Plot Twist

by Bethany Turner

  “Did he kiss you back?”

  I’d had two years to cement the memory in my mind, and I had complete, comprehensive, full-sensory recall of his hand on my hip as he pulled me close. Of my chair being moved across the floor with me in it. Of his peach-scented breath against my mouth. Of his lips battling with mine in a dance of desperation.

  “Oh yeah, he kissed me back.” But then I was ripped out of my reverie by an aspect of the memory that I didn’t look back on with nearly as much fondness. My eyes snapped to Fi’s. “Who’s he marrying? Is he still with—”

  “Yep. It’s Samantha.”

  “Good,” I breathed.

  “‘Good’?”

  “Yeah, good.” I grabbed a tissue from the box now sitting prominently on Fi’s desk and dabbed at my eyes almost with spite. “That means I didn’t ruin another relationship for him.”

  “Hey, now!” She stood from her desk, walked around to join me in the chairs on the other side, and placed her hand on my knee. “You did not ruin my relationship with Liam.”

  I took a deep breath. “Look, Fi, I know he took most of the blame, and I let him because I didn’t want you to know that . . . to let you know that . . .” My chest began heaving with sobs again. “I didn’t want you to know how miserable I was. I wanted you to be happy. Really. And I wanted him to be happy. And, well, if you could be happy together—the two people I love most in the world—well then . . .”

  If she was able to decipher anything I was saying through the blubbering, it was a miracle. I ended my unintelligible blabbering by lifting a soaked tissue in each hand, like pom-poms. “Then . . . yay!” I collapsed into her open arms.

  She stroked my back and spoke against my hair. “Olivia Ross, you listen to me. You did not ruin my relationship with Liam. Sure, the two of you making out in the kitchen nudged the timing along a bit, but . . .” Her shoulders rose and fell. “I don’t know. I don’t think he was ever in love with me either. In some ways we made sense. On paper, I guess.”

  “I always thought you would have made beautiful, brilliant babies.”

  She laughed and kissed the top of my head. “That’s probably true. But don’t you see? The heart of our relationship was you. That’s what we talked about that night on the beach in Santa Monica, when we broke up. We only ever talked at all because we were worried about you. Because we were missing you. And then when you came back? Well, the truth is it was still about you. It was like you were our kid or something, and every evening we’d get caught up on whether or not you’d had a good day at school.” She placed her hands on my shoulders and pushed me up to face her. “He’s not married yet, you know. Maybe you should contact him. Maybe if you told him—”

  “Look, I’m glad you and Liam were able to make your peace. I am. And that’s great if you want to be in touch with him, and that’s abso-freaking-lutely fantastic if he wants to write to you and tell you he’s getting married. But there’s nothing there for me anymore. And I can’t keep pulling him back in every time he moves on.” I sniffed and settled back into her arms. “We said goodbye in Boston. Now I’ve got to let him go.”

  We sat in silence until there was a knock on the door.

  “Oh, crap!” Fiona exclaimed quietly as she pulled a mirror from her desk and attempted to make herself presentable. “Just a second,” she called out, though we both knew it was going to take more than a second.

  The knock grew more incessant and impatient. “I’ll take the bullet,” I groaned, figuring it was the least I could do—partially because I hadn’t bothered with makeup and partially because I considered it my great privilege to take bullets for her whenever necessary.

  “Oh. Hi, again.” Caleb smiled at me when I opened the door, but my impression of him the second go-round conflicted strongly with the first.

  “What? Why are you looking at me like that? Did you forget I was here?” I asked in a tone I was pretty sure never could be mistaken for flirtatious. “Fiona will be just a minute.”

  “That’s fine. I just have a message for her from Gus. But while we wait—”

  “How old are you, Caleb?”

  “Um, twenty-eight.”

  “And how old do you think I am?”

  “Now, that’s dangerous territory—”

  “No, seriously. I need to know. How old do you think I am?”

  “I would say, maybe, thirty-eight?”

  Oh. Well, I hadn’t expected him to be that close. Or that honest. I had to step back and try to remember what I was trying to accomplish. I had expected him to guess either way too low, in which case I would point out that he was blind and ridiculous and I was far too old for him, or way too high, in which case I could be offended and slap him or throw a glass of wine in his face like I was Sue Ellen Ewing or something. Instead, I just hemmed and hawed until, thankfully, Fiona was ready to present herself.

  “What is it, Caleb?”

  “Gus is wondering if you have a script for Keanu.”

  She looked at me and smiled as she said, “I do. A Nancy Meyers script came across my desk last week, and I think Keanu will be perfect for it.”

  The beautiful Caleb nodded that he would pass along the message, then he looked at me one more time, with mischievous intent in his eyes—and it did nothing for me. I’m not sure if I was too exhausted or if I’d grown up in the past hour or so. Maybe I’d just been reminded of my heart’s high standards.

  I shook my head. “This will not be happening. But thank you for your interest.” Then I closed the door on his beautiful, confused smile.

  “I’m proud of you,” Fi said with a grin. “I do believe you just slammed the door in a Redford’s face. If that’s not a leading-lady move, I don’t know what is.”

  February 4, 2013

  I awoke three minutes before my alarm went off. And that was the ninth time I had opened my eyes to glance at the clock throughout the course of the night. It was a night that felt eternal—and isn’t it funny how therapeutic and refreshing that feeling is when the endless night consists of sleep, and how torturous it is when it consists of restlessness? The one that finally ended three minutes before my alarm went off was nothing short of torture.

  After I rolled over and turned off my alarm, I stood and walked to the calendar pinned to my wall. February 4, 2013. How long had I waited for this day? Sure, I could pinpoint exactly how long, if I wanted to be literal, but how long had I been waiting really? A decade? Since I was a little girl? My entire life?

  I walked around my bedroom in the West Hollywood apartment Fi and I had been living in for about a month and wondered how everything might be different the next time I was in there. The next time I awoke. I wasn’t deluding myself that everything was going to change overnight, but I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that something would. For better or worse, my life would never be exactly the same again. Regardless of what the day held, it was the end of one era and the beginning of another, and that prospect excited me in a way I had never experienced before. I was on the precipice of change. That thought terrified me, but it was a terror I welcomed.

  I went to my closet and pulled out the outfit I had chosen for the day—the outfit I had purchased for the day—and laid it out on my bed, ready to get moving. But before I could make any progress, I smelled a fascinating, intoxicating aroma coming from outside my door. It was a scent I knew well and one to which I was enslaved, but in its current context it made no sense whatsoever. It was almost certainly the scent of fresh coffee, but the sun was not yet up, and I knew I hadn’t brewed coffee yet. So how could there be coffee?

  “Liv? You up?” Fiona questioned softly from the other side of my door.

  I was so startled that I screamed, which made her scream and then giggle. I threw open my door, bewildered.

  “Fiona Mitchell! Do you know what time it is?”

  “Well, yes. Of course I do.” She stretched out an arm to hand me a full mug.

  “Thank you,” I said as I warmed my face in the java’s s
team. “What are you doing up? I was beginning to think we had an amicable burglar who wanted us to be caffeinated when we filed our insurance claim.”

  “Well, aren’t you the funny one. If this is the treatment I receive at this time of day, is it any wonder I usually choose to wait it out a little?” She took a gulp of her own coffee, enveloping the cup in both hands for warmth. “But I knew you would be leaving early, and I didn’t want to miss you. I’m so excited for you, Livi! Can you believe this day is finally here?”

  I just smiled, having already gone through that entire sequence of emotions alone in my bedroom.

  “Well, I’ll leave you to it so you can get ready,” she continued. “What are you going to wear? Oh, that’s right! You and Stella have finally become friends.”

  I rolled my eyes at her as I sipped on the surprisingly delicious coffee she had made for me. She must have used the good stuff. “Don’t be getting any ideas, Fi. I have not become friends with Stella McCartney. Or any other designer, for that matter. I don’t wear designer clothes. I’m just wearing this one amazingly beautiful dress, which just happens to be from Stella McCartney’s fall line.”

  “Admit it. Just saying that sentence made your heart beat faster.”

  I couldn’t deny it, but I also refused to give in to her belief that every self-respecting woman in the universe should wear designer labels whenever possible. I would go back to normal clothes with a normal price tag on February 5. Regardless of how good I felt in that dress. Regardless of how good I looked in that dress.

  “Fi, this coffee is amazing,” I diverted. “I wasn’t entirely sure you knew how to work the coffeemaker. I’m super impressed right now.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re super impressed. I, for one, am super offended. Of course I know how to work the coffeemaker, Olivia. Having said that, this is Los Angeles, and coffee can be delivered hot and fresh anytime, day or night. But I placed the order all by myself.”

  Whether or not she or I were what one might consider “domestic,” I had no doubt that in the year since our frank discussion about Liam, Fiona and I had grown in about a million different ways. Once we were able to stop skirting around our mutual misery and hidden subtext and actually talk about the things we’d been avoiding, life went on. Without Liam. I’d had a life before him, I’d had a life with him, and I had a life after him—but I had no recollection of life without Fi. We had survived some of the worst things friends could do to each other, and we had come out on the other side stronger and more bonded than ever before.

  Turns out Fiona Mitchell and I were actually the loves of each other’s lives.

  About three weeks after I refused to let Fi show my script to Gus or rework it into a riotous laugh fest about love, loss, and espionage starring Keanu Reeves, Exquisite Agony finally picked up its first victory of awards season—the Academy Award for Best Picture. No one could quite explain how it happened, but it didn’t matter. The little film that critics had loved all along, but that audiences had avoided like a depressing, heartbreaking plague, pulled off one of the biggest upsets in Oscar history. And those thirty-nine million Oscar viewers were so curious about the winner they’d never heard of that it soon became a box-office smash.

  Its mainstream success made me lose a little bit of respect for it, obviously, but it was a good turn of events for Fiona. As Gus became more in demand, and hot on the heels of her impressive, cool-under-pressure (as far as anyone apart from me knew) selection of a Nancy Myers romantic comedy for Keanu, she became 90 Craic Films’ most valuable asset. By the time she’d gotten halfway through the UCLA Film School’s Producers Program, she had a major Hollywood production credit under her belt. Within six months Gus had handed her the reins of her own slate of films for 90 Craic, and there had been no looking back since.

  * * *

  Thirty minutes after I finished the coffee that Fiona had ordered for me—all by herself—I was standing in our living room, obsessively twirling and contorting in front of the mirror, making sure that each and every angle was worthy of the day. Fiona was also dressed, ready for work, in Vivienne Westwood from head to toe. On her, designer made sense.

  “You look sensational, Liv. Stop fidgeting. You’re ready. What time do you need to be there?”

  “They open at nine, so shortly after that. I don’t want to be seen waiting for them to open the doors, but I don’t want to lose any time either.”

  “Smart.” She nodded. “And you’ll call me after?”

  “Of course.”

  “Although, maybe rather than talking about it on the phone, we could just meet for coffee . . .”

  I laughed so hard that I had to run back to the mirror and check my eye makeup again. “That was good, Fi. Subtle. You held out a lot longer than I thought you would, actually. My money was on there being a note on my pillow when I woke up.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, exuding naivete. “I just thought—”

  “I know what you thought, but no. I’m not going anywhere near that coffeehouse today.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “But it’s finally been ten years, Livi! Wouldn’t it be a shame, after all this time and all the drama of the last decade, not to even see if he showed up?” With each and every word came more pleading in her eyes and voice, and I began comprehending the real reason she had set her alarm for a pre-sunrise world. She was running out of time to convince me.

  Smiling, I put on my light coat and pulled my hair out from under the collar. “Is it not enough that I begin writing for television today? Is it not enough that your best friend is the new head writer of dramatic programming for the Heartlite Network?” Man, that was fun to say. “Seriously, Fiona. What else do you need?”

  “I need for you to marry Hamish MacDougal and make lots of Scottish babies that we can dress in little baby kilts. I’m an only child, Liv. You are my only chance of ever being an aunt. Do it for me.”

  “Brandon has nineteen kids now. That should be enough to get you through.”

  Okay, so maybe he didn’t have nineteen. But in addition to Matthew and Maisie, he and Sonya did have five-month-old twins, Felix and Astrid. Of course my overachieving brother had found a way to give our parents four grandchildren in the span of two years.

  It was all so disgustingly perfect, and I wanted to be disgruntled about it. After all, in less time than that I had gone back to work writing greeting cards, but had also written and submitted my first script for a Heartlite feature—which had gone on to be the most successful original feature in the Heartlite Network’s history. And there was no spotlight to be found. But my sister-in-law and nieces and nephews were all so perfectly lovely that I couldn’t bring myself to be crabby about Brandon’s perfect life.

  “What would it hurt, Liv?” Fiona was undeterred. “We walk in there and we order a coffee, like we have done so many times at so many coffeehouses. If he’s there, then you’ll know. And if he’s not, well, when have you and I ever regretted having coffee?”

  I picked up my purse and keys and she did the same, and we headed toward the door together. “I’m starting a new job today. I have better things to do.”

  “Oh, you’re not starting a new job. You’re filling out HR paperwork and getting introduced to your staff. You said so yourself. You don’t start working until tomorrow. So—”

  “I’m going to work now, Fiona. And that’s the end of it.”

  With a sigh she muttered, “Fine. Whatever. I hope you have fun today choosing not to marry Hamish MacDougal. I hope you’re okay with that decision for the rest of your life. You know, the rest of your life that you will spend not married to Hamish MacDougal.”

  I laughed as I closed the door behind us and locked it. “I’ve made my peace with it.”

  We stepped away from the door together, but I stopped in response to her gasp.

  “What? What is it?”

  “You are not wearing those shoes.”

  I looked down a
t my ballet flats. “What’s wrong with my shoes?”

  “Most days, nothing. But on this day, with that Stella McCartney dress . . .” She crossed her arms and shook her head. “No way.”

  “You’re going to make me wear heels, aren’t you?”

  “You have to wear heels, Livi. Yes! This is a dress that is made to show off your calves and make you look tall, and you can’t do either of those things in ballet flats you bought off the clearance rack at Walgreens.”

  I rolled my eyes at her. She could be such a snob. Besides, I hadn’t bought them at Walgreens. I’d gotten them at Goodwill.

  “Fi, the black heels I have pinch my toes, and I don’t want to be miserable all day.”

  She jingled her keys around and found her key to our front door, which she opened up again. “Wear some of mine.”

  It was my turn to gasp.

  Fiona and I had worn the same shoe size since the ninth grade, but ninth grade was also the last time she had let me borrow her shoes. The details were fuzzy in my mind, but I was pretty sure it had something to do with me wearing her brand-new floral Doc Martens while painting sets after school for the upcoming production of You Can’t Take It with You. Yeah . . . who could say for sure if that had anything to do with it.

  “You’re going to let me borrow your shoes?”

  She looked me dead in the eye. “You’re a forty-year-old woman beginning a professional, high-profile job in the entertainment industry. I’m trusting you to handle this responsibility with the gravity it deserves.”

  “I’m completely prepared to handle this job, Fi—”

  “Not the job, Livi. The shoes. Keep up.”

  “Of course. Okay, you have my word. I will protect them with my life.”

  “Knock ’em dead today. I’m so proud of you.” Studying me with misty eyes, she said, “My best friend, ladies and gentlemen. Achiever of dreams. Conqueror of life’s obstacles. Able to accomplish whatever she sets her mind to.” She pulled me in for a quick hug and then turned to go, calling over her shoulder, “Anything but the Manolo Blahniks. You’re not ready for those yet.”