“Are you sure?” he asks. “Don’t want you passing out on the first day. I’m sure they’ve got something small like a granola bar.”
The more I consider it, the more I realize he has a point, but instead of letting him go for me, I say, “You’re right. I should have something. I’ll get it. Can I bring you anything back?”
I think the walk and the distance will help me parse out some of this.
A tall man with long sandy hair wearing all-black comes barreling through with a cart covered in inflatable pool toys shaped like food. “Out of the way!” he shouts. I jump to the side before he pancakes me, and I nearly knock the whole catering table over in the process.
When I turn, I notice I’ve startled a man so much that he’s dropped half of his everything bagel. When I pick up the part that landed by my foot, I notice my hand is covered in scallion cream cheese. Buckley is the only person I know that used to eat that. It always weirded me out because it felt like onion overload, but he loved it and had it almost every Sunday, which meant he walked around for hours with bad breath.
The memory blurs into reality when that familiar scent hits my nostrils, and Buckley blinks back at me from one side of the catering table. I shake my head certain I’m imagining this. Maybe Leo was right. I should’ve eaten more this morning because now I’m hallucinating. Only, when my vision sharpens once more, Buckley’s still there, still holding half a bagel, still...smiling?
What the actual fuck is happening?
“Buckley?” I ask, feeling and sounding stupid. I’m tempted to reach out and touch his face to make sure, but he steps closer and I’m far too certain.
“Hi there.” He wipes his cream cheese hand on a napkin and then offers it to me to shake as if four weeks ago we didn’t kiss on the mouth and have sex and sleep in the same bed. I grimace at his outstretched hand, and he awkwardly tugs it back. “Surprise!”
“Surprise? What’s going on right now? How are you here?”
“A car and then a plane and then a car,” he says. There’s no humor to his words. He’s being factual, answering the question at face value. I’d forgotten that quirk about him. He fixates on the minutia to make sure you know you’ve asked a ridiculous question.
“That’s not what I meant.” I backtrack. “Why are you here? What are you doing?”
“Remember when I said ‘surprise’?”
“Yeah, that was two seconds ago!”
“Well, that’s why I’m here. I’m surprising you,” he says so matter-of-factly I could scream. Los Angeles has been a fever dream as it is, but this has turned it into a diabolical nightmare. My worlds should not be colliding like this.
Buckley made a choice. He left me. I left New York for this trip without him. And now he’s here. On the set ofMadcap Market. A show he openly detests. My heart palpitates with all this conflicting information. The screeching and shouting around me as the crew preps for rehearsal is adding to the cacophony inside my head.
“They just let any person waltz onto the set like this?” I ask, incredulous. Leo and I had to go through many levels of security. Scans and pats and checks. How is Buckley here and eating from the bagel platter meant for cast and crew only?
“No, I’m here for my call time,” he says as if I should’ve known this. “I’m competing. I figured you’d have seen it on the email we got sent last night and my surprise was ruined, but by the look on your face, I assume that’s not true.” He’s receiving sick pleasure over this, I can tell.
Nearly catatonic, I shake my head slowly. “I—what? A month ago, you told me this show was an abomination!”
“Shh,” he says, sharply demanding, which knocks me the wrong way. “Keep your voice down. As far as everyone here knows, I’m a fanatic like you.”
Anger and confusion are helixing in my chest. “You’re telling me you flew out to LA and auditioned for the show?” I don’t remember seeing him at the audition, but then again, that casting call was mobbed. He could’ve been in any of the groups before or after us. There’s no way I could’ve kept track of everyone coming and going.
Though, if I hadn’t been so wrapped up in Leo last night, both physically and metaphorically, I might’ve seen Buckley’s name on the call sheet and prepared myself for this emotional upheaval.
My mind flashes to Leo flexing in his sweatshirt, to him tying me up, to him saving the last greasy-yet-delicious french fry for me at the bar. I didn’t miss it. I willfully wasn’t looking. Leo has a way of making me stay present, so I’m not reaching for my phone when we’re together.
I think suddenly about Leo back on set. I’m supposed to be bringing him something small to eat. There’s no way to avoid my teammate from meeting my ex-boyfriend when we’re competing against one another. Everything is all jumbled up.
Which leads me to another gnarled thought: Who is Buckley’s teammate?
I’m about to ask when a familiar face appears behind him.
Alexia stands there looking flush and beautiful in brand-new athleisure (God, I can’t escape it). When she sees me, she smiles a friendly smile that reads as so deceptive that she could be cast in a film noir as the murderess. “Fancy seeing you here,” she says with a little tap on the shoulder.
This situation gets a thousand times worse.
Buckley was easily aggravated and sometimes standoffish with me when we were together, but he was never devious or mean. Showing up here, out of the blue, after publicly reaming me in front of an entire restaurant over these exact plans seems crueler than I know him—knew him?—to be. And to do it all with Alexia by his side makes it feel like he’s hurling the culinary-grade knives I saw in the cookware aisle at me as I’m trapped to a spinning target.
“Holden, what’s the holdup?” comes Leo’s voice from around the corner.
