“Well. Not really. I told you! It was silly. But I made enough money to get started in L.A., so that’s what mattered. Anyway, every now and then I would look at the comments, and, holy shit, people could be gross and mean for absolutely no reason.”
“Yes!” says Sam. “Why are people like that?”
Alexa shakes her head. “I wish I knew. I’d read some of this stuff, and I’d be like, what did I ever do toyou? Or, worse, I’d be like, You want to dowhatto me? If my mom ever read that stuff, she’d flip out. That’s one reason I shut it down. Plus, once I had what I was trying to save for moving I didn’t need it anymore. Anyway. When I said I recognized you, I was talking aboutMy Three Daughters!” Alexa ducks her head, looking suddenly shy. “I was a fan.”
“You were?” Sam is surprised. Alexa must be, what? Twenty-one, twenty-two? So whenMy Three Daughterswas on she was fifteen or sixteen. Not exactly the target audience for a Disney show.
Alexa smiles and take a sip of her iced tea. “My little sister,Morgan, used to watch it. She was a big Disney Channel junkie. So I’d watch with her to ‘keep her company’”—she puts air quotes around the last three words—“but really even though I was technically too old for it I loved it.” She pauses, wipes her mouth, and says, “We went through a—through a family tragedy around then, and honestly a lot of the time all we wanted to do was watch TV and not talk to each other about how sad we were.”
“I’m so sorry,” says Sam. She wants to know what the family tragedy was, but she doesn’t think Alexa is going to tell her.
“That’s okay. It was a long time ago now.”
Sam clears her throat; this is her cue, she figures, to change the subject. “So what are you going to do while you’re here? Does my uncle have you working like crazy, or do you get to have some fun?”
“A little bit of both.”
“Are you a beach person? I can tell you what’s what. You’ve never been here, right? Tell me what you like. Rocky, with atmosphere and amazing sunsets? That’s Vaill. Long and sandy and warmer water but maybe more crowded? Mansion or Scotch. Bathrooms and a pavilion? Fred Benson. Beach bar? Ballard’s.”
“Wow.” Alexa blinks rapidly. “So many choices! I grew up near the beach but we didn’t have this much variety.”
“Right?” says Sam. “It’s kind of ridiculous! I grew up in Narragansett and same for me. So what do you like? I’d take you myself, but I’m supposed to stay out of the sun, you know, this close to the show opening. But I can point you in the right direction.”
Alexa hesitates. “Thank you. I might skip the beach. I love the beaches in California, but New England beaches...”
“Too cold? I get it. Sometimes you really have to brace yourself, right? Try Scotch, though. You’d be surprised how warm it is.”
Alexa blinks rapidly again. Problem with her contact, maybe? Sam wonders.
“It’s not that. I don’t mind the cold. It’s more that... it’s morethat the beach this time of year reminds me of something.” She clears her throat. “Reminds me of an old boyfriend.”
“Ohhhh,” says Sam. “I get that too. I’ll probably never be able to have a slice of Ray’s Pizza without thinking about Tucker. We used to go there all the time. Did it end badly with this boyfriend?”
Alexa clears her throat, takes a long drink of her iced tea, clears her throat again. “He died.”
Hedied?“What?Holy shit, Alexa! I’m so sorry I asked you. Geez. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Alexa smiles. “Really, it’s okay. It happened three years ago. And I’m the one who brought it up. It’s not your fault.”
“Can I—can I ask what happened?” First a family loss, and now this? Alexa is an actual tragic heroine, while Sam has spent all summer moaning about someone being mean to her on social media.
“Car accident. He was alone. A deer ran out in front of his car.”
“I’m sorry,” says Sam, for what feels like the hundredth time.
Alexa chews and swallows the last bite of her lobster club. She smiles a crooked, sad smile—the kind of smile you see on people who might start crying any minute. “It sounds silly, when I say it out loud. But I owe him a lot. Basically he made me nicer. I wasn’t very nice before I met him.”
“You weren’t? You seem super nice to me.”
“I’m nicer now. Back then I hated my friends, and I was tired of where I lived, and I wasn’t as nice to my little sister as I could have been. I definitely wasn’t as nice to my mom as I could have been. I was scared to be excited about anything, you know? Like I thought I was too cool for whatever.” She dabs at invisible tears with a fresh napkin and says, “Shit, Sam, I’m sorry. You’re nice enough to take me out to lunch and here I am treating you like a therapist.”
“I don’t mind,” says Sam. “I like it! I’m sort of... light on friends right now.” This is the first time she’s said this out loud, oreven really acknowledged it at all, but now she realizes how true it is. Without her high school friends around, without her Xanadu crew, she’s been gravitating hard toward the over-forty crowd.
“I’m sorry!” says Alexa. “Is it because of—” She clears her throat dramatically. “You know, because ofthe thing?Sorry. I know you don’t want to talk about it.”
“Kind of. Sure, a little bit. A lot, I guess. You realize when you leave social media how much some of your ‘friendships’”—she does air quotes—“were on the surface. But also, all my high school friends went to college, so they have like these totally different lives from mine. Roommates and sororities and midterms, you know? And it’s hard for me to relate. Meanwhile I know my mom would love for me to go to college like yesterday.” She rolls her eyes.
“Ididn’t go to college,” says Alexa. “I’d be starting my last year if I’d gone when everyone else in my high school class did. I got accepted into my mother’s alma mater, Colby, and my mom wanted me to gosobadly. So I hear what you’re saying. I could see it on my mom’s face every time she looked at me, how much she wanted me to go. She was so excited for me to have the same experiences she did.My best friends are my college friends,she was always telling me. But at the end of the day I wanted different experiences. I wanted to move to California. I wanted to start working as soon as I could. Honestly I felt like I just wanted my life to begin.”
