Truly Madly Famously

by Rebecca Serle

  “That’s not true,” I say. “This whole thing”—I gesture around me, to the space between us—“isn’t how it should be. I don’t want things to be awkward and miserable between the two of you. It’s my fault that—”

  Rainer shakes his head. “It’s not your fault,” he says. “But you also can’t expect things to just return to normal. That’s not the way life works.”

  “What would normal even be?” I ask. I have no idea anymore. Nothing is the way it used to be, least of all me. I’m not Paige Townsen, employee of Trinkets n’ Things. I’m Paige Townsen, star of Locked. And I love both of these boys. In ways that are different and the same, all at once. Standing in that audition room last year, I never would have thought my life could change this much. But that’s just the thing—it has. For better or worse, this is where I am. But where I’m going is something I’m not sure I’m ready to face yet.

  Rainer exhales. He runs a hand over his forehead. “The two of us need to get back to set,” he says, gesturing toward Jordan. “We need to duke it out over August some more.” He tries a smile.

  They both stand up. I follow them to the door, where Jordan stops, leaning against the frame.

  The light is fading. I see the shadows across both their faces. “What’s done is done,” Jordan says. “We can’t change that.”

  “I know.”

  “But we also can’t move forward like this.” He exhales. “You think you’re saving us by not choosing, but you’re not. You’re holding us here. I know we’re supposed to say we’ll be patient; I’ve seen the movies—” Jordan breaks off, shaking his head. “But until you act, Paige, no one is going to be able to move forward. And I just have to figure… I mean… that isn’t what you want, is it?”

  “Come on,” Rainer says. He cocks his head, and Jordan unhinges himself from the doorframe. They take off down the corridor.

  I watch them disappear around the corner, and when they’re gone, I’m filled with the biggest, deepest sense of loss. Because, for the first time, I realize I don’t understand love at all. I thought it was sacrifice. I thought if I committed to Rainer when he needed me, if I refused to choose, if I let Jordan go, that that was love. But maybe love isn’t about the things we give up. Maybe love is the thing that—after everything is gone—remains.

  CHAPTER 19

  The next morning I pull myself out of bed at five. The sun is still sleeping, and I make my way, half-conscious, into a bathing suit, grab a towel, and slide on sandals. My morning Maui ritual.

  I pad down the pathway to the beach, and sure enough, I’m met with that familiar calm at the water’s edge. The soft lapping of the water, the moon passing the baton off to the sun.

  I toss my shoes off and towel down, and when I sink my feet into the sand I instantly relax. The water is cool, but not freezing. It’s early, and the sun is getting ready to rise—a sorbet sundae of color. As I swim I let my thoughts spread out with the sky.

  It feels like coming clean. Like I’m washing the last six months off me. With each stroke I let go a little bit more. I give it to the water. Greg’s evil influence, I let slide off me. My sister’s betrayal, I send down deep. The scandal with Jordan—it floats away on a wave. The photos and paparazzi and endless tabloid stories are no more than a drop out here. They seem silly, frivolous. Our lives, the minutiae of our celebrity, are no more than a blip on the radar of humanity. They don’t matter. If I’m with Rainer or if I’m with Jordan or if I go back to Portland and start dating a customer from Trinkets n’ Things—it’s irrelevant. We’re insignificant, all of us. Just a speck on the face of one tiny planet. And doggy-paddling now, out in the great Pacific Ocean, I have never felt so liberated by the realization of my own unimportance. I feel the weight fall off my shoulders right along with the water. I’m just one girl. I can’t possibly be responsible for all that I think I am. Fulfilling the expectations of strangers is not in my job description. There’s no way to make the whole world happy. It’s just not possible. Responsibility isn’t about pleasing others—it’s about doing your best to be true to who you are, and letting people see that.

  I’ve been so afraid of screwing up, letting people down, that I’ve made the greatest misstep of all: I haven’t been here. I haven’t paid attention. Because if I had, if I hadn’t been so busy being panicked over the press and my relationship and whatever image I’m projecting, I would have seen what was right in front of my nose this whole time. I would have gotten it.

  I’m just coming in when I see Jordan on the beach. This is his routine, too. Morning swims, sometimes surfing.

  I swim up to the shore and jiggle the water out of my ears. He’s a little ways down on the beach. I grab my towel and wrap it around me before heading over to him.

  He’s sitting with his elbows on his knees, gazing out at the awakening horizon. He’s not wet; he hasn’t gone in yet.

  “Hey,” I say.

  He looks up at me, confused, and then his face changes. “Good morning.”

  “Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  “You’re not.”

  He gestures to the sand beside him. I tuck my towel underneath me and sit.

  “I’ve missed this,” I say. Jordan leans over and chucks my shoulder with his.

  “Me too,” he says.

  “You were right,” I say.

  I hear Jordan breathe next to me. “I’ve had a lot of opposing opinions lately, and I’ve been expressing them with embarrassing frequency. You may have to be more specific.” He closes one eye and peers at me. It makes me crack up.

  “Yesterday,” I say. “The thing about us not being able to move forward.”

  “Ah.” He leans back on his hands. “You think?”

  “I do.”

  Jordan nods. “Okay. But I should have added something.” He leans over and picks up a strand of my wet hair. He holds it between his thumb and forefinger.

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  “You won’t lose me,” he says. “If you go back to Rainer, hell, if you move back to Portland. You won’t lose me.”

  He tucks the hair behind my ear, and I reach up and take his hand in mine.

  “What about if I stay here and buy a beach shack and become a fisherwoman?”

  “Especially then,” he says, running his thumb over mine. He looks up at me, and I see his eyes—black and bright. Like a comet through the night sky.

  “Wouldn’t that be awesome?” I ask him.

  “Staying here?”

  “Yeah. Just living off the ocean.”

  “We could,” he says. He threads his fingers through mine. “We could renovate a small cottage.”

  “We have money,” I remind him. “It may as well be a whole house.”

  “The success has gone to your head,” he says, smiling. “Okay, a house.”

  “I’d decorate it with driftwood and shells, and it would be all white and the windows would always be open.”

  “We’d have no doors,” he says. “Just linen curtains.”

  I’m imagining this house. This cottage on the ocean. Jordan and me, living out our days in sunlit bliss. Feasting on fish and fruit and vegetables. Reading and sleeping and staying forever underneath the stars.

  “Sounds familiar,” I say.

  Jordan quirks an eyebrow at me. “Locked?”

  “Yes.”

  Jordan drops my hand and brushes his palms together. Some sand falls. “I’ve been thinking lately that I need to stop believing paradise is a hideaway. That the only way to be happy is to be somewhere no one can see me.”

  “Trying to tap into mainland Ed?” I joke.

  “Maybe,” he says. He’s thoughtful for a moment. “I’ve watched you grow a lot,” he says. “You’re so much more comfortable being in this world than you used to be. You’re not scared anymore.”

  “I don’t know about that,” I say. “But I’m trying.”

  He smiles at me. “I want that for myself.”

  “
I want that for you, too.”

  “I’m sorry if I made you feel like it was more noble to hide.” Jordan swallows. “I just didn’t know any better. But now…”

  “Yeah?”

  We look at each other. Alone on the beach, the only sound our slight breathing and the waves crashing on the shore. “I don’t believe that anymore.”

  “What changed?” I whisper.

  “You have to ask?”

  I feel my heart begin to hum. It’s beating like it’s powering not only my body but the whole goddamn universe.

  “You,” he tells me. “You changed everything. All of it.”

  “Paige!” I hear my name being called, and I whip around to see Jessica storming down the beach at a runner’s sprint.

  I scramble away from Jordan and stand up, my legs wobbly. “Slow down!” I call to her.

  “Can’t,” she says. She reaches us, panting. She sticks her hands on her knees. “Rehearsal. Starting. Early,” she says. She straightens up and arches her back. “It is sad how winded I am right now.”

  “I just need five,” I say. I look at Jordan. His expression is open, and I want to tell him that he changed everything, too. That the world is entirely different because he’s in it and that I’ve been looking at everything upside down and I want to see things right-side up now. That I can.

  “You’re already ten minutes late,” Jessica says. “We gotta move. Jordan, your call time isn’t until nine AM.”

  “Thanks, Jess,” he says. “I’ll see you guys later.”

  I’m about to follow Jessica when I feel Jordan loop his pinkie finger through mine. I remember the premiere—how he took hold of me the same way. Then it was our good-bye, but now it feels like something else. A promise, maybe.

  And then he’s picking up his surfboard and heading toward the water as I climb the path back to the condos.

  I work mostly alone for the rest of the day and wrap an hour after Rainer. Jordan is still on the soundstage rehearsing through a scene with Alfonso.

  My phone rings on my way back up to the condos. It’s Alexis. “Gorgeous!” she says before I have a chance to say anything. “I’m hopping on an earlier flight.”

  “Alexis—I can’t even believe—”

  “We’ll have plenty of time,” she says. She sounds like she’s on speakerphone. I hear the sounds of traffic. “Tell Rainer and Jordan to be at the airport at ten twenty with you.”

  “Alexis, we love you, but I highly doubt the three of us are going to voluntarily get in a car together.”

  “I just came out in front of the world,” she says. “You can sit in the car with the two of them for twenty minutes.”

  “You’re really gonna milk this, huh?” I say.

  “Till it’s dry. Tell them if they don’t show up I’m holding a press conference to release all their secrets.”

  “I think they’re already out.”

  “Darling,” she says. “I’ve known those boys for ten years in Hollywood. You are just the tip of the iceberg.”

  “We’ll be there,” I say.

  “I know.”

  As promised, I get the three of us to the airport. I tell Rainer that Alexis had requested we all pick her up together, and to my surprise, he’s into it. When we get to the lobby, Jordan is waiting for us. “She called me,” he says. “Shall we?”

  Rainer’s neon-blue convertible comes around, and we all get in. Rainer drives, Jordan sits shotgun, and I climb in the back.

  I lean forward and fiddle with the radio, and when Katy Perry comes on, I leave it. Jordan tries to give me a hard time about it, but Rainer just turns it up. I catch his eye in the rearview, and he winks at me.

  Rainer has brought a lei, and he hands it to me when we get out of the car. “You should give it to her,” he says.

  It smells like sugar and sunlight. These gorgeous yellow and white flowers. Plumeria and pikake. My favorite Hawaii scents.

  I loop the lei over my arm and walk behind Rainer and Jordan. Jordan points out an old yellow Cadillac that is parked outside baggage claim. “It’s Rhonda,” he says to Rainer.

  Rainer shakes his head. I see him laugh. “God, remember what a piece of shit that car was?”

  “We asked a lot of it,” Jordan says.

  “That we did.”

  The two of them exchange a glance, and I stay silent, walking behind. Their shared history, as Alexis reminded me, is extensive. Maybe she knows something about getting them back together that I don’t.

  We wait for Alexis where Rainer waited for me just a few days ago, and she comes bounding down the stairs ten minutes later, the first one off the plane.

  She leaps into Jordan’s arms first. “Wilder,” she says. “I missed you.”

  “Missed you, too,” he tells her.

  She looks radiant in ripped jeans, a loose white V-neck, and straw hat.

  Alexis keeps an arm over Jordan and then slings one over Rainer. She draws them in so the three of them are in a huddle.

  “Guys,” she says. “I’ve invited you both to my homecoming to inform you that this rift of yours is over. I’m calling it.”

  Rainer leans back and raises an eyebrow at her.

  “This is not up for discussion,” Alexis says. “This is just a fact of life. I’m bored with this tension. Plus, neither one of you ever fought over me like this, and frankly I find it kind of insulting.”

  “Clearly that would have been a lost cause,” Rainer says.

  “True,” Alexis says. She squeezes Jordan’s shoulder with her open palm. “Drop it,” she says. “Now. Life is too short to not let in the ones you love.”

  I see Jordan nod. “You’re impossible,” he tells her.

  “Nothing is impossible,” she says, untangling herself from them. “That’s the point.”

  I see Rainer and Jordan exchange a conspiratorial glance.

  “Now go get my bags,” she says. “I have to talk to Paige.”

  Jordan laughs and starts walking toward the carousel with Rainer. “Good to have you back, A,” Jordan says.

  “Don’t forget it.”

  I’m marveling at them standing together waiting for Alexis’s suitcases. They are talking. They appear to be laughing.

  “How did you do that?” I ask Alexis. “Are you a witch?”

  “Kind of,” she says. “Paige.” She loops her arm through mine. “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you the truth. You were dealing with so much already, and it wasn’t the right time.”

  I take her hand in mine. “You don’t have anything to apologize for. You didn’t owe me an explanation, and you still don’t.”

  She shakes her head. “I was worried about the wrong things—what it would do to my image and career.”

  “Hey, I’m straight,” I say. “And I still managed to massively screw up my image.” She jabs me in the side, and we both laugh.

  “It’s just time to come clean,” she says. She keeps her eyes steady on me.

  “I know,” I say.

  She nods. “Good.”

  The boys are waving to us from the carousel. “I’m assuming these giant Vuitton trunks are yours?” Rainer calls.

  Alexis gives him a thumbs-up.

  They work together to lug the suitcases off the conveyor belt, and each wheels one over to us. “Unless you have a small country coming down, I think we’re good.”

  Alexis checks the bags. “Let’s go.”

  We start off for the parking lot. The Cadillac is still there, and Rainer and Jordan are reliving an extended Vegas weekend with “Rhonda.”

  “I told you eventually we’d be real friends,” Alexis leans over and tells me.

  “I never doubted it,” I say.

  “You did,” she says. “But this is a night of forgiveness.”

  I squeeze her arm. “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  I gesture toward the boys. “This.”

  “That,” she says, hiking her carry-on farther up her shoulder, “has nothing to do
with you. It never did. They just had to be reminded of that.”

  I help the guys load the suitcases into the car. We laugh as Alexis tries to be the architect of the whole thing. “What did you pack?” Jordan asks.

  “None of your business,” Alexis says.

  Rainer holds the door open for us, and we crawl in the backseat, Jordan up front. I’m thinking if there were cameras here now, they’d catch the four of us joking and driving and singing to Taylor Swift. And there’d be no way to spin that as anything but the truth: four friends in Hawaii, catching up and moving on.

  CHAPTER 20

  We get Alexis settled. Jordan stays to hang out with her, and Rainer and I head back to our side of the condos. The last thing I hear before the door closes is Alexis asking Jordan if there is anywhere he can secure her frozen yogurt at this hour.

  “This isn’t New York City, A,” Jordan says.

  “Come on,” Alexis says. “Since when do you not know how to make anything happen at any hour? That is not the Wilder I know and love.”

  “Fine,” he says. “But you owe me.”

  Rainer shakes his head as the door snaps closed. “Walk you back?”

  But Rainer’s room is first, and when we get to his door, he asks if I want to come in.

  “Yeah,” I say. I’m still wired from tonight, from having Alexis here. I’m not remotely tired.

  Rainer holds the door open, and he follows me inside. I go into the living room. Our condos are almost identical, but I’ve always thought he had the better view. I push the sliding doors open and step out onto the balcony.

  The cool ocean breeze hits me, and I lean over the railing, closing my eyes. “Today was pretty great,” I say.

  “Leave it to Alexis,” Rainer says from behind me. “You were right, about Jordan and me.”

  “Which part?”

  “All of it, I guess. I do care about him.”

  “I’m glad,” I say.

  “He’s changed, you know.” He clears his throat. “He’s different now. I know a lot of that has to do with you.”

  “I don’t—” I start.