“Well, look who’s being honest with menow,” Birdie said.
Imani sighed, and Birdie could picture her at her home in Santa Monica, in her kitty-cat pajamas that Birdie had gifted her last Christmas, nursing a hefty glass of wine to manage her stress.
“Birdie, things are going to get worse before they even haveany hope of getting better. I thought we could do some splashy profiles, some redemption-arc pieces, and this would all go away. But, look, can you just... lie low, draw absolutely no attention to yourself, and let Sydney and me and your team put our heads together to figure out how to move forward?”
“Iamlying low. That was the whole point of the dive bar, of coming ho—”
But Imani had hung up on her before she could finish her sentence. Which was what Imani did when she was issuing a decree, not making a request.
Elliot let out a whistle, and for a second, Birdie had forgotten he was there, driving her home like a gallant escort, a noble hero of sorts, even though he certainly wasnota gallant escort, despite feigning the fact that he was that exactly when they were teenagers. Would a gallant escort have left her in bed seven years ago? Would a gallant escort not have even bothered to send an email, a text, a goddamn Facebook message after walking out?
“So. You’re obviously scrapping your plan to hunt down this anonymous long-lost pathetic sad sack of a lover, correct?”
“Ah, he finally speaks,” Birdie said. “And I’m sure that you would be delighted if he were a pathetic sad sack of a man. Like that’s the only type I could have pining over me?”
Elliot’s face folded into confusion. “What? No. I was joking, Birdie. Trying to lighten the mood.”
“Well, you should stick to nonfiction, then. Comedy isn’t your forte. Do not recommend. Zero stars.”
“I wasn’t—” He shook his head and fell silent. “You’re right. I’ve never been funny. That was always Mona. And you.” This wasn’t true at all, but Birdie didn’t feel like boosting the man when he was down.
“I’m going to ask again,” she managed, ignoring his compliment,because Elliot was so adept at telling women what they didn’t even know they wanted to hear that she couldn’t let herself get hoodwinked. “Just so that we’re clear. Was it you? Because if I find out that it—”
“No,” he said, and Birdie thought she heard his voice wobble, but then, she was also very drunk, so she couldn’t be sure. Wouldn’t swear on it in court. “You know I don’t do regret.”
“ ‘Elliot O’Brien. I don’t do regret.’ ” Birdie managed a laugh and hoped it was one that conveyed disgust. “That should be the name of your memoir.”
“Put it on my grave.”
“Or at least in your Twitter bio. Give all those fangirls fair warning when they slide into your DMs.”
“They don’t slide into—” His phone buzzed again in the cup holder, and he fell silent, just as he turned into the darkened street where they used to play kick the can in the summer after dark. Birdie would lie on the couch all day thinking of quippy things to say to Elliot, who spent the summer at swim training and then, when they were older, lifeguarding at the YMCA pool, and there was nothing more satisfying than when she nailed the pithy one-liner. Making him double over in hyena howls, pressing his fingers into the sides of his waist to ward off a cramp. If Mona noticed that her best friend had long-simmering feelings for her twin, she never said a word. At least not at the time. There was nothing threatening about Birdie’s feelings because it was so one-sided, and neither of them—Mona nor Birdie—ever dared to imagine that anything would come of it. Besides, half the school had crushes on Elliot. Mona was so used to his public adoration, the low-level, ever-present flirting by just about everyone that she seemed to be immune to it. Also, there was the fact that even when Birdie was dreaming up those devastatingly acerbic,hilarious one-liners (Elliot was perhaps her first audience), she was always steadfastly in Mona’s corner: when boys tried to tell her that she wasn’t smart enough to join their honors science study group, when girls asked her if she and Elliot were really twins because he had gotten all the looks in the family. (Not all the looks, of course. Mona was adorable and plucky and had the same annoying facial symmetry of her brother. It was just that Elliot’s features all fell together much like Michelangelo’sDavid: perfectly, all at once, in total harmony.) Birdie was always there, Mona’s ride or die, shit-talking those boys, eye-rolling at those girls. It wasn’t hard to love Elliot from a distance and cherish Mona much more closely.
Tonight, by the time they pulled up to Mona’s house, Elliot’s old childhood house, Birdie’s eyelids were being tugged lower with every inhale, lower still with every exhale. It was easier to get drunk, chew out Nelson Pratt, imagine that this anonymous letter could be her professional salvation, than to face the consequences of getting drunk and chewing out Nelson Pratt, the video of which (though Birdie did not yet know this) already had two million views on YouTube.
When Elliot said, “Well, we’re home,” she was halfway asleep and, for a very brief moment, forgot the entire mess before her and believed him.
7
ELLIOT
By 2 a.m.,Elliot was still wide awake but could feel the throb of his eyeballs imploring him to get some rest. But he was right on the cusp of a professional breakthrough—he was actually somewhat desperate for a professional breakthrough—and as was always the case when a thread was tugging at his brain, he practically levitated with energy, and short of a tranquilizer gun, sleep was never going to find him. Birdie evidently had no such problems and had passed out down the hall in the guest room, stumbling inside and rebuffing his efforts to lend her a shoulder on which to lean as she wobbled up the steps. Neither of them ever considered that he drop her at her old house; it was muscle memory that she’d crash here, down the hallway lined with framed photos of their trio at birthday parties, at Disneyland, at high school graduation, from his own boyhood room.
His phone blared again, and this time, when Francesca’s name popped up, he had a plan and answered it.
“Francesca,” he said to his editor in his best honeyed voice. “Just who I wanted to speak with.”
This was, of course, a lie, and they both knew it. Elliot had been back in the States for three days, home in Barton for two, and Francesca had been up his ass ever since. She wasn’t out of line—he knew he deserved it—but still, all he wanted was a few days off to not think about work, to not live and breathe his work. The issue at hand, however, was that Francesca was primed to give him plenty of days off from work. Too many days.
“Why didn’t you tell me that you knew Birdie Robinson?” Francesca hadn’t smoked since her thirtieth birthday, but she still sounded like a barking seal when she was running hot. “How have I made your career without knowing that you were friends with the biggest movie star on the planet?”
“Is she?” Elliot asked, though he knew she was. He hadn’t thought that this was where the conversation would start—he figured he’d have to beg a bit and lie a bit and convince her a bit—but he wasn’t disappointed that she was already playing into his hand.
“Seriously, how do you know Birdie Robinson?” she pestered.
Something occurred to Elliot: “How do you know that I know Birdie Robinson? Which, between us, that’s not even her real name. She’s Birdie Maxwell here in Barton.”
“The video, from tonight,” his editor replied. “You two muttering into each other’s ears, and I couldn’t tell if you were in love with her orhadbeen in love with her, but then I realized: What? Elliot doesn’t have a shot with the world’s most beautiful movie star.”
