Nearly everyone on the planet knows Birdie Robinson, which also means, let’s be honest, that nearly everyone has devoured the on-set tantrum and subsequent leaked emails and attacks on her character. As it turns out, I know Birdie too, albeit a little bit differently. Birdie is my twin sister’s best friend, so I have viewed this public backlash through a slightly different lens. I viewed it as an attempt to undermine a woman I knew as ridiculously talented and equally enjoyable to be around. She and my sister, and thus yours truly, spent unquantifiable hours together as children, and yes, people can change, but still, I maintain that the Birdie of my childhood is not altogether different from the Birdie of now. She is kind. She is good. She is brilliant.
As the internet has determined, I was at a bar with Birdie two nights ago, when she showed me ananonymous love letter that she’d received. Through various behind-the-scenes vetting processes, we determined, blessedly, that the letter was not from a stalker or an obsessive fan. In fact, the letter appears to be genuine, an attempt of an ex to stake his claim, to put his feelings out into the world and see, as he said in the note, if they come back to him.
And so, we are going to do that, readers. You and I and Birdie. She and I are visiting a few of the potential old loves of her life. I’ll be writing about them and revealing the facts—unbiased, I promise you—as we go. To maintain her safety and privacy, the location of each ex will not be disclosed until the story is filed.
Stay tuned! This is just a teaser for all the excitement to come. Let’s try to give our Sweetheart the happily-ever-after we all root for when she’s on the screen in front of us.
12
BIRDIE
Ian ran afast-paced,en voguerestaurant on a mostly unremarkable block where the air smelled slightly of the sea and sidewalks were adorned with elegant, barren trees. By no small turn of fate, they found a half-empty street, and Birdie eased the RV to the inclined curb, then mistakenly went atop it, then eased back to the pavement. The RV clunked and clattered but it was parked, and Birdie figured they should both be relieved. She’d warned Elliot that she was out of practice driving, and full disclosure, she’d been flying on adrenaline on the highway and felt more than a little lucky that she didn’t drive straight on top of at least three Priuses (they were so small compared to the RV). But she hadn’t wanted to show him that she was nervous or faltering or in any way vulnerable, so she kept her grip on the wheel and her eyes on the road, and she pretended. Because she was always very good at pretending. Now she flipped the key in the ignition and flopped back in her seat, unsure if the churn in her gut was from the prospect of seeing Ian again or possibly taking theirlives into her hands on the streets of San Francisco, which were wholly not designed for a vehicle the size of a small yacht.
“Right,” Elliot said. “I made a six thirty reservation, so we should hustle.”
Elliot had called ahead to at least secure a table. Birdie hadn’t really thought through exactly how it was going to go or what she was going to say. Only that she imagined something like him seeing her face from across the room, and her matching his penetrating eyes. And then she would rise from her chair, and they would meet in the middle of the restaurant, and yes, people would be staring and some others would be filming, but then that would make their feel-good reunion blaze around the internet at a world-record pace. Maybe Ian would clasp her face in his palms or maybe he would leak happy tears. Maybe he would sweep her off her feet and spin her in a circle while the diners cheered. Birdie hadn’t quite narrowed it down, but any of those sounded great to her.
She would ask him about the letter, and either he would have written it or he wouldn’t have, but maybe it didn’t matter because the start of her heralded reputational rehabilitation would have begun.
Birdie had changed out of the caftan into a pair of Andie’s oversized cargo pants and still wore the garish neon tie-dyed hoodie. She wished that she had something more presentable, something that wardrobe would approve of—a cashmere sweater and faded black jeans like she wasn’t trying too hard—but Andie had packed the dregs of her closet, likely intentionally, so Birdie had to do with whatever she had on hand. She thought she looked like a seventeen-year-old skate rat, but then there wasn’t much to do about it, so she pushed her shoulders back and held her head high, like this was all part of the plan.
Chez Nous had a gilded door with three five-pronged stars across the middle. Ian had three five-pronged stars tattooed in the crux of his left arm, and Birdie’s stomach unexpectedly cramped at the memory, of running her fingers over them absentmindedly while he explained the notes of a Syrah or kissing it in the morning to wake him up for morning sex. An understated sign hung over the restaurant’s corner entrance, which was abutted by two large olive trees, like Ian was beckoning you into the South of France by way of San Francisco. There was a huddle of patrons outside, and Elliot, who was a pace ahead of her, reached behind and grabbed her hand, as if she needed guidance to find her way through. Her body charged when his fingers laced with hers, but she reminded herself: Ian and his cooking and his kindness and his sexy tattooed arm and how he loved her before any of the rest of this.Ian, she said to her brain,not Elliot.
“Come on, we’re late,” he said.
But Birdie stopped, needing one more second before it all became real. Elliot spun around and placed his free palm on her elbow.
“Hey, it’s okay. Whatever happens, I have your back.”
Her eyes met his, and he held her gaze, and another charge coursed through her.Goddammit.
“Okay,” she said.
“Okay,” he said, then walked side by side with her through the door. When she took a step in front of him, she felt his hand on the small of her back, and something about it felt safe, felt like armor, even though she was used to arming herself: with the wardrobe of a skater kid who wasn’t anything like her, with a script that was fiction, not her own, with lighting that illuminated her from every angle, with a costar who never stole her thunder.
Birdie wasn’t one to linger retrospectively on her choices,because in her business, there would be too many what-ifs to get caught up on. What if she’d better prepared for that audition? What if she’d agreed to sleep with that director? What if she had been more gracious to Sebastian Carol and pretended she hadn’t minded his wandering hands, the way that he leered at the extras? What if she’d never let his brother, Kai, into her life? But now, standing in the hub of Chez Nous, with wineglasses clinking and peels of contented laughter loitering in the garlic-scented air, and patrons who just seemedhappy, Birdie, for the first time since she walked away from Ian to head back west to LA for pilot season, considered that she could have gotten it all wrong.
The hostess, Birdie could tell, recognized her immediately. To be fair, everyone recognized Birdie immediately everywhere she went and had for the past decade, since her breakout film opposite Kai. But seeing the flare behind the hostess’s eyes and the way that her jaw opened quickly then closed as the woman composed herself somehow calmed Birdie, even though she sometimes complained that what she wanted most was privacy, anonymity. But the hostess’s momentary flummox reminded her that she was in charge here, she had theinfluencehere, and she could march in and construct whatever narrative she wanted to. Even if Imani told her to lie low, even if Elliot thought thathecould craft the narrative. (Birdie suspected that Elliot thought he couldstillcraft the narrative.)
“I’m here to see Ian,” she said to the hostess and put on her very best movie-star smile.Entertainment Weeklyonce said that “Birdie Robinson has a smile that could power the sun.” She felt very much like she could currently power the sun.
“Do you have a reservation?” the hostess murmured.
“We do,” Elliot said, but Birdie already had a hand in the air, shushing him. “Under O’Brien.”
“But I am here tosee Ian,” she reiterated.
The hostess made a show of pretending to look up the reservation, as if she didn’t know exactly who was standing in front of her, but Birdie didn’t want to wait. And besides, she wasn’t here to eat. She strode through the room as diners dropped their forks, hands stilled in midair. The kitchen was in the back but open, facing the diners, so whether Ian saw her or she saw him, it didn’t really matter.
In less than a beat, he was in front of her: Chef Ian Sands, whom she hadn’t seen in fourteen years, whom she hadn’t spoken to in fourteen years. And Birdie felt calm. Birdie feltgreat.
Did he write the letter? Did it matter? She could already envision them as a new power couple; she could see the headlines, she could taste the homecooked meals that he would serve her while she was naked in bed or after a long day on set.
Ian looked significantly more rumpled and simultaneously more beautiful than he had when she last saw him when she was twenty and he was twenty-three. His blond hair was longer and shiny, which made him look more like a surfer who got lost in a kitchen. His baby fat had been shed and now the cut of his cheekbones matched the cut of his knife. Fine lines had crept in around his eyes, which Birdie found endearing and, well, lovely. He looked wise now, and though she had loved him before when he was just Ian the sous chef, he’d grown into real adult handsomeness, a beauty that caught her off guard. And though she’d had her reasons for walking away, an altogether new feeling clanged in Birdie—not just that she wanted this for the headlines, which she knew were likely already writing themselves. Rather she wished that Ianhadbeen the one to regret their split. In their entire two years together, Ian had never been unkind, had never been anything less than devoted, had supported her peripateticaudition cycle by insisting on sending her out into the world with a hearty breakfast, by pinging her cell all day to see if she landed a part. He would massage her feet at night when she was still waitressing, and once she quit, slightly prematurely because money was still tight, he brought her home all the extras from the restaurant. He was protective and sweet, and her heart expanded when he kissed her. Birdie remembered all of this, suddenly, in a long rush right there in the dining room of Chez Nous, and dialed up her movie-star smile.
“Ian,” she murmured and leaned over to kiss his cheek. “Surprise.” She grinned so widely she felt like her dimples might crater.
When she would rewatch the video of this moment online tomorrow morning, she would see Ian’s stony face, she would witness that not only did he not reciprocate her kiss, but rather he appeared to recoil from it. But Birdie was so swept up in the moment—in genuine nostalgia and belated appreciation for her first ex, her second love—that she overlooked his body language, missed his chilly vibe completely.
