What the Lightning Sees: Part One Read Online Free PDF

obtuse? He was starting to irritate me.
    “Why are you even working at this magazine? You clearly don’t need the money. Shouldn’t you be interning at an investment bank or something?”
    “I know you find it difficult, but will you just try not to be bitchy for thirty minutes? If you had any sense, you would be doubly nice to me now that you know I know Sandy.”
    Was he saying he could make things awkward if I didn’t suck up to him? “You’re blackmailing me?” I asked him.
    He sighed. “Jesus, you’re hard work.”
    “I’m the one trying to keep it professional. You clearly have a personal relationship with the subject of this article,” I said. It’s like I’d pressed a button I couldn’t turn off. I’d slotted into giving him grief and I couldn’t row back.
    “You think consistently insulting me is professional?”
    I didn’t. I needed to stop. I had to unpress my bitch button. I couldn’t work out what had started it. Did I resent his charmed life? The way everyone seemed to eat out of the palm of his hand? The way women began tittering around him. Check, check and check. I wasn’t normally this bad. At least I didn’t mean to be. The problem was that he seemed like a nice guy, and despite calling me on my shit, he didn’t seem to hold it against me. I pushed back my stray hairs into my bun.
    “I’m sorry if you thought—”
    “Stop it with your half-assed apologies. There’s nothing worse than the non-apology apology. Either apologise and mean it, or don’t bother. Don’t try and be clever and half apologise and think I won’t notice—like on the Post-It. I’m not dumb. Say sorry and we can all move on, but don’t dare say you’re sorry if I thought you were a bitch. It’s a cop out. You were a bitch.”
    I pushed my lips together. I’d always found apologizing hard until I discovered a way of apologising without actually apologising. No one had ever noticed before, or they never told me they had. Shit. Shit. Shit.
    Harry uncrossed his too-long legs and stood, clearly wanting to make every inch between us count.
    He was right. I was going to have to try to be nice to him. I couldn’t have him turning Sandy against me, and I didn’t want him not to like me.
    “Okay. I’m sorry for being a bitch.”
    He slid his hands into his pockets and nodded.
    I pulled out my laptop and started to take some notes. If I focused on the article, at least I would have less opportunity to be mean to Harry. I guess he couldn’t help it if he came from a privileged background any more than I could help not coming from one. I would try and make more of an effort with him.
    There was lots more to take in than I expected. I had thought I’d be tucked away in a dressing room, waiting for a break in filming, but being on set was fascinating. There seemed to be a lot of people not doing much but staring intently at Sandy and her co-stars as they ran through what seemed to be the same scene again and again and again. We were too far away to hear what they were saying, and no one had given us headphones. I checked to see if there was a free seat closer to the action.
    “Do you think they would mind if we moved forward?” I asked Harry.
    “I think if you were a little nicer to me, I’d ask Sandy to get them to move us forward, but as you’re not, I think we should stay put.”
    I felt like I was being taught a lesson, like a schoolgirl who’d been caught talking in class. “Okay,” I replied.
    “Okay?” he asked.
    “Yes, if you think we should stay here, then that’s what we’ll do.”
    “Okay,” he said, giving nothing away.
    “I am sorry. I don’t mean to say those things. My lips get loose when you’re around.”
    “Your lips get loose?” He turned to look at me and raised his eyebrows.
    “You know, things just tumble out.”
    “I think you’re a little crazy,” he said as he turned back to the set.
    I nodded and took a deep breath. “You’re probably right. But there’s a