wicked games.

When Reina shows up at the Hirsch residence that night, there’s already an eerie vibe going that she can’t quite place. She’s been there plenty of times, mostly for the sake of M’s son and her good friend, Rory, but to be there alone at night is a little strange for her. She’s let in the door and told M is upstairs and Reina doesn’t hesitate to make her way inside, wanting to have a chat with the older woman before they film the next day. Reina needs all hands on deck for this fucking Evelyn situation, and she wants to be sure M is on her side.

The last thing she expects to stumble upon is a woman coming out of M’s room, staring longingly at the door she’d just closed herself before she sheepishly looks over when Reina makes her presence known. It’s almost comical how startled the woman looks, but Reina manages to hold in a laugh. “M asked me to come by and drop this off for our shoot tomorrow,” she explains, holding up the box she’d brought over as proof. “I didn’t realize she’d already have company.” Company in the form of Maggie Chen, nonetheless. Reina recognizes her — after all Andrew is a friend of her husband’s — but that doesn’t explain why she’s here. “You’re a friend of hers?”

Hardly anything fazes Maggie. She’s learned stoicism from the very best, from a set of parents who’d traded love for duty, but the woman’s — Reina, she recalls — interrogation strikes differently in that she could form no concrete answer at all. Her throat feels dry suddenly, and it takes all the effort in the world not to depart, wordlessly, then and there. But M values Reina’s company more than most, that much she’s confessed, and Maggie doesn’t dare underestimate the woman’s intelligence lest she herself be antagonized. And, after all, there aren’t many reasons why she’s spent a bulk of the afternoon at the Hirsches, free from the spotlight and in the confines of M’s bedroom. The illusion would be broken soon enough, so instead, Maggie begins —

“I’m not her friend,” It’s the closest she could arrive at the truth, the statement uttered with just enough slyness (and, dare she say it, trepidation) to indicate a much broader relationship at play. “The situation is... delicate, right now,” she begins, simply. Getting found out was one thing — but for the news to reach the public before even she and M could fully sort out whatever they had, before the tension can be pulled back to a gentle simmer, could have severe ramifications on M’s end, one that she cares not to unravel. “M trusts you, you know. And I dearly hope she was right to,” she remarks, but while her words sounded confrontational, her eyes indicate anything but — soft, and filled with deep-set concern. 

There is a hint of something wicked in the air, and Nate doesn’t like it.

Four beers in him, and he can still feel the tension in the air, like a heaviness that signaled when it was about to rain, sucking all of the oxygen from the space like a slowly deflating balloon, shrinking, until there was nothing left but the remains of stretched-out rubber. It’s what gets him reaching for the fifth beer, though he tried not to drink too much these days, but today (and the entire month, really), had called for it.

When he hears Margaret call out, he stops in his tracks, right in front of their bedroom, furrowing his brow as he nods. “Hey, sweetheart,” he responds, leaning against the threshold, half-tense, half-jittery from the demeanor of the woman sitting before him. “What’s up?”

More than two decades. Surely that’s accomplishment enough, and when Maggie’s social circles inevitably get ahold of the news that she’ll soon be part of the other half of the population that hasn’t made their marriage work, she’ll draw her strength upon that considerably long time frame, and the memories they’ve shared together, none of which was terribly bad —

— but to reminisce about their time together also casts a shadow of doubt, evident by the way her hands have begun to shake, ever so slightly. Is it worth it? To trade something good, and admittedly, something beautiful for a wide unknown, to drown herself in sea of uncertainty even as she sees no horizon? 

“It’s...” She swallows, then, the earlier confidence in her voice faltering as she holds out the documents, the proverbial period to end all things, “it’s easier to show you.” 

      Childhood sickness stole an infinite amount of experiences from Alexis. Both good and bad. For seven years of her life her world had been confined to hospital beds followed by trips home that never lasted for as long as she would’ve liked before being readmitted. She was shackled to her illness the way criminals were to cells. Alexis had promised to herself during those days that when ( Maggie and Nate always stressed to her to think in when & not ifs ) she finally beat the cancer wrecking havoc in her body that she would never miss out on anything else again. 

    She may have been able to pull some strings and gotten herself a better job straight out of college but that would have meant cheating herself out of yet another experience. In more ways than one it was important for her to start where she was before climbing upward and she appreciated that her mother respected her wishes enough to let her do so. Alexis knew all to well some parents meddled in their children’s lives to an almost suffocating degree but she had gotten lucky when it came to the people who raised her. “Whiskey sounds good,” maybe if it was strong enough it could burn the memory of her long day away. Although she would definitely limit herself to one drink, she couldn’t imagine having to PA work while hungover. “Just the sound guys but they always give me a hard time. I think I’m getting used to it.” 

    Alexis responded with what she hoped came across as a nonchalant shrug of her shoulders. Truthfully after they had gotten mad at her for misplacing some equipment she had disappeared off to the bathroom to cry but she didn’t want her mother knowing that. “How about you? How was your day?”

“The sound guys?” And it’s then that maternal instinct surfaces, one that’s eluded her in the first few years into motherhood, but now she only just manages to keep at bay, afraid to be quintessential Tiger Mom that had led to severe repercussions in Maggie’s own life. But the frustration lies there, adeptly hidden so as not to scare Alexis off from divulging her doubts, but palpable just so in the way Maggie’s courteous tone slightly falters. “You shouldn’t have to get used to them giving you a hard time. They should know better than to gang up on you.”

Deep down, she knows that Alexis isn’t delicate. Far from it — she’s much stronger than she realizes, having come out of harrowing experiences that would’ve broken most people stronger and wiser. And while Maggie has been there for her, in every step of that toiling path, she’s certain her daughter can survive anything on her own. But she’s afraid to turn the lens onto herself — her unwillingness to let go of Alexis’s hand, that once she’d secured against her own, but is now admittedly the one that keeps Maggie steady. 

“So do you come here often, or...?”    

Margaret doesn’t mean to overstay her welcome. That, at least, is the excuse she’ll use when she assess this night for later.

What she doesn’t want to admit to herself is how easily time passes in the pleasure of M’s company. Maggie does not even begin to realize it until the moon’s perched on the sky, its light passing through the windows, and Nathan’s calling her up for the third time that night. It reminds her of her obligations, in more ways than one, and the guilt compels her to stand and depart even as her heart wills otherwise.

Maggie’s nervous. It’s an odd feeling. It’s odder, still, to note that this is one of the few instances that she’s felt as such around his presence. 

Being married to Nate was — is, she corrects herself — easy, and she’s yet to figure out whether that’s a good or a bad thing. They’ve survived this long, at the very least, and more than two decades together seems like a good enough run. Certainly not worth scoffing at, as her parents had done in her and Nate’s tenth-, fifteenth-, and twenty-year anniversaries, still holding their breaths and waiting for everything to fail spectacularly. 

She doesn’t want to give them the satisfaction of being right. 

Instead of allowing it to crash and burn, she establishes the setting of a slow simmer: of her, seated at the couch on the foot of their bed; the papers, heavy and weightless all at once, sitting on the table beside it. Slow and steady, just as they are, and may never be again.

— CUT TO: ALEXIS RENEE & MARGARET CHEN ( @margarcts​​ ).

        When Alexis Valentine-Chen chose to forgo getting help from her god mother in order to navigate the dog eat dog world of entertainment she hadn’t been delusional about it. She knew it would be difficult but even knowing that apparently hadn’t been enough to prepare her for the utter hell that came with being a production assistant for a reality TV show. Carefully hanging her Valentino bag against the back of the dining room chair Alexis made quick work of ridding herself of the uncomfortable pair of heels she’d been running around in all day. The bottom of her feet were tinged in a reddish hue and irritated from a ten hour shift with no break but she didn’t mind. It wasn’t something a soak in cool water couldn’t wash away. “Mom,” Alexis called after the woman who had disappeared into the kitchen, “can you pour me a glass of anything but wine? I swear if I never smell of whiff of Sauvignon blanc or Pinot noir again it’ll still be too soon.”

She’s yet to visit the set again. Her threshold for drama isn’t nearly high enough to be there on the regular, and she’s certain her daughter wouldn’t care for her looming presence both inside and outside the relative comforts of their home. There’s only so many occasions she could linger on the set without feeling suffocated, each and every time, anyway. The abundance of cameras and cast and crew are reminders that every moment she spends there are under scrutiny, as if she hasn’t dealt with that every day of her life.