Eden’s Phone
* incoming call from Olivia *
Olivia : Hey, Eden. I thought I’d check in. How are you doing? Are you safe? How are you handling the new reality?
Eden : I was literally about to send you the exact same question. Dude, you are a literal queen. How are you handling the new reality?
Eden : Wait, I shouldn’t have addressed you as ‘dude’. I’m so sorry.
Eden : Is someone coming to arrest me right now?
Olivia : Please call me ‘dude’ at every opportunity. Very few people do anymore. Actually, very few people have, ever. My new reality is hard work and then some more hard work. And to top it off, guess what?
Eden : Hard work.
Olivia : Bingo.
Eden : It must be so challenging, Olivia. I can’t even imagine.
Olivia : Actually, I love it. I love it so much, every aspect of it. I am just so fulfilled, so… It almost feels like I was born to do this.
Eden : It shows. Every photo I have seen of you lately, you just… glow. You queen.
Olivia : From one queen to another.
Eden : Haha I don’t think so.
Olivia : I do think so. I know so. Talk to me about your situation, En .
Eden : I’m back home with my dad and my sisters right now. I took some time off school. I didn’t drop out completely, but I… I wasn’t handling it too well. I am trying to be kind to myself, but all I keep thinking is that I’m letting everyone down. Disappointing everybody.
Olivia : Is your dad disappointed? Any of your sisters?
Eden : No. They keep telling me how proud they are of me, but they don’t need to, honestly. I can tell.
Olivia : Well, is your Isaiah disappointed in you?
Eden : He is not ‘my’ anything anymore. Didn’t you see those live interviews he did? He was just so… clear.
Olivia : I did watch a clip, and honestly, I hadn’t realized how absolutely breathtakingly gorgeous he is up close. I mean, was that a cathedral building or his cheekbones?
Eden : Erm… Olivia?
Olivia : Oh, gosh, I’m sorry. Don’t tell Marco I said that. Or that. Anyway, everyone in the palace legitimately stopped what they were doing—state affairs, might I add—to watch your pop prince on the TV. They were that mesmerized. They say he might have never done an interview before.
Eden : He hadn’t.
Olivia : Wow.
Eden : Yeah. He was that determined to get his message across.
Olivia : What message?
Eden : That he wants nothing to do with me.
Eden : I mean, it was a little too much, but whatever. I told him I needed some time, and then we didn’t talk for a few weeks, and all of a sudden, he goes on national TV and does that.
Olivia: It must have been devastating to you to see that .
Eden : I lost a couple of days. I don’t remember them. My sister says I was mostly crying and sleeping, but they are a blank to me.
Olivia : I should send my guards to murder him. Actually, wait, I can. I command an army now. Would that work for you?
Eden : I don’t know why he did it, Liv. He is not a cruel person.
Eden : We were already broken up. Why did he feel the need to publicize it all of a sudden?
Olivia : Maybe he didn’t.
Eden : What do you mean?
Olivia : I mean, that leak about you being his writer put your life in danger, literally.
Eden : I guess it did.
Eden : By the way, thank you again for offering me your security. I already had one by then.
Olivia : Did you need it?
Eden : Yes. Still do. I can’t step foot outside the door without security these days. People have been trying to get into my dorm and now my house nearly every day. I once nearly got mobbed on the street. I’ve had to delete all my social media. It’s so scary it’s surreal.
Olivia : There you are then.
Eden : Where am I?
Olivia : That’s why he did it, En. That’s why your Isaiah had to go on national TV and insist that there’s nothing linking you to him. That you mean nothing to him. So that his rabid fans would leave you alone.
Olivia : He was trying to save you.
Eden : He WHAT ?
Olivia : He probably broke his own heart in the process.
Olivia : Have you watched any of his recent shows?
Eden : I haven’t been able to.
Olivia : Well, don’t. And whatever you do, don’t search ‘Issy Woo falls apart on stage in Munich’ either.
Eden :…
Olivia : Eden? Why aren’t you replying? You’re googling it, aren’t you? Oh, baby, don’t. At least make sure someone is with you when you watch it.
Olivia : Eden? Should I call one of your sisters?
Olivia : Eden?