Chapter Six Check, Please
Chapter Six
Check, Please
After three pep talks from Regan, an oddly reassuring text from my mother, two (half) joking offers of slapping from Johnny,
and a nervously chugged iced coffee that I definitely didn’t need and shouldn’t have drunk, I find myself finally driving
across town to the little diner.
Danny’s Diner sits in the farthest corner of Main Street, right where the tourist shops give way to liquor stores and dingy
take-out places that actually have the best food around. It feels fitting, in a way, that we meet there. It’s almost exactly
halfway between the flower shop and the little cabins that started it all. We’re truly meeting in the middle for once . . .
even if it still feels like Nikki is the one holding all the power.
What else is new?
Still, I can’t help but think about the last time we went to Danny’s together—the last time we were here, in this town, together.
We had just come off our particularly rough fourth and final season, one that Nikki was gone for more than she was there.
She had recorded most of her lines in post rather than being on set, which meant frantic last-minute script rewrites whenever she wasn’t available.
I had to do double the work to make up for it.
I had secretly wondered if the showrunner would recast her or write her out, but it was clear the producers wanted to keep
her name attached—especially once she started to get more recognition. The fact that it meant more work for me wasn’t even
a footnote on the studio’s list of concerns. In retrospect, my agent should have demanded bonuses or a new contract to account
for all the extra hours on set—but no. He was too busy embezzling to notice, I guess.
Nikki and I had already been outed to the public by then—an unfortunate accident made in the middle of season three by a loose-lipped
guest star who had assumed that, since it was a bit of an open secret on set, that meant she could talk about it in public.
If ever there was a record-scratch moment at a press junket, it was when Lorna MacNeil blurted out, “It’s so cute how in love
they are. Dating your costar has to bring so much comfort in this crazy industry.”
Cue a major uproar and both of our teams (and Lorna’s) flailing around the sidelines in a panic. Nikki and I just sat there,
rooted to the spot, knowing that the pin had finally been pulled, detonating the truth all over a crowd of unsuspecting TV
reporters.
The headlines were relentless. Then came the protests from conservative groups saying we were trying to “brainwash the children,”
then the LGBTQ+ advocacy groups who wanted us to be loud and proud at all times—even on days when I just wanted to be home
in my pajamas watching Love Island and pretending none of this was even happening.
Our publicists tried to keep us apart for a while, worried that it hurt our image, hurt the ratings, made life harder, and it did, it did. But we somehow survived it—even if our show did not. Cosmo even named us “cutest celebrity couple” once . . . which only ramped up the protests and headlines.
I don’t think any of us were surprised when the network announced that the fourth season would be our last. I probably should
have been more pissed about them cowing to conservatives, but Nikki seemed almost relieved about having one less thing to
juggle, so I tried to match that energy. Besides, I was already exhausted from it all.
We came here, to this town, right after filming wrapped forever on The Nikki and Andy Show.
We both desperately needed a break after everything, and I hoped that the time away would also help us remember who we were without all the Hollywood hoopla. It worked, mostly. When Nikki wasn’t taking work calls, it
was downright domestic—lazy mornings spent sipping instant coffee in our room or ordering pancakes at the diner, regular afternoon
jogs, plus sunsets and beach walks and learning how to do our own laundry in the little room full of machines outside the
caretaker’s cabin.
It wasn’t a glamorous vacation, but it was real. It was perfect.
I clung to the memories of this place with a white-knuckle grip as our ship started sinking almost immediately after our return
to LA—on my most desperate days, I used them to convince myself that things weren’t that bad. That we couldn’t have shared
so much by the ocean if we weren’t meant to be. That two weeks of daydreaming that she was a waitress and I was a florist
made up for years of being let down.
They existed like a montage in my head, faded and overly romanticized—I swore I could still feel the surf washing over our feet as we galloped across the beach, laughing and free for the first time since our parents sent us off to set like little dolls waiting to be posed.
The shells I collected had bitten into my palms, sharp and stinging, but I didn’t care. Because every time I walked up with
more, Nikki acted like they were the best things she had ever seen. She would lead me inside, pressing her lips into my softest
skin, and suddenly the scratchy sheets and the cold, sandy floors felt more luxurious than any of the fancy places the network
had ever put us up in. It was our place and we had picked it ourselves.
I wasn’t naive enough even back then to believe she would make the timeline jump with me—which is probably why the fact that
she’s here now is screwing with my head on every single level. It was always going to mess me up to see her again, but here? In this place? It’s a level of surreal I could never have imagined.
I take a deep breath, trying to rein in my thoughts as I park my car and squint through the well-lit windows at all the people
bustling around. What if I walk in and find Nikki waitressing inside, like we daydreamed about all those years ago? What would
I do then, if she followed the rabbit hole all the way down?
It doesn’t matter.
Those two girls on the beach—the ones who still felt like their love was something precious instead of damned—they don’t exist
anymore.
Now, they’re just a trivia question . . . or at least I am. A footnote in every “Where are they now?” listicle, forever reduced to weighing brussels sprouts in a “last known photo,” while Nikki is the bright, splashy cover image, complete with a six-page spread.
I head inside, nodding to the hostess as I make my way to the booth in the back corner. Nikki sits tucked away inside, baseball
hat back on, pulled low, just like the last time we were here so many years ago. I take in the sight of her stacking tiny
jelly containers into a mini pyramid, like I’ve seen a hundred times before—it seems no amount of media and manners training
could break that particular annoying habit of hers.
Nikki stills for a moment when I slide into the booth across from her, but doesn’t look up, concentrating on piling the syrup
in a single tall tower instead. She makes it up to seven before I nudge the table with my knee on purpose, causing them to
fall.
“Whoops,” I say.
A waitress appears and sets two glasses of water down before scurrying back to the kitchen. I raise an eyebrow, confused why
she didn’t ask for my order, only to see a guilty expression flash across Nikki’s face.
“I ordered your favorite,” she says. “I hope that’s all right?”
I cross my arms. “You don’t know my favorite anymore.”
“Are you telling me that you don’t order chicken and waffles with a side of ranch and extra syrup?”
Well, apparently, she does.
“No,” I lie. “I’m more of a burger girl now.”
I don’t even know why I said that. I didn’t eat red meat then and I definitely don’t eat it now. The thought of it twists
my stomach, kicking up the anxiety swirling inside me to a whole new level. If I have to choke down a burger on top of everything
else, I’m going to fling myself right out the window.
“If you’d like to order something else . . .” She trails off, biting her lip and tugging the laminated menu out from behind the napkin dispenser set against the wall.
I decide that making her look briefly nervous is ample punishment; no need to torture myself on top of it. “No, it’s fine,”
I say, waving the menu away as she tries to pass it to me. “I’ll cram it down for old times’ sake.”
“I want you to be comfortable, Andy—Annie. Anne. Sorry, I’m not trying to be a dick about your name. It’s just hard for me
to see you as something different.”
“I am something different, though,” I say. “Someone different. I have to be.”
“Why?” she asks so genuinely it catches me off guard.
“You know why. Surely you know why.” I shift in my seat, letting the awkward silence linger a bit before I add, “Anyway, I’m
here. What did you want to discuss?”
“Everything,” she says, looking strangely like she means it. “What have you been doing the last few years? How’s our cat? How’s your mom?”
“Rebuilding, still hates you, and . . . you know what, ‘still hates you’ works for my mom too.”
Nikki scoffs. “Carly could never hate me! Not after I gave her my secret family fudge recipe.”
“It’s on the back of the Fluff container! It’s hardly a secret,” I say, fighting off a laugh of my own. It feels familiar,
sitting across from her again, like putting on a well-worn hoodie you thought you’d lost and finding it still fits perfectly.
It shouldn’t.
“What just happened?” Nikki asks, narrowing her eyes.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I almost got a smile out of you and now your face is all pinched up like you got kicked in the stomach.”
“You being here is a kick in the stomach, Nikki.”
She winces and I grab a straw, desperate for a distraction. Wishing on knotted straw wrappers is something I’ve done since
I was little. My mom did it religiously growing up: get your knot out and you get your wish, simple as that. Nikki always
said it was goofy, but I caught her tying enough straw wrapper knots before a big audition or performance to know she didn’t
truly mean it.