“It does,” Will says, “but thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” she says primly. “So how’s the movie going?”
“It’s... going,” he allows. They’ve been filming for nine days and are hopelessly behind schedule. Johnny Jones spends most of the day in his trailer drinking gin before periodically emerging in a burst of alleged genius and keeping them all on set until three a.m. Still, it’s not like Will isn’t grateful for the distraction. He’s been itchy and tense ever since the party at Charlie’s, Lilly at the house and Caroline in the kitchen and then Nick Harlow of all fucking people squatting on the restaurant patio like an alligator in a New York City toilet. Will’s been busy; sure, maybe. But that’s not the only reason he’s been avoiding Georgia’s calls. “It’s good.”
“Wow,” she replies now, her voice even. “What an evocative description. I really feel like I’m getting the full Hollywood experience.”
Will sighs. It’s like this with Georgia, it always has been, the knowledge that she deserves a different kind of brother lining the walls like lead. “I’m sorry,” he says again, poking at the pasta with a wooden spoon.
Georgia sighs. “Don’t be sorry,” she instructs. “Just—” She breaks off, the silence stretching out for three thousand miles between them. “How are you doing?” she tries. “Like, for real.”
Will huffs a laugh. “Now you sound like Charlie.”
“Charlie is literally your only friend,” Georgia points out. “He’s also surprisingly emotionally intelligent for such a hot and famous person.”
“He’s the full package,” Will agrees.
“I’m serious,” Georgia presses, her voice a full click lower thanhe’s used to hearing it. “We never really... you know. Talked. After.”
Will swallows, watching out the window as a grackle builds a nest in Charlie’s patio umbrella. He doesn’t want Georgia to worry about him. He doesn’t want anyone to worry about him, ever, but especially not her. “There’s nothing to talk about,” he promises, banging his head softly against the wall even as he says it. “Everything is fine.”
By the time he hangs up the pasta is overdone and mushy, past the point of saving. Will dumps the entire pot in the trash.
***
“Hold on one fucking second,” Will says two nights later, grabbing Charlie’s arm and yanking him away from an MTV reporter with a microphone as they walk the red carpet forMajor Fantastic. Well, Charlie is walking it, anyway, his face movie-star luminous beneath the neon marquee of a glittery art deco theater in West Hollywood. Will shuffles along behind him like a weird, spidery manservant, trying not to trip in his fancy shoes. “You actually invited them? I mean, like, all of them?”
Charlie turns and follows his gaze to the black SUV idling at the curb, watching as Lilly and June climb out of the back trailed by the rest of their sisters, all of them tumbling out one after another like a family jug band or members of a religious cult come to look for vulnerable young outsiders to conscript into agrarian servitude and sexual deviance. Their mother brings up the rear in a sequined floor-length gown. “I did.” Charlie shrugs, pausing to sign an autograph for a squealing girl behind a barrier. “I said I would, didn’t I?”
“I mean, sure,” Will concedes. “But people say things all the time without actually following through on them.”
“Not me,” Charlie says happily, waving to a gaggle of photographers.
“You would never,” Will agrees.
“Anyway,” Charlie continues as they head toward the doors of the theater, turning his body slightly so that the flashbulbs catch his good side, “you should be thanking me. After the way you crashed and burned with Lilly the other day, somebody had to run your damage control.”
Will whirls on him. “Who says I want you to run—” he starts, but Charlie is already gone, swallowed by the teeming crowd like a prop plane disappearing into the Bermuda Triangle. Will frowns, glancing back to watch as the Benedettos work the rope line. He once saw a picture of a flamboyance of flamingoes crowded into a bathroom at a zoo during a hurricane and he thinks of it literally every time he sees them all together: long necks and extravagant pink feathers and the knowledge that, working in tandem, they could probably eat the flesh right off his bones. He hasn’t talked to Lilly since that morning on the patio, and he cringes at the memory of it: the proud, panicky way he brushed her off, his brain shorting out so fast and hard he’s surprised he didn’t pull a muscle. It was all too much, her smile and her sisters and Nick lurking over her shoulder, the palest hint of a smirk on his smug, self-satisfied face. He’d never want to see him again, if he was her.
She’s here, though. She’s here.
Will tucks his hands into his pockets, trying not to stare—or, at least, trying not to look like he’s staring. Lilly’s dress is blue tonight, a long slit up one leg and a back that shows off the sharpwings of her shoulder blades. He wonders again what it must be like, to feel so perfectly comfortable everywhere you go.
He falls into step beside her before he can talk himself out of it, trying to walk with the confidence of a person who doesn’t get nervous and sweaty in crowds. “So, here’s a question,” he says, tipping his mouth toward her ear. “What do you think is the over/under on the number of exploding spaceships in this movie?”
“Cute.” Lilly doesn’t smile—or, she does, but not at him, waving over her shoulder to a couple of paparazzi. “Too bad we can’t all be as smart and sophisticated as you, I guess.”
“Weird,” Will jokes, still hoping there’s some way to brazen his way through this. Women like that sometimes, don’t they? Brazen men? “I say the same thing to myself in the mirror every morning.” Then, when she still just stares at him, utterly stone-faced: “It’s three, for the record. Exploding spaceships. I’ve got an inside source.”
“Charlie, right?” Lilly nods seriously. “Your friend whose house you live in and whose food you presumably eat even though you don’t respect the work he does or think he’s a serious actor?”
Will blinks. He’s used to her being rude to him—helikesher being rude to him, if he’s completely honest with himself—but this feels... different than that. “Ouch.”
“Oh please,” Lilly snaps. “Don’t act for one second like I’m hurting your feelings.”
“I’m not—” Will breaks off, confused. “Okay?”
Lilly ignores him. “Speaking of friends,” she continues, “I’ve been spending some time with one of yours lately.”
