“I sold it,” Birdie snapped.
“Whatever,” her sister replied. “It was about six years ago.”
“And who were you with then?” Mona asked Birdie. “I lost track.”
“Nice.” Birdie sulked. “Very feminist.”
“I meant I can’t remember. Not that there were so many.”
Andie glared at Birdie. Birdie glared at Andie. Elliot didn’t know what he was missing.
“Simon,” Andie said. “I remember that Simon was around all the time.”
“Well, Simon is next on our list anyway,” Elliot said. “The day after tomorrow. We’re going to Vegas.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Birdie said.
“Simon was always pretty great,” Andie interjected. “I never really understood it. That whole thing. Why he put up with it.”
“I’m literally sitting right here,” Birdie whined.
“But, per your own words, you’re not going anywhere,” Andie said, looking like she was starting to enjoy this. “So you’re just going to have to grin and bear it.”
Birdie pushed back her chair and stomped to the front door, as if she’d do exactly what she didn’t want to do just to prove Andie wrong.
“So what am I telling Francesca about the rest of the series?” Elliot called after her. He rose from the table and trailed her. “Are you in or are you out? Because either way, I have to finish this.”
“It seems to me that you didn’t need me in LA. With Carter,” she said, pivoting toward him.
“Ididneed you,” he replied. Then, before he could help it, he said again, “I still do.”
They locked eyes for a beat too long, like it was only the two of them in the room, and Elliot’s insides bottomed out. He hoped Mona didn’t detect anything. He hoped Birdie didn’t either. That longing, that pang, that want.
“I would just like to reiterate that I’m still rooting for the first guy.” Mona tutted behind him. “Seems like the second one is capitalizing on a trend. Gross. The worst. Actually, he disgusts me.”
“So a man who is interested only because he knows I’m taken.” Birdie said. “There’s a trope for that in movies. Usually pops up just at the end of act two.”
“So we’re at the end of act two?” Elliot asked.
“That implies that my life is literally a rom-com, Elliot. I think the past few weeks have clearly disproven that.”
“Well, you never know until the closing credits,” he said. When she didn’t reply, and Andie opened the front door, he called out, “See you here on Thursday morning? I’m going to find Simon with or without you.”
The door slammed by way of answer. Elliot hadn’t managed to stop hoping for a different ending with Birdie. If their history was any indication, his heart would probably hang on the line until the screen went black.
32
BIRDIE
Birdie and Andiedid not speak on the short walk home. Dusk was falling, and a few houses had chimneys smoking; one that still needed to take down its Christmas lights three months later. It was beautiful, she thought, even if she hadn’t expected to find much beauty in Barton. But that, she was starting to realize, was her own issue. Notallof her issues, but some of them. The sense of not belonging in her brainy household, the sense of invisibility that went along with it, the sense that her little sister was always outshining her, which shouldn’t have been the natural order of things. Still, she was almost thirty-five now, and heaving around a chip on her shoulder—even if that chip had forced her to be independent, self-reliant, hardworking, stubborn, all qualities that launched her into superstardom—wasn’t doing her much good anymore.
She and Andie had never really discussed that year when Andie had lived with her in Los Angeles. Just like, she realized, how she and Elliot had never discussed the night in her apartment in Tribeca. Once could be excused. Twice meant it was perhaps apattern. Three times—with Ian; four times—with Kai; and actually, maybe her avoidance was pathological. For the better part of a decade, she’d been coddled by Imani and Sydney, said yes to by a thousand people who knew they had no other option but to say yes. No one ever bothered pushing back. No one ever offered lukewarm approval like her parents did, like Andie did, and now the pushback had become a very public tsunami, and Birdie was out here pretending she could do the same old things and not drown. She couldn’t. She was halfway to the bottom of the ocean.
At the time that Andie moved in with her, six years ago, Birdie had skyrocketed to A-list and needed someone around her she could trust. It was about a year and change after Elliot, right in the middle of Simon, which meant it was also right when Kai, now engaged to his high school sweetheart, popped back into her life.
Andie, who was already tepid about working as an assistant and taking orders from Birdie (but who was saving up for her master’s degree, and Birdie paid her generously), did not approve. The first time Kai showed up outside the gate of her new Brentwood home, Birdie had been at some event—she couldn’t remember which now—with Simon. Simon was an easy date to industry events. He was used to fancy people from his job managing high-end hotels, so he didn’t mind breaking away on red carpets for her solo photos, he didn’t mind that she was gone for weeks at a time on location, didn’t mind that she was becoming neurotic about her place in the industry even while gaining more power with each film. He didn’t know anything about Kai (of course), but by then the two of them, Birdie and Kai, had their secrecy down to CIA clearance. No one knew other than those who did. And those who did kept their mouths shut. Also, Birdie had kept everything completely platonic since Kai’s team had announced his engagement two years back. She thought this wasimportant: that she was on the correct side of morality, even when Kai tried to tug her across that line by texting and calling and emailing, all of which Birdie returned irregularly, as if this gave her cover.
The night when Kai rang her security bell over and over until Andie finally relented and buzzed him in was the first time he’d made a mistake in years, publicly calling attention to himself on the street outside her house. And so it was also then that the rumors about their history very quietly began to take root on the internet, even though Birdie had stopped sleeping with him, tried to stop even thinking of him.
