Me Against Her (Cate Blanchett x OC)

Gaslight

However, as soon as we landed, I saw that there were 58 new messages my inbox. 

They were news article after news article, from outlets big and small, with titles such as "Who is Cate Blanchett's mysterious plus one to the Oscars?" "Cate's got a new fave" "STC exec accompanies Oscar-winner to Academy ceremony." and so on. 

I read all of them closely, my heart pounding. None of them speculated anything other than a professional relationship between us. A few hinted at a close intimate friendship. 

"Don't worry, it'll all pass soon enough." Cate was unfazed, resuming to a cold hard exterior.

When Cate made a promise, she kept her word. Before we parted at the airport, she took one last businesslike look at me as if she had never laid her hands on me, and reminded me to cancel all of her meetings at the office tomorrow and to schedule a lunch with so-and-so. 

-----

When I arrived home that day, my apartment was a bit of a mess, with magazines and newspapers strewn all around. Abby jumped from behind the door, with a copy of Us Weekly in her hands, squealing, "Edie! You're famous." 

She showed me a picture of Cate and I getting out of a limo together and smiling for the camera. "Tell me how it all went. Spill."

"I mean, it was fine." I said, "I honestly didn't enjoy schmoozing with celebrities for 4 hours." 

"Okay, well, if you hated it so much, why didn't you come back Monday like you were supposed to?" She smirked at me. 

"Oh, that," I fumbled for an explanation, "um, Cate and I decided to take...a short break before coming back to work." 

"Yeah right," she didn't bother hiding her deep skepticism, "a vacation with the boss from hell. Did she order you around, making you run errands for her and wait on her hand and foot? Like the evil stepmother from Cinderella." 

"No," I said, my mind drawing a blank and realizing that I shouldn't even try keeping a secret from my roommate. It would be way too much effort to keep up the lie. Besides, I remembered that it was supposed to be over now, and I had the sudden urge to confess to someone. "it wasn't like that at all. Abby, I know this'll come as a shock, but I have to tell you something, and you can't tell anyone, okay?" 

"Shit, what happened? Is she part of the illuminati?" 

"Shut up and listen," I sat her down, "so remember how a few weeks ago, I told you that I had to work a lot of overtime because of our new show?" 

"Yea?"

"Well, I wasn't exactly...working. I was having dinner...with Cate."

"Okay?" She was still not sure where this was going. 

"And when she asked me to go to the Oscars with her, I thought it was just an industry norm. You know, bosses taking their employees as their plus one. But I didn't find out until we got to LA, Abby. She said she had...feelings for me." 

Abby's jaw fell to the floor and was too stunned to speak for fifteen seconds. "YOU ARE FUCKING KIDDING ME." 

"Nope," I said, dropping the other half of the bomb on her before she recovered, "and I realized that...I felt the same way about her too." 

"HOLY FUCK." she looked at me with a side-eye, "You're gay? Cate Blanchett is gay? And you're gay for each other??" 

"Trust me, I didn't expect it either." I confessed, "Besides, we didn't like each other for a long time." 

"What happened?" 

"I'm not sure." 

"So while the world was staring at pictures of you two smiling demurely on the red carpet, you were secretly fucking?" she was almost shouting, and she was staring into space in such a way that I knew she was imagining it in her head. 

"Oh lower your voice," I shushed her, "well, we didn't exactly...fuck. In the conventional sense." I was going to say that I watched her masturbate in a hotel room because I was on my period and then she fingered me to the best orgasm I ever had on a transatlantic flight, but that was probably too much information for now. 

"Let me get this straight. You hated each other like last week, but then fell for each other for no reason; you got away and stayed in a hotel for three days to have an affair, but didn't have sex? It doesn't make any sense." 

"Okay, that just sounds weird when you put it like that." 

"Edie, this woman is batshit insane. It's like she has you under some sort of spell. You're not yourself." 

"But she's...so wonderful, Abby," I threw my head back on the couch and sighed, "she's imperious and volatile and cold, but god - she brings me to places I've never been. I've been thinking about her ever since I left the airport." 

"Exactly something that a gaslit person would say," she uttered, "sounds like she's manipulating you to get something from you. Celebrities are always like that." 

"But she's not though. She specifically said that it was over the minute we got off from our flight." 

"Do you want it to be over?" 

The question hit me straight in the heart again, and I recalled my little meltdown episode at the airport. Abby was right about one thing - my emotions didn't feel coherent for the last week. The mega cocktail of hormones and emotions hampered my ability to think straight. Or was it my period talking? 

"I don't," I said, "which is so ridiculous and stupid because I proposed it in the first place." 

"Again, making you believe it's all your own fault. It's textbook gaslighting, Edie." 

My brain was perfectly comfortable wrapping itself around Abby's cynical theories, but my heart, or rather my clit, was perfectly willing to trade in a piece of my sanity to fill a craving. The issue was that I couldn't separate my heart and clit in this matter - Cate's powerful influence had melded them into one interconnected entity that just screamed her name in unison. 

Remembering Cate's task for me, I opened up my laptop and looked at her calendar, and my own. They were lined with infinite days that I would spend with her at the office and infinite nights in her absence. It was an excruciating future to think about, almost more so than one of never ever seeing her again.