Birdie Maxwell liked vending-machine Cheetos inhaled on a cool linoleum floor and passed back and forth, like a secret, with Elliot until the tips of their fingers were bright orange and sticky.
Birdie was half a mile down the Strip now, away from the hotel. She could keep walking, stay out most of the night. Or she could pivot and return to face the complications that were waiting back at the Boulevard. In a script, Birdie thought, maybe Elliot or Kai would come running after her, shout into the wind until she heard him, then kiss her in front of the fountain at the Bellagio as music soared in the background.
But that was a Birdie Robinson feature.
She spun around without second-guessing herself. She’d thrown herself into this whole endeavor because she’d wanted to regain control of her own narrative, and then, as soon as it got difficult with Ian, she’d retreated like she only got one shot to change her trajectory. When had she become someone who took no for an answer, who took a punch to the chin and refused to get back up? Elliot had assured her that she could carry on, push through, persevere, but she’d been so humiliated after Ian that, she supposed, it was easier to pretend that she didn’t have agency anymore, that her story had already been written.
Birdie stopped, her heart beating so hard that she could hear her own pulse in her neck. She tilted her head toward the sky, and it was then that she noticed it was snowing. In Las Vegas. She fluttered her eyes against the flakes and tried to just breathe. Snow in the desert. She opened them and stared down the Strip, at how everyone was now gazing upward, as if no one else could believe it either, like it was some sort of miracle.
Birdie felt her face crack into a grin and blinked back a surprise of tears. In Vegas, anything was possible; anything could happen.
Then she started moving, double-timing it back to the hotel. If she wanted her own sort of happy ending, she really was going to have to write it herself. And for the first time—or maybe the second—since everything cratered around her, Birdie truly believed that she could.
51
ELLIOT
Elliot made itback to the room after three and a half martinis. The half had been a mistake. He fumbled with the key card, dropped it, picked it up, but then Mona swung the door open.
“Goddammit, you’re a mess.”
“At long last, I’m as messy as my twin sister,” he said, his tongue feeling swollen, thick.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she said, color rising to her cheeks, her fists curled like she was ready to come out swinging.
“Nothing.” He sighed. “It means nothing.” All Elliot wanted to do was make contact with his pillow.
“I cannot believe you,” Mona said. “Are we really doing this again?”
“No,” he said, face-planting on the bed. “We are not doing it again.”
“I’m going to tell you for the last time, Elliot. I know you think I blew it, that I should be working for NASA or at the very least some biotech firm in Palo Alto. But I amhappy. I like Monads,and I like our old house, and it’s pretty fucking ironic that you think I’m the one who is stuck.”
Elliot felt his shoulders curl closer to his ears. He knew she was just warming up.
“Just because I don’t live this high-wire life doesn’t make it any less fulfilling. And I think—” Mona took a deep breath. “I think you should, like, figure out why you are so tied to the validation from your career. When, I mean, look, Elliot, we’re not getting any younger. We’ll almost be as old as Mom and Dad were soon...” Her words drifted, but she didn’t need to say anything else. They both knew that whatever he was chasing had something to do with his parents and mortality and leaving a mark on the world, but goddammit, the chase was exhausting, and he was beginning to realize he was sprinting down a dead-end street. Sprinting for the sake of it, not because it made any sense. “Also,” Mona said. “I think you should talk to Francesca. Ask for a vacation, take some time to just be a human, not a reporter. I think she’d agree, and you could start fresh.”
Elliot groaned into the bedsheets. She was right. His brilliant twin sister had figured out how to live her life all on her own terms while he was busy judging her. He shifted and rolled on his back and found her glaring at him from across the room.
“I’m sorry, you’re right,” he said. “And I’d be happy to talk to Francesca if she doesn’t fire me after tonight.”
“She’s not going to fire you,” Mona said.
He checked his phone one more time, but there was nothing from his editor, and his eyelids were tugging him toward sleep.
“She is,” he said. “But it’s just as well. I shouldn’t have accepted this assignment in the first place. I should have done everything differently. If I could go back in time, I’d start over. I’d rewrite it all.”
52
BIRDIE
Birdie raced intothe lobby and scoured the bar for Elliot. She had things to say to him. They had things to say to each other. She felt the stares and the long gazes from the patrons, and she decided to let them look. Birdie Maxwell hadn’t turned her life upside down to become Birdie Robinson to hide away from the attention. She smiled and waved, and when three people asked for a photo, she cheerfully said, “Of course!”
She could do this on her own terms. She really could. She’d never been one to cower at the first sniff of rejection, and she wasn’t sure why—or how—she’d become the sort of person who did so now. Birdie Maxwell was tired of hiding. Tired of listening to everyone else. Tired of the carefully curated persona. Who ever said that America needed her to be their sweetheart? Who ever said that audiences couldn’t differentiate between a woman they’d like to know exactly as she was and the roles that she played?
She thanked the last picture taker, then felt someone tug on her elbow and turned, and there was Simon.
“We didn’t get a proper hello,” he said, all British charm and sparkle, and Birdie gratefully welcomed his embrace.
