Group watch party starts tonight at six, PST—live chat under hashtag #LBWatchParty! Post a photo of your Sasha-Kate-inspired Dutch braids if you wear them!
3
I’m putting on a careful coat of mascara, turning Ransom’s last text over in my head, when my phone buzzes again: it’s Attica, my publicist.
Any chance you’re suddenly interested in adopting a kitten? Or maybe Bre and I could find a fundraiser for you to chair, like maybe for snow leopards?
A kitten?I send back.SNOW LEOPARDS? (??)
Almost immediately, she sends a link over. Something about Sasha-Kate in the headline, from a site I’ve never heard of. I skim the post, grateful Attica’s not here in person to see how dramatically I’ve just rolled my eyes.
We’ve reached the point where texting is inefficient. She picks up on the first ring. “So what if Sasha-Kate wants to save the whales?” I say in lieu of an actual greeting. I glance out the window—Jimmy, my driver, is set to pick me up in ten minutes. “It’s not a competition.”
“You say that now,” Attica says. “But it does matter, Liv. I know that’s just a random blog post, but it’s not the only one that’s popped up lately—you want a reboot green-lit after the reunion special, and not just some mediocre spin-off where you get cut out of it. You need to make sure the audience is firmly Team Liv.”
“I was never under the impression theyweren’t.” I’m not even sure Iwanta reboot green-lit—not that Attica can be blamed for assuming so, since I’m still working through my feelings and haven’t told herotherwise—but it would be beyond insulting to be cut out of it.Girl on the Vergewithout its original girl? Surely they wouldn’t.
“Oh, they love you, Liv, always have! But we’re talking kittens and whales here—if any of those Sasha-Kate fan sites wanted to make you look cold in comparison, they could.”
I bristle at her words but resist the urge to defend myself.
“How about this,” she goes on. “Think of something that feels right foryou. Once you land on your thing, let me know and I’ll work my magic. Forget about the snow leopards?”
“Already forgotten.”
“Okay—rest up, think about it, get back to me when you can. How are you feeling about tonight? The carpet, the press?”
“Eh,” I say. “I’ll survive it.”
“You’ve got this.” She’s made of confidence, and I want so badly to believe her. “Just do your whole mysterious enigma vibe if there’s anything you don’t want to answer, okay?”
“So that would be preferable to, say, biting their heads off in very public fashion?”
“Only slightly. But yes.”
When we end the call, it’s like the air has physically stilled in the room. Attica’s energy is palpable even over the phone, just like Bre’s. If not for Mars—calm, cool, and collected to the extreme, a mostly ideal personality mix for an agent—my team would skew too heavily toward the frenetic. I’m somewhere in the middle: my whole life, people have attached words likemagneticandcharismaticto my name, even though I’ve got a relatively calm way of moving through the world. Some of that poise came naturally, and some came through practice; my first publicist back in the day coached me by saying, over and over again, words that could have come straight from my father’s mouth:Starlight is full of energy, but it stays fixed in the night sky.You’re a star, Liv—act like one.
The girl staring back at me in the mirror took that advice to heart a long time ago, for better and for worse. Sparkling eyes, cherry lips, smoky shadow beneath perfectly arched brows: a familiar face to go with a household name, even if she’s fiercely devoted to keeping parts of her life locked away, just for herself. Luminous but distant.
I peek out from my bathroom window and see Jimmy’s Mercedes idling in my circle drive, only a little bit early. I touch up my lipstick one final time and head downstairs.
Bre’s outside and ready when we pull up. Her green dress perfectly complements her red hair and fair complexion; her heels could kill. She slides into the open seat behind Jimmy.
The ride gets off to an uncharacteristically quiet start. Bre fidgets, riffling through her slim handbag for who knows what.
“You good?” I ask, and she meets my gaze with dreamy eyes.
I’ve seenthatlook before—and never in a million years expected it from Bre. Not once have I ever seen her nervous or intimidated in the presence of another person.
“I’mso excited, Liv,” she breathes. “I thought I’d be chill, but—ahhhh—I’m so mortified right now that I’m like this. Sorry, I’ll try to pull myself together.”
I laugh. “Breathe. In and out. You’ll be fine, just be your normal lovely self.”
I never considered that an event like this would faze her even slightly. I forget the people who’ll be in the room tonight are iconic household names from her childhood—all of us together with the litany of producers, directors, and writers could be more intimidating than I realized. To me, they’ve always just been the people I grew up with.
They weren’t part of Bre’s world until our paths crossed a few years ago, when I’d freshly settled back in LA after my years off the grid. A stranger at the time, Bre came to my rescue when a starstruck group of tourists spotted me jogging on the Strand—I’d craved the view of the Pacific while in Montana and had almost gotten away with being on a public beach when the tourists started flocking to me. Bre was on a run, too, and expertly extracted me from the situation like we’d been best friends for ages. All these years later, we actually are as close as we pretended to be.
We pull up to the venue just as the sunset fills the sky with the most extraordinary explosion of colors, pinks and oranges and purples and rays of gold. The timing couldn’t be better—it will make the most gorgeous, dramatic backdrop for all the photos that are about to be snapped as soon as we step out of the car.
