“PhD.” Andie tutted.
“Right, so then surely you can see how me tracking down this old boyfriend and throwing myself at his feet is the love story that America didn’t know it needed? But I need to know where to start.”
“How exactly would I know where you should start?” Andie said. “I haven’t known anything about your life since I quit.”
“Since I fired you.”
“Since Iquit.”
Birdie stared at Andie. Andie stared at Birdie.
And then Anderson Cooper broke their standoff by introducing the next segment.
“It’s not often that we cover behind-the-scenes Hollywood drama here at the news magazine, but this is the story that won’t go away: Did Birdie Robinson, who until several weeks ago was the rom-com queen of Hollywood, permanently destroy her career when she went toe-to-toe with Sebastian Carol? We’re back after the break to put this story through its paces. Don’t go anywhere. Trust me, this is a good one.”
“Oh my god,” Andie said, her palm moving to her mouth to conceal her grin.
“Oh my god!” Birdie shouted, both at Anderson and at her sister, because there was nothing else to say.
4
BIRDIE
Birdie had notdriven a car since she left Los Angeles four years back and permanently moved to New York. Andie’s 4Runner was a stick shift, which meant that Birdie unintentionally peeled out of their parents’ driveway, the tires squealing on the cement, her body lurching forward then back as she remembered how to ease off the clutch.
She and Andie had gotten into what Mona referred to as “classic Bird and Andie shit” over60 Minutes, nearly coming to blows over the remote. Andie was the more physically fit between them, despite Birdie’s mandated boot-camp and training sessions, and alas, Birdie could not wrestle the remote from her sister’s palm. So she grabbed her sister’s keys from the kitchen counter, threw her arms into a puffy parka she suspected had been bought at Costco, and ran out before Andie could follow her.
Mona. Mona would know what to do about this letter.
Birdie stopped and started and reminded herself to release the clutch as she lurched through Barton, past their old high school, past the turnoff for the strip mall with the Sbarro. Monahad opened Monads, a semi-shitty dive bar, shortly after their parents’ inheritance had come down just over a decade ago, which made the payout sound grander than it was. But it was enough for her to buy out the floundering watering hole that mostly catered to underage high schoolers and tired nine-to-fivers in Barton. At the time, her best friend had intended to be an astrophysicist or head up NASA, but she’d dropped out of Caltech to come home and then stayed home, and Birdie didn’t judge her for it. Now she got her galactical fix in on the weekends on alien-hunting excursions in various southwestern deserts, and for this, Birdiealmostjudged her, but Birdie didn’t have so many friends that she could risk losing Mona, and besides, she didn’t think she could handle it if she did lose Mona. They’d been inseparable since the O’Briens moved to her block from San Francisco, and even as Birdie’s star ascended higher and higher, she knew she’d never find anyone to replace Mona.
Birdie remembered the route to the bar by heart and flipped her blinker on, turning into Monad’s parking lot, then blessedly easing into a spot next to Mona’s RV, which she had also inherited from her parents and used as an excuse to never buy a car. The 4Runner’s gas gauge flared red, as if it were angry with Birdie for the three-mile trek, and she reminded herself to fill it up on her way home. One less thing Andie could be mad about.
The bar seemed quiet as she stepped down from the truck, which came as a relief. She hadn’t thought her plan through—didn’t really have a plan, in fact, other than she didn’t want to watch60 Minutesand she didn’t want to be in Andie’s company for a moment longer than she had been. Fleeing to Monads made sense. But now she was standing in the parking lot in a Costco jacket and a flowy caftan, and it occurred to her that she would be completely exposed once inside. Camera phones would beraised, record buttons would be pressed. Her location would be shot across the internet in no time flat.
But Birdie was not in a position to barter with the universe, so she curled her toes in her misguided strappy sandals to keep them warm and strode across the lot as if a director had told her to march forward with all the confidence she could project. Birdie always found difficult moments easier to digest if she simply pretended she was acting out a scene; this meant she could be vulnerable on the surface but not so vulnerable that she risked emotional decimation. She thought of Elliot again—perhaps the last time she’d been completely vulnerable—just before she pushed the door to Monads open. Elliot had emotionally decimated her, but then that was her own fault—thinking she’d be something different to him, thinking that he’d spent years craving her the way that she’d spent so long craving him.
Monads hadn’t changed much since the last time Birdie had been home, four years back. The first thing that hit you about the place was the scent. Birdie didn’t know why Mona couldn’t hire a deep cleaner to blast whatever the whiff was that assaulted your nose upon entry, but when she’d asked the last time she was here, Mona had flung a hand and said, “The smell is part of the charm. People would kill me if it smelled like Pine-Sol.” So instead, Birdie was sledgehammered with an odor that fell somewhere between old shoes and spilled beer and Glade PlugIns. The walls were adorned with Barton High memorabilia—a banner from the year the basketball team won regional playoffs, another from the single season they’d come in first at football but quickly lost in the playoffs. (Elliot had invited Mona and Birdie to tailgate, and Birdie leapt at the chance but Mona waved him off, so Birdie acted cool like she wouldn’t have thrown herself into his trunk for an opportunity to keg stand with him.) There were photos ofbeloved coaches over the years, and more than a few black-and-whites of Elliot on the podium at swim meets.
Birdie had lost track of today’s exact date, but there were half-strung white doilies on the wall behind the bar and several dollar-store cupids hanging from the ceiling—Mona’s attempt to draw out Valentine’s Day into early March, no doubt. When she was first getting her start, Imani made a big push about how America’s Future Sweetheart was obsessed with Valentine’s Day. Her publicist secured the FebruaryInStylecover, which blared,BIRDIE ROBINSON LOVES LOVE!, and an entire narrative was constructed around how much Birdie, well, loved love. No one stopped to ask Birdie if she’d really been in love by then, when she was twenty-five, and if anyone had asked such a thing, she couldn’t have answered honestly, so it was just as well.Yes, with my best friend’s brother? Possibly with a chef who I ghosted once I got semifamous?Regardless, Birdie eyed Mona’s decorations and felt flush with relief that February was behind her, and March lay straight ahead.
From the front door at Monads, Birdie watched her best friend behind the bar for a beat. Dressed in overalls and a flannel shirt, her hair in two pigtailed braids, Mona still looked sixteen, but then that was part of her mystique: how she could be so disarmingly adorable while her brain ran circles around your own. Birdie knew that what she personally lacked in book smarts she made up for in emotional intelligence, but Mona was lucky to have both. Which was precisely why she was the one to ask about the letter, not Andie. Andie with the enormous chip on her shoulder. Andie with an ax to grind.
Mona organized the glassware while the overhead speakers started in with ABBA’s “Dancing Queen,” which reminded Birdie so acutely of driving to school in Elliot’s car that she wondered ifshe were being set up, onCandid Camera, if that was a thing anymore. She glanced around but the bar was still quiet, mostly empty but for a few dart throwers in the back room, so the song, the memories, the way both washed over her, was simply chance.
Birdie had always been well aware that Elliot would never think of her as anything other than Mona’s best friend. He was a star swimmer, editor of the newspaper his junior year even though that had always been reserved for a senior. He went through girls as quickly as he tore through a fifty free, which was to say extremely quickly, and even if Birdie had wanted him to go through her (she did, she very much wanted him to gorightthrough her), she was not the type of girl he set his sights on. But there was a moment, a very brief hiccup, back when she’d entertained the notion of Elliot as more than just Mona’s twin brother.
It became real, concrete for her, in the middle of high school. When her butterflies grew into something more adult, more electric. In the doorway to Monads, with ABBA blaring and her best friend shimmying her shoulders while wiping down the bar, Birdie remembered now that Elliot had just gotten his license—he and Mona were four months older than she was—and Elliot started driving to school. Mona, afraid of failure, refused to take the test initially. Their parents gifted them their old Honda Accord, and one week their junior year, Mona was out sick with mono so it was just the two of them every morning. Elliot, because he was gracious, had offered Andie a ride too, but Andie got to school early because she was already in advanced math classes and liked to meet with her teachers for extra work. (Birdie didn’t think she could be blamed for hating her younger sister.)
Birdie had assumed that carpooling with Elliot alone would be exactly like carpooling with all three of them, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t at all. Though they’d been alone a zillion other timesbefore, something charged passed between them those mornings. Or at least something charged passed through Birdie. Her mouth would run dry and her palms would grow clammy and she’d stay up all night the evening before trying to think of clever things to talk about. Elliot, so much more at ease at sixteen than she was, brought her his mom’s banana bread every day (back when she still ate carbs) and let her choose the radio station, and Birdie always opted for songs that showed off her range. There were a couple of moments when their hands brushed each other’s, reaching for the volume to turn it up to full blast, and Birdie felt something reverberate deep in her gut. But she didn’t allow herself to consider anything more about it. For a variety of and plentiful reasons: (1) Elliot O’Brien, varsity swim star and editor of the paper, was so far out of her drama-dork league that she didn’t even think she qualified for the minors, while he was the anointed MVP, (2) Mona would kill her (not that there was anything to kill her over—see point number one), and (3) Birdie hadn’t yet even kissed a boy, and she honestly didn’t know what could happen next, whatwouldhappen next. She knew in theory of course: Susana had academically explained sex to her and Andie when they were nine and seven, so it wasn’t that she didn’tknow; it was that her imagination either went too far—popping the buttons off his shirt and pants on the side of the road before they made it to school—or not far enough—that she was a fool to even think that Elliot would enjoy kissing her.
Years later, he proved her suspicion correct.
Still, though. During that heady week of carpooling, there was something about the way he looked at her when she turned up the dial and belted ABBA, like he was discovering something new about her, or the way he asked her opinion on a story he was crafting for the paper because he said she always consideredthings differently than everyone else, that made her wonder:Maybe?
But then Mona recovered quickly—it probably was never mono, her pediatrician decided—and was back in the carpool, and Elliot was more measured, more brotherly, and Birdie convinced herself that, like many things about boys, she’d gotten him wrong. Maybe he did understand her, but that didn’t mean he wanted to careen the car over to the side of the road and drop the passenger seat back and climb atop her. Birdie’s imagination always worked too hard. There was a reason she was still a virgin.
Tonight, ABBA finished the final harmony and the stereo switched over to some new pop song that Birdie didn’t recognize. She saw Mona’s face furrow as if she didn’t know who had come up with this playlist either, and then her friend’s eyes glanced up and her mouth dropped open in joy.
