Harmony Rediscovered: A Melody of Secrets and Second Chances (Camren)

Chapter 10: The Show

Heather folds her hands over the table; her fingers are thin and bony, and so is her face, more so than the last time Camila saw her. Mark sits next to Heather, shoulders back, rigid as a statue. “You want to come out,” Mark says.

Camila looks at Roger; he raises an eyebrow, as if to say that this is her battle, not his. He might be her ally, but he's keeping his troops home for this one. “Yes, I do.”

“Why?” Mark asks, voice monotone.

“Because it's who I am,” her words shake with uncertainty, the sentence turning at the end, almost like a question.

“Why now?”

Camila exhales and tucks a piece of hair behind her ear. She doesn’t think it’s fair to ask, even though she knows that if she were to come out, people would ask on Twitter, Instagram, and in interviews. Her answers, sickly sweet and lacking substance, would be printed in glossy tabloids that people buy when they purchase gum and a candy bar at the grocery store checkout. “Because I’m ready.”

“So?” Mark asks. Everything he says sounds the same: flat, uncaring and bored. He believes Camila’s wasting his time.

“This is really important to me.”

“You’re not dating anybody,” he says.

Heather narrows her eyes.

“No, I’m not.”

Camila hates the trick embedded in the question. If her answer is yes, she’ll get in trouble for not following the intended protocol: disclosing the relationship so Mark can figure out the best way to handle it going public, if at all.

She hates that, because the answer is no, it means she doesn’t really need to come out. Public Relations and Marketing are boys at a club, and they’ll only respect her if she’s already dating someone. And if she were seeing a boy, they’d just call her difficult. Because everyone would assume she’s straight like they already do, and there would be no point in clarifying.

Except that everyone is wrong.

“So, you want to make our jobs more difficult for no reason?” Mark asks, a challenging quirk to his mouth.

“The reason is it’s who I am,” Camila protests. Her voice still sounds thin, but her words don’t vibrate with nerves. “I want to be honest.”

“You’ve never cared about honesty before,” Heather offers. Her words are cooler than Mark’s, sharper, like a slap.

Camila’s jaw clenches.

“Do you know why people come out, Camila?” she asks, so icy Camila fights a shiver. “Sometimes it’s because they’re in love. Sometimes it’s because they feel too much guilt about not showing the public who they are. Nevermind the fact that they are never really themselves in public, and they won’t be, even if everyone knows they want to sleep with someone of the same gender.

“Mostly, people come out because they’ve been caught, and it’s more cost effective than trying to bury the lead. Coming out now wouldn’t hurt your career the way it would have once. It’s not a death sentence. But it won’t help you. You don’t even seem to know why you want to do this.”

Camila blinks and digs her nails into her palms. It hurts. “You’re an asshole.”

“This is business, Camila. I understand that it’s hard for you. I understand that you’re a person with feelings. But you have to understand, it’s not my job to care about that. It’s my job to make your label money.”

Camila can feel Roger tense next to her. She casts a glance his way and finds him looking at Mark and Heather, calm and unreadable.

“We want you to be happy,” Mark cuts in. “We were skeptical about your desire to collaborate with Lauren. But you did, and it worked even better than we could have predicted. But this is an even bigger favor. And you haven’t earned it yet.”