“What I meant,” she growled, “was the past few weeks. Are you now keeping tabs on me, checking my press hits in your Google search?”
Elliot sank into the passenger seat and shook his headno, and Birdie wondered if it was possible to actually die of humiliation. Of course he wasn’t checking up on her. He was off breaking, like, Middle East peace talk news, certainly not following the dire downfall of a girl he once knew and a woman he once slept with.
“Just do this on my terms,” she said with a huff. “Once we find the guy who wrote this, I’ll be redeemed, you’ll probably get loads of, like, women sliding into your DMs, and you’ll never have to think of me again.”
“You’re the boss,” he said, and she waited for him to refute the DM insinuation, but he did not.
Birdie replied by pressing her foot to the gas and lurching back onto the highway. Ian Sands was due north. She couldn’t wait to surprise him.
11
ELLIOT
Birdie is aterrible driver.Elliot was simultaneously attempting to type notes about Ian and keep from vomiting, and this was all he could think.Birdie drives like she lives: like she has something to prove, like she’s up for the fight, even though no one else is throwing punches.She was honking and lane changing and not above giving someone the finger, which Elliot thought was not the best way to stay inconspicuous, but then she also made it clear she wasn’t interested in his opinion. But focusing on her driving was more palatable than focusing on Ian—on the breezy way she spoke about him, on the upturn in her voice when it became evident that she’d be happy to reunite with the esteemed chef if he were indeed the ex who hoped for his second chance.
Elliot tried to remember all the details about her time with Ian, what Mona would have filled him in on. Those first few years at Berkeley were a blur, though: he was no longer the big fish in a small pond, and he found that he had to work harder than he ever had before to maintain the air that everything came naturally to him. He walked onto the swim team but almost never gotto compete. He applied for the college paper and was given a position copyediting, not nearly what he’d hoped for. He’d figured that the coaches would fall all over themselves, that the editors would fling open their doors. So maybe he didn’t know many details about Ian because he hadn’t asked Mona or maybe he was just so busy keeping his head above water that he knew if he lingered on Birdie, how she was brave in chasing her dreams and courageous in doing it in New York and falling in love with someone who wasn’t him, he might fall apart.
“We lost track of each other for those years, I guess.” His voice was low, husky, and he almost didn’t sound like himself. “I don’t remember any of this. This is all news to me.”
“I guess I sort of disappeared,” Birdie said. “It felt important to try to make it on my own. Leave Barton behind.”
He started to say that he wished she hadn’t disappeared from him, but then that was rewriting history. Wishing for something like that now when he’d been busy losing himself to the beautiful women he met on campus were two wildly divergent realities. The easy attention from classmates who wanted to spend the night with him felt familiar, safe. Birdie was anything but.
“The beginning of Birdie Robinson,” Elliot said instead.
“In my defense, there was already a Birdie Maxwell in SAG.”
“And the ‘Robinson’?”
“It just sounded like a movie star’s name.”
Elliot stuttered out a sharp laugh. His fingers flew over his keyboard.
“Please don’t write that,” she said, quickly glancing toward him. “That makes me sound ridiculous.”
“Nothing about you is ever ridiculous,” he said before he could think otherwise. He felt Birdie’s gaze lingering on him, and he found that he couldn’t return her stare.
They were close to San Francisco now, the early-March sky nearly dark by 5:45 p.m. He stood, stretched, and took three strides to the fridge, which he opened, seeing only a six-pack from one of Mona’s weekend adventures, and closed again. He had a rule that he never drank on the job, and even though he knew that was unlikely to stick for the duration of this reporting gig—because Birdie, if anyone, could drive him to inebriation—he still thought he should at least make the effort. Birdie changed lanes unexpectedly, and the RV swayed, and Elliot reached above to grab on to anything available before he went toppling. He steadied himself on a cabinet door, which swung open, and weathered road maps spilled out. Relics of a bygone era. Relics of his parents.
Elliot wasn’t prone to sentimentality, but he lost himself for a beat. That they could be so long gone and yet still so present. He squatted down, and when the motor home heaved yet again, he simply plopped on the floor, running his hands over the unexpected poignancy of the memory of his parents, side by side, poring over the paper maps, exploring wherever their whims took them.
“Sorry,” Birdie called over her shoulder. “I did warn you.”
She had. She had warned him that she rarely drove herself anywhere anymore, so perhaps she should remain in the passenger seat for the journey, but then she’d gone and plunked down behind the wheel anyway. Classic Birdie Maxwell. He gingerly eased himself to his feet, slowly, nervous that she would lurch forward or brake hard or peel into another lane. That was the thing about her: Birdie was infuriatingly stubborn, extremely self-reliant, honest when she wanted to be, vague when she needed to be. But she at least leveled with you while doing so.
She even had after their night together in New York.
“Don’t go just yet,” she’d said the next morning. They wereboth naked in her bed, and in reply, he raised the top sheet and peered at her body underneath and replied, “Well, I certainly don’t have to for a while,” and then slid lower and disappeared beneath her bedding, and she didn’t bring it up again until they’d finally dragged themselves out of bed for some sustenance. He remembered how she had only some wilted unidentifiable greens in the veggie drawer and some moldy cheese that looked like cheddar, but that was really just a wild guess. She was never really home anymore, she said. And when she was, she didn’t cook. Cooking reminded her of an ex, she’d said. Because Elliot was the one naked beside her, that hadn’t even resonated, hadn’t bothered him one bit. Instead, he suggested running out for bagels, and she moaned and said, “Ooh, carbs, yes.” And he dressed himself and took a long glance at her still in bed, and he wanted to press himself close to her heart, tell her that he’d take care of her, assure her that she didn’t have to use sharp elbows to stride through life anymore because he could be there beside her. So he said, “I’ll be back, and don’t go anywhere.” And he meant every word. Until plans changed.
Elliot’s phone buzzed, breaking him free from the memory.
FRANCESCA
update?
ELLIOT
Sending you a teaser asap. Can go live tonight.
