they didn’t.”

“You said you never learned. I don’t believe you,” I tell her.

Her gaze snaps to mine. There’s a glint of irritation in her eyes. It feels like victory. She knows exactly what I’m doing with my goading.

“Yes,theyfought. The entire family fought. But it wasn’t productive. It wasn’t efficient. And it always, always meant I had done something wrong. And it was never truly over. They didn’t fightwithme. They foughtatme.”

“It was never over?”

“No, there was never a resolution. Mom loves bringing up disagreements that happened months ago, reminding me with little barbs of things I’ve done—things that still hurt her. My father, when he was alive, didn’t argue at all. You either agreed with his perspective, or the conversation was over and you could leave. There was no in-between. And there was certainly no making up afterward.” She takes a deep breath. “I just had to quietly wait it out, test the waters, prove myself to them again, until the argument was swept under the rug and hopefully forgotten.”

“So you never knew when it was over.”

“No.”

“We’ll practice that too.” I hold up my hands. “Do you do the same things with guys, then?”

“I guess,” she says. “I know what to say to ensure there’s no argument, to bend to what they want to hear, because the idea of not doing it…”

“You’d get punished if you didn’t,” I finish. “Your mother. She’s…”

“Yes,” she says with a groan. “You know her.”

“I’ve met her a few times. She’s a character,” I admit. Rafe and Nora’s mother was once an actress. She nurtured attention and craved it, a circle that sustained her, until it stopped. Until she pushed that onto her children instead. I’ve seen the exasperated way Rafe has dealt with her over the years.

I’ve never witnessed the way she takes it out on her daughter. It rearranges some of the things I’ve heard, things I’ve seen.

“Was she the one who wanted you to model?” I ask.

Nora looks down at the water bottle. “Yeah. It was her dream for me. She made most of it happen.”

I shake my head slowly. “Don’t say that. You did the work.”

“Yes, sure, but it was…” She shrugs a little. “I’m grateful. I don’t mean to say that I’m not, and I know that my life?—”

“For fuck’s sake,” I interrupt. “There are no cameras here. Do you think I’m going to hold you to anything? Say what you really feel. Without the caveats.”

Nora’s eyes flash again. “Fine. It was her dream, and I did it to make her happy. All of it. The auditions, the dietitian, the nose job, the sessions with a coach on how to walk, how to pose. And it made me feel good for a while, to know that I was making her happy. That I was making photographers happy. My father, my brother. Everyonethought it was soclever,that I could model the brands Valmont owns.”

“I’m sure they did.” My arms are crossed over my chest now, like that might stop my muscles from tensing with anger. Every single thing she’s saying makes my blood heat another degree. “Anosejob?”

“The week after I turned eighteen,” Nora says. Her face is calm in a way I’m not. Like I’m the only one burning with anger. “She found the surgeon, booked the time.”

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