He was drunk because Kai was often drunk, and Andie, as unimpressed by meeting the world’s biggest action star as she was by being a blood relative to the world’s biggest rom-com star, put him in the guest room, where he fell asleep half-dressed, and called Birdie and demanded she head home. Birdie remembered, even now, that she’d made an excuse to Simon at the event, that Andie had sprained her ankle and needed help. What adult needed help with a sprained ankle? But Simon kissed her and stayed behind because rubbing elbows with VIPs was important for his own job, and for once, Birdie was relieved to be with someone who bought into the celebrity of it all. She rushed back to find Kai snoring facedown atop the duvet with one shoe dangling off his foot, and Andie standing there with crossed arms. Their own mom had left their dad for someone new, and Andie was understandably puritanical about infidelity. But Birdie hadn’t seen Kai in ages, she told Andie, and that was true. She’d been faithful to Simon, just like in a few years when this pattern repeated itself with Carter—Kai hurling himself against her front door because by then he had her gate code—and she was faithful to Carter too. It was just that Kai always took up emotional space,lurking in Birdie’s cerebral background, a sickness for which she had no cure.
Still, that night she roused him and kicked him out before Simon got back.
Now, with the sun setting in Barton, she and Andie stopped in front of their childhood home. Andie had always been a better person than Birdie, that much was clear. The next morning, she told Birdie to cut Kai out of her life entirely. That he was a cancerous tumor, that she owed it to Simon. But Birdie couldn’t, couldn’t commit to such a thing, even if she wasn’t the one chasing Kai, even if she had abandoned him completely once his team arranged the fake engagement to Haley. Eventually, months later, it became obvious to both of them—Andie and Birdie—that their arrangement was untenable: Andie’s judgment, Birdie’s obstinance or paralysis when the phone rang at midnight or Andie was cleaning out Birdie’s inbox and saw Kai’s emails (which Birdie did not return but left there all the same). So she fired Andie or Andie quit. It didn’t really matter which—they screamed at each other as Andie threw her clothes into a duffel and revved up the 4Runner, and the damage had been done to their sisterhood, which wasn’t even all that seamless in the first place.
What made it all the more punishing for Birdie was that she knew by then that she didn’t even really love Kai. Not in the way that she had loved Elliot. Kai had his pick of any woman on the planet. The actual planet. But Elliot had rebuffed her when it mattered, when it was just the two of them with so much naked history between them. So maybe Kai was what she deserved, whom she deserved: a man who was half-present, dubiously faux-engaged, and who once said to her, “You’re, like, ninety percent what I’m looking for.” Birdie hated herself for trying to convince him that he could live without the ten percent rather than convince herselfthat she was already everything that someone else might want. But who did want her one hundred percent? Not the person she actually hoped it would be in the first place: Elliot. So she kept Kai’s pleas close to her heart because at least that was something. At least it wasn’t nothing.
The sun had nearly tucked behind the horizon on their street in Barton when Birdie finally decided to forge a peace with her little sister. “I wasn’t that bad of a boss,” she said, toeing a crack in the sidewalk because it kept her eyes occupied.
“You were a dictator,” Andie replied. “You were grouchy and demanding and very rarely thankful or appreciative. I know it was a job, but, like, we were sisters, Birdie.”
“Are sisters.”
“But you treated me like an employee. And then there was... that asshole. I mean, honestly, Bird, fuck him.”
“But youwerean employ—” Birdie started, then caught herself picking an entirely different fight. She stopped, inhaled. “So then this whole thing, Sebastian Carol, the studio shutting us down, the apology video—it must have delighted you.”
“You think that I get off on my sister being publicly shamed?”
“I think you thought I should be shamed for a long time coming.”
Andie blew out her breath, which sounded acutely like her patience was being extremely tried.
“Birdie, this is your whole problem. You always think everything is aboutyou. I have spent approximately zero minutes thinking about your video meltdown, your professional liabilities.” Andie stared at her until Birdie had no choice but to meet her gaze. “I have a life outside my famous sister. I have a girlfriend, I’m prepping my dissertation, I’m packing up our entire childhood because our parents are in Spain. I have... like, othershit going on. If you ever came home, ever called, you’d know that.”
“I can’t wait to hear all about your dissertation,” Birdie said, and Andie rolled her eyes because they both knew that wasn’t true. “Okay, but Idoknow you have a girlfriend. Heather,” Birdie said. “I met her. I like her.”
“Heather and I broke up nine months ago,” Andie said. “Her name is Dre.”
“Oh,” Birdie said, her eyes right back to that crack in the sidewalk. “Okay, well, maybe I could meet Dre. I am sure I’ll like her too.”
“Maybe.” Andie shrugged and started toward the door, like they were so far gone it didn’t matter one way or the other. Maybe it didn’t.
But maybe it still could.
“Hey,” Birdie said to her sister, who hesitated for a flicker, but then opened the front door and slammed it behind her. It struck her suddenly that there was nothing stopping her from making sincere amends. Other than her pride. Really, other than herself. That it was that simple. Like an equation that Andie had probably worked out long before Birdie did because Andie really always was one step ahead of her in math.
She probably owed a lot of people apologies. Not a filmed apology like Imani and Sydney had insisted on. Birdie knew she sounded insincere and was grimacing like she was battling a bad case of food poisoning. That the lighting was too perfect, that her makeup was immaculate when it should have been running down her face, that her stylist had given her blowout too much pep, her clothes too much starch. What people needed was a real, heartfelt, down-on-her-knees, from-the-bottom-of-her-soul apology.
She stood outside her childhood home as the light faded andthe temperature dipped. The lights from the neighboring houses twinkled. The smoke poured out of chimneys. If she inhaled deeply enough, she thought maybe she could smell mulled cider on a stove somewhere or maybe that was just her imagination, the embellishment that she was always adding to a perfectly fine reality.
She stared up at the first stars in the cloudless, chilly sky. She knew what the script would dictate she do. She knew how her character would be rewarded. She just didn’t know if it was too late in the act for the audience to believe that she could change.
HOLLYWOOD HOT SHEET
BLIND ITEM:
We have an early Valentine’s teaser! Want to know whose heart might burst at the seams? Well, the star who is on everyone’s brain these days: BiRo. One Miss Birdie Robinson. A different little birdy sent us a blind item that we thought was a perfect love potion for our subscribers.
We hear that Ms. Robinson’s anonymous paramour is a high roller who likes the penthouse life amid the showgirls. Will theirs be a happily ever after? A roll of the dice.
33
ELLIOT
Elliot woke upthe next morning with an itch to write and with Birdie on his brain. Francesca had blessedly gone quiet for the morning—a quick text about her kid’s violent stomach bug, which was obviously not a positive, but Elliot took his wins where he could get them these days with her. He tossed his phone to the foot of his bed and rolled to his back, staring at the ceiling. He had to figure out how to convince Birdie to trek to Vegas and sit down with Simon and see where it could lead.
His future, not to be too dramatic, depended on it.
