by Skye Grace
“At least you haven’t had to play a high schooler for the last five years!” Taylor balks, and Alexis and Sage nod.
Okay, so they’re TV stars? God, what? And what am I? The thoughts plague her while the beautiful people laugh, unphased by Aura’s potty mouth, and drink shots of espresso in between sips of their cocktails, hardly touching the spread of food before them.
I guess I’ll have to check my ID when I get back upstairs… no one’s gonna mention my age, she thinks, letting out a sigh. This definitely isn’t my 16th birthday and we’re not in Seattle anymore, Toto.
She eyes a profiterole the size of her head, and her stomach grumbles so loud she thinks the whole neighborhood can hear it.
“It’s okay, Aura, you’ve been so good lately, you deserve it,” Alexis says to her, prompting her to indulge.
She frowns at her empty stomach and the thought that not eating is somehow considered ‘being good.’ She promptly stuffs half the giant cream puff in her face and feels an instant pang of guilt ringing clear in her gut. It’s almost as if she can hear an inner voice telling her, Stop! I can’t eat that!
She pushes the ache of regret to the back of her mind, covering it with sugary fluff. The idea of feeling guilty, scared, terrified; none of those emotions make sense with how truly beautiful her surroundings are. No real reason to be afraid.
This is my world now, she thinks, gleaming from the inside. Her chest puffs, the voice in her head that’s always been hiding, lurking somewhere in the depths, that confident girl. The beautiful badass that can hold her head high, exude self-assurance, was kind but took no shit. She feels as though, despite all this crazy, that girl is finally coming out of hiding in this new place, this new time.
Taylor, Alexis, and Sage chat happily and gossip about people she doesn’t know from Adam, while Monroe drinks more than Aura thinks is kosher for a breakfast gathering.
All Aura can deduce from this situation is that they’re in Los Angeles, and unbelievably, she’s now starring on a popular TV show, different from the one that Alexis, Taylor, and Sage star on, and that her show must be currently on hiatus while these three were still finishing filming before their summer break. Taylor is definitely not her boyfriend, and while she’s learning that he and Alexis play a couple on their show, they actually broke up months ago but remain close friends.
“So, what are your plans for the day, birthday girl?” “So jelly you don’t have to work, Aura! Are you coming on set with us again today?” Taylor and Sage gush.
“Or you could ride along with me,” Monroe drawls. Is she from the south? Aura wonders. “I’ve got that interview with Hot TV, but we could do other stuff after that. Whatever you wanna do.”
Taylor and Sage nudge Alexis in the ribs and she seems to remember something instantly. “Oh, yeah! Aura, don’t go with Monroe, it’ll stress you out. Come on set, please!” Alexis begs, her cheeks getting pinker.
“Why? She was just there yesterday!” Monroe is curious now, and frankly, so is Aura. This wasn’t her TV show, why would she always be on set?
“You have an admirer!” Sage giggles, expecting Aura to know exactly who she’s referring to but she doesn’t. She pours more champagne into her glass and gulps, hoping the memory will leap into her head.
“Liam could not shut up about you yesterday when you left the set,” Taylor laughs, as if everything they’re saying is totally obvious.
“Yeah, the nerf gun fight the two of you had yesterday, Aura? You two had so much chemistry, don’t play dumb!” Alexis rolls her baby blues. “The pics and videos of it you posted on Insta? People are already starting to speculate.”
Monroe pulls a wafer-thin gold rectangle, seemingly from thin air, and her thumbs fly over it furiously for a moment, and then she gasps. “GossipStar says, ‘Is Aura Lidell joining the cast of ‘Beautiful Deception’ or just dating her bestie’s co-star, Liam Kennedy?”
Aura’s brain flairs with frustration, she doesn’t even know half of what the girls just said, and it takes her a full minute of looking at it to realize the gold rectangle is Monroe’s cell phone.
She takes another drink, and closes her eyes despite her friends staring at her. You have the same phone, and you know how to use it. It will help answer some questions, but the rest you’ll have to figure out on your own. She knows the voice in her head is her, the same voice that attempted to shame her into setting down that pastry. Inner-Aura. The older Aura she seems to have fallen into. She takes a deep breath and tries to picture this Liam person, but all she can make out is a faint outline.
“Aura!” Alexis shouts, her eyes snapping open. “Liam wants you on set today.”
“Like… he requested it, Aura. Are you dying?” Sage’s doe eyes are wide and crackling like a campfire. “We know you like him.”
“And he RSVP’d to your birthday party tonight, I’d say that’s a good sign,” Taylor smirks, “I can never get him to come out with us!”
The panic sets in again with more vigor this time. Liam who? He likes me and I have no idea who he is. I don’t even have an idea who I am yet. She takes a drink and the words are flying from her mouth, directed at Alexis.
“That day in New York, I called you, after I first saw him on your show.” Her brain begins to gush and her mouth follows quickly after. The memory was one of total and instant infatuation. She had to have him.
“From the very first episode, Aura, you were his! And now he’s finally gotten to know you, and you live here now! No more East Coast excuses!”
If I’m meeting this boy tonight, she muses, I can’t possibly go on set today, cold. She needs to watch the show, to see him, to know why she’d fallen for him in the first place. She needs an excuse.
“I uh… I can’t. Go with you Monroe, or to the set with you guys today. I have to go to the doctor.”
“The doctor on your birthday? For what? You didn’t tell me!” Alexis whines, while Aura wonders just how much of her life Alexis is in charge of.
“Yeah, oh, it’s just an, uh… inner ear, thing. Gotta get it looked at.”
“Inner ear?” Taylor muses.
“I think that’s code for her vag,” Monroe laughs and the whole table follows suit. Aura turns a shade of beet.
Sage pulls a thin silver rectangle, Aura shakes her head, Oh yeah, her phone, from her lap and taps it once. “Drive times from Malibu to Studio,” she commands, the phone answering back instantly in a computerized voice that Aura has to pretend she isn’t shocked by, “Malibu to Studio City will currently take 55 minutes.”
“We better get dressed,” Sage smiles, finishing up a tiny serving of greek yogurt. “You gonna be okay without an entourage today, Monroe?” she jokes.
“I guess,” the pop star pouts, “but I’d be better if Aura didn’t have to go get her stupid vagina inspected. Btdubs, I’M her bestie, bitches!” Monroe suddenly shrieks, popping another bottle and promptly spraying it all over the five of them.
Aura tries not to giggle but the laughter and the bubbly spray is infectious. “Slack!” She laughs, not knowing where that word came from at all.
“Slack you, Monroe! This why we can’t hang out with you on work days!” the friends squeal. “You’re the reason we can’t have nice things!”
Soaked in Champagne. Surrounded by love and yet, confusion. Somehow, it’s the best birthday breakfast Aura can remember.
Chapter Four
When the last of her friends leave the house, she grabs a plate of macarons and a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, which happens to be a vintage from the year she last remembers being in. She’s a bundle of open nerves, too jumpy to notice the irony there. She rushes to the theater room and eyes the big box that must have her show and Alexis’ show on tape. Oh, I mean DVD. She rips open a box.
Her hands shake uncontrollably as she lifts up a small box that states, ‘Girl Gang, Season 3’ with Aura and three other girls on the cover. Then she picks up another box ‘Beautiful Deception, Season 1.’ That box had four b
eautiful girls on the cover, two of them being Alexis and Sage.
Aura notices her co-stars aren’t all model perfect like Alexis’ and she’s now gone catatonic staring at herself on the cover of this box. She reads the show’s description on the back, ‘The hottest network on TV, the most talked about dramedy on any network. Everyone’s favorite 20-something New York girls continue on their adventures to finding themselves with each other always in tow.’ Aura sighs and picks up the bottle, popping it the way she’d watched Taylor do, and drinks some straight from the bottle while downing an entire raspberry macaron in one bite.
“U’m the pretthiet guh on th shuw,” Aura mumbles aloud, mouth full, and it stops her in her tracks. How could I say something like that? Not that it wasn’t true, but Aura had rarely in her life been as rude as she had in the last hour and it shocks her to the core. Something about this Inner-Aura isn’t sitting right with her already.
She looks down at the plate of cookies. Are these making her this confident, this cocky? Or had she just grown to be what society could refer to only as a heinous bitch? How could the harmless little confections being doing this? You know it’s true, even Jake Conrad on the late late show said it. Remember how mad the other girls were at first?
“No, I don’t!” Aura yells, quite literally, to herself aloud. She takes a deep breath and thinks. Sometimes the voice in her head is her, innocent, sweet teen HER. And other times it’s almost a different voice entirely. She knows it’s her, the Inner-Aura that knows how she got here and everything that’s led up to this point. Everything that’s made her so different.
“I’m going slacking crazy!” Ugh, that word again. “How is this me? How did I get here?” She screams, throwing the box set across the room. Full tantrum mode, she throws herself down on a leather sofa and cries. She finally catches her breath and whispers, “I need answers. I need Rowan.”
Aura takes the bottle with her, running up the stairs to her room, finding the tiny gold phone mixed in with her tangled sheets. She holds down the round button at the bottom like Sage had done, and orders, “Call Rowan!”
“There are no entries for Rowan, please try again,” the tiny lady in the phone replies. “I can’t use this slurking thing! What?” She taps the screen frantically until her long list of contacts pops up. She scrolls and scrolls, fat, juicy tears rolling down her cheeks as she realizes, within all these names unknown to her, her once best friend’s name isn’t even there.
She manages to find the call log, and notices that though she’d missed multiple calls that morning, none of them were from Rowan. What could’ve happened that was so bad that I don’t even have her number anymore? That she doesn’t even call me on my birthday?
Her eyes prickle at the thought and more tears fall, more and more until her sheets are soaked through. Rowan. Why can’t she be here to share this with me? Where is she? Why isn’t she here? A sad, hard, little lump of emotion clogs up her throat until she sees a missed call from her mom and instantly hits dial.
“Happy Birthday, Baby!” her mother chimes on the other end.
“Mommy!” Aura cries like a child.
“Sweetie! Are you okay?” Aura hadn’t called Melissa Mommy in 15 years, at least.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine,” she lies.
“I can’t believe my baby is 26 years old today!” Melissa chortles.
“Twenty… Six?” She begins to bawl, the soft cotton nightie becoming only a means of absorption and no longer functional clothing. The nightie, along with the linens, soaked, Aura, wrecked.
“Oh, honey, have you been lying about your age again? So much that you forgot yourself?”
“No!” she cries. She picks up a designer handbag from the nightstand and begins throwing everything out of it until she finds her driver’s license, confirming what she’d thought was just a cruel joke, one that everybody’s in on except for her; 26 years old today. The joke, if that’s what this is, is all on her. Missing ten years of her life, however, doesn’t feel the faintest bit funny to her.
“Good, because you don’t need to. You’re still young, and you’re beautiful! You know, our friends have been calling every day since you were on Jake Conrad, they all comment on how he said you were the most beautiful girl not just on your show but on most of TV right now! He was so right,” she can hear her Mom beaming.
“Mom, that’s not very nice, you’re the one who told me life isn’t all about looks. That I shouldn’t compare myself to other girls?” She pouts, her eyes scanning the room that looks like it’s in the slow process of being decorated but is still largely clean, white, and empty. A shelf in the corner appears to be covered with some of her most important things. She wanders over to it while her mom apologizes for being crass.
“I know, I’m sorry. You’re right, you are all amazing actors. And Whit’s creative vision is impeccable, it’s not all about looks. You’re all such strong, amazing women. We’re just so proud of you, we can’t help it, Aur.”
“Is that a god damn Emmy??” Aura feels her voice punch through the octave roof.
Melissa sighs with relief, “Oh good, you found it! I know you weren’t sure which box it was in!”
She tries to hold the tears at bay as she walks over, fingers trembling over the cool metal statue that had clearly been found and appears to be freshly polished. A framed picture of her with her parents is next to it, along with photos of her and her co-stars at an awards ceremony, and one of her and Alexis grinning in front of the Eiffel tower.
She wants to ask her mother so much about the past ten years. About the show. About how it felt to win an Emmy. About Rowan. But knows she can’t. Knows mom will then know she’s gone completely nuts.
“Is Dad at work?” Aura instead asks, assuming it’s a safe enough question.
“What?” Melissa asks, a little confusion and concern mingling into her typically joyful banter.
Her mind races. What did I say wrong? Did I just blow my cover? She runs over and takes a drink from the bottle.
“I meant, is he um… working on his music?”
“No, it’s a little early for him, you know! It’s a miracle he’s even awake at this hour, you know how retirement’s been!” Melissa laughs. “He’s right here, trying to recreate those fabulous waffles we had in Brussels last month. Thanks again for the anniversary trip, baby.”
“No problem, mom,” a single tear escapes Aura’s big, hazel eye. The left one, to be exact. Her parents had actually been able to retire, focus on what they love, all because of her. There’s that lump in her throat again, remembering the very last day they ever had to work. Her mom puts Dad on the phone.
“Happy birthday, my baby!” They both sound happier than Aura has heard them in quite a while. She’s so happy she can barely breathe.
“Thanks, Dad,” she says, hoping to mask her choked up reply.
“Excited for your party tonight?” he asks. She nods weakly, knowing that’s response enough for him. That’s how connected they are, or at least, were. “I’m so sorry we can’t make it, buttercup. If I didn’t have that gig tonight…”“Dad, it’s okay!” She takes a sip of Veuve, How is this the only thing that helps me remember? “You’re playing the Lakeway Theater! That’s a big deal! Sorry I’m not gonna be there!”
“Ha! I’m sure your party will be more exciting than me with a guitar, but I do have a pretty sweet band backing me tonight! So… You excited to see Sebastian?”
“What?” Aura half sneezes, half chokes champagne up her nose and down the wrong pipe. She racks her mind for memories of a Sebastian, the only one she could think of couldn’t possibly be someone she knows. Or could it?
“Sebastian Gerard?” her larynx manages to squeeze out.
“What other Sebastian would I mean?” Dad laughs, “I know you were pumped when he said he was coming to the party! Or likely coming, right? Man, I watched his documentary last night. I knew whales were becoming endangered but WOW! I learned a lot. He’s quite the guy… He car
es so much about the environment! And he’s quite the looker, too!”
“Dad!” she squeaks. Seriously, who still says that? “There’s no way that I’m dating Sebastian-” Her actual voice is cut off by the older, embittered Inner-Aura. It was enough to drive a person insane, if they weren’t already. Actually, yeah, you kinda are. I mentioned Sebastian and I were dating when I was on the Conrad show a few weeks ago, in an attempt to get him to commit. Hasn’t worked so far, the inner voice sneers. She waits for more explanation but the voice goes silent.
“That’s not what this ‘Celeb Weekly’ on my counter says!” Dad laughs, sounding far too sure of himself. “And you talked about him on the late late show, so it must be serious! I mean, can you imagine how beautiful your kids would be?”
She lets her inner voice speak for her this time, she’s just too shocked to think for herself. “Dad! Stop! And don’t ever believe tabloids, I’ve told you that! As for me and Sebastian, I guess it all hangs on tonight. If he shows up. If not, it’s as good as over.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll leave it alone for now!” her dad groans, humored by the whole thing. “Wish you were here to try these Belgian waffles, pumpkin. They smell incredible!”
“Wish I was there too, Dad. Go eat. Love you.” Click.
Aura can’t speak, can’t move. Can’t even think, let alone comprehend how two parts of her completed one whole parental conversation. Couldn’t begin to understand how she could possibly be seeing the Sebastian Gerard. The man so gorgeous that when his first film as a leading man came out, she had to go see it three times just to make sure someone that amazing could even exist.
“No freakin’ way,” she whispers to herself, picturing herself watching it over and over last summer. Yes freakin’ way, and try ten summers ago! the wiser, bitchier, somewhat disembodied and yet in the completely right body Inner-Aura barks.
“How am I supposed to pretend to like this Liam person tonight when someone as beautiful Sebastian is going to be there?” she asks herself aloud.
