He darts his eyes from the carpet to the camera, and I cling onto his jacket.
“I can’t wait to meet the friends Holden grew up with.” My voice is pitched higher than normal, and I’m cheesing so hard that my face physically hurts.
In between the setup at the coffee shop, the styling suite and the way he kissed me with no one around, it escaped my mind to tell him his ex was going to be here.
I am sure he looked it up. He had to, right? The backdrop, the trailer—he must’ve known. But the look on his face displays a little fawn caught in headlights. No emotion, just stunned into stillness.
“Have you spoken to them since the show ended?” The interviewer points the mic directly in Holden’s face.
“This is our reunion,” he says, smiling at only me.
This answer satisfies the interviewer and they don’t reply with anything but a smile. We shake hands before moving closer to the door that opens to the theater.
He holds the door out for me, letting me step into the room first. My senses instantly pick up the savory smell of movie theater popcorn.
“I am going to grab us a bucket, okay?”
He nods as I politely smile back at him, heading toward the line for concessions, gnawing at my gums with each passing moment. My eyes are never too far from where Holden is in the crowd.
I forgot how much of a recluse Holden is. Everyone is vying for his attention, and I can visibly see him turtling into his shell.
Reverting back to day one, where all he could do was stand, stare and make you uncomfortable with each passing second where he didn’t talk.
All I want to do is get back to him.
At snail speed, I move forward, inching my way closer to buttery perfection. My stomach growls so loud that a little wave of joyhits me when another person exits with their popcorn bucket. I’ve completely missed the woman’s train I’ve just caught my foot on.
“Oh shoot, I am sorry,” I say from behind.
The blonde woman whips her head back in my direction, looking me up and down as I’m doing the same to her.
From her well-manicured toes to her sparkling pink dress, Sloane Swanson—in the flesh—is slowly killing me with one look.
She is doing a once-over of my entire figure. Staring at me from head to toe before swiping her dress from the floor and away from my foot.
When she does grace me with her words, she flips her hair back and says, “You could have torn it. It’s a vintage Matisse.”
She snaps her attention back to the line. Her stark, white-blonde hair is different from the honey blonde she had on set. Her eyebrows are thinly tweezed from her natural brow shape. Everything about her is different.
More drastic. More deliberate than seven years ago.
Cold air rushes past my shoulder, the glow at my neck starts up and I know she isn’t far behind.
The chant signals me of her arrival.
“A luz sabe… duas almas incompletas…”
She would want me to say something. Do something.
In a taunting voice, Skye says, “If you only knew…”
My vision feels fuzzy as everything slowly morphs around me. The people who were standing in front of me are glitching. When I turn my head to my left, Holden is no longer in the corner of my eye.
I blink hard, trying to recalibrate as everything is pitched into black. A man is talking.
Is this what a stroke feels like? No longer in control of my body…?
I smell woodsy cologne that I recognize and see the blue and white basketball uniform. Zooming out to a makeshift basketball court with overhead lights on a rig. Holden looks frustrated, fully in costume with his script in hand.
