Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter
Thirty-Nine
“I don’t care if we’re from different worlds. You are my world. Wherever you are. ”
Blair said the words with heart.
With feeling.
Tears brimmed in her eyes as she held Dylan’s face between her hands. Dylan’s own tears trailed down her cheeks as she gripped Blair’s wrists, their foreheads pressed together.
“ I’m yours ,” Dylan said. “ In any world. Every world. Always. ”
The moment of Eloise and Mallory’s reconciliation was romantic and taut. The entire crew around them seemed to be holding their breath right along with the paid extras as the two actors stood in the middle of Clover Moon Café, which Mallory had filled with a thousand purple irises, Eloise’s favorite flower. Eloise had opened the restaurant door that morning to a sea of purple, a powdery floral scent filling the space.
And in the center stood Mallory in a pair of worn jeans and a tee, ready with all the reasons she and Eloise should be together, despite the chasms in their lives.
The scene was cute, a grand gesture for the big screen, but it was powerful too. Weighted. Because Blair was goddamn good at her job, and every single one of Dylan’s emotions had been living at the surface for days, ready to spill over for this very moment.
It had been two weeks since her split with Ramona, and since then, she’d only caught glimpses of her, a flash of dark hair and curves, always carrying clothes, always hurrying, never looking up or around at anyone.
Which was just as well.
Dylan didn’t know what to say to her. Didn’t know if she wanted to say anything. Anger and hurt simmered just under her skin, but there was something else there too.
Her own mistakes.
Her own lies.
Her own… missing .
Because she missed Ramona so much. More than she’d ever missed anyone in her entire life. When she and Jocelyn had broken up, even when all the drama and publicity about it slowed down, she never longed for Jocelyn like this. Never felt her arms ache from emptiness, her bed too big for her solitary form. But there was nothing to do about it. She’d hurt Ramona. Ramona had hurt her, and Dylan had never known how to get around those feelings to the other side.
She wasn’t sure there even was another side.
“ Kiss me ,” she whispered against Blair’s mouth now.
And goddammit, she tried not to think about Ramona. She’d tried this entire shoot, the penultimate scene of the movie and the last day of filming in Clover Lake, to not think about Ramona, about reconciling, about taking her in her arms and kissing her, but she couldn’t help it.
And maybe that was a good thing, because Dylan was good . This scene was emotional and intense, and even Gia was speechless as she and Blair kissed, hands in each other’s hair, tears on their cheeks.
“ Always ,” Blair whispered.
“ Always ,” Dylan whispered back.
“And cut,” Gia said, her voice the softest and gentlest Dylan had ever heard.
Everyone remained quiet while Gia checked the monitor, hand on her chin as she watched what had just been filmed. Dylan’s hands were still tangled in Blair’s curls as they both waited.
“And…” Gia said, looking up and smiling. “That’s a wrap.”
Cheers went up in the crowd, and some people even threw their caps into the air if they had them.
“Good work, everyone,” Gia said, then shot a finger gun at Dylan, which was the closest she’d probably ever get to a compliment from Gia Santos.
Dylan smiled back as she pulled away from Blair. She clapped along with everyone else, nodded when people asked if she’d be at the wrap party in a few hours at Four Leaf, the only bar in town and, really, the only place big enough to house the entire crew. Her chest felt tight and bubbly at the same time—she’d done it.
She’d had a few bumps in the road, her name on the sites more than she’d like over the last six weeks of filming, but she’d done it. She’d become Eloise, portrayed a character wholly unlike her, and did it well .
And she was happy.
She was .
But she’d learned long ago that emotions were never only one thing. Fear could exist with excitement, and anger could exist with love, and hurt could exist with longing, and all those things could exist together.
She looked around the room, spotted Iris Kelly, the book’s author, who had flown back to Clover Lake for the last scene and wrap party. She saw Owen, the diner’s owner, shaking hands with Gia. She saw Noelle Yang near the back, clapping and beaming along with everyone else. And with all the pride and relief in her heart right now, Dylan couldn’t help but let in a wave of sadness that Ramona was nowhere to be seen.
It didn’t take very long for the wrap party to get wild. That was usually how these things went, the relief over being finished, the stress that had built up for weeks and weeks finally allowed to release.
Dylan sat at a table in Four Leaf, nursing a club soda. She hadn’t been drinking lately, and she’d never felt better physically or mentally. She knew she used alcohol as an escape, something her therapist had pointed out very brutally last week during a Zoom session, and it was a habit that could quickly spiral out of control if she didn’t do something about it. She’d fallen into her parents’ old habits, an ironic twist of fate that left her feeling like an idiot, like a weakling. Eli had said she was none of those things, that she simply had never been given other tools to process her emotions, and that was something they needed to work on.
So here she was, drinking fizzy water with lime and trying to process her emotions with some good old-fashioned introspection.
“Hey,” Blair said, sitting down at the table with her, a glass of red wine in her hand. “When do you head out?”
“Tomorrow,” Dylan said. She was going back to LA, back to life, back to her cavernous house alone. True, when everything started with Ramona, she’d never expected it to last past filming. And when she realized she liked Ramona way more than she’d ever dreamed was possible, she never really thought past Clover Lake.
She hadn’t thought through so many things. There was still so much shit in her life she needed to work out, including years of pointless enmity with Blair. Despite the tentative peace they’d formed over the past couple of months, Dylan wanted to make it right.
Because she’d been wrong. So, so wrong.
“Blair,” she said.
Blair took a sip of wine, blinked at her. Then widened her eyes when Dylan stayed silent. “Yes, Dylan?” she asked, laughing a little.
But Dylan didn’t smile. She took a deep breath, leaned forward in her seat. “I’m sorry.”
Blair’s thick brows lifted. “What?”
“You were right,” Dylan went on. “That day you told me off in Clover Moon.”
Blair just stared at her.
“I was— am —spoiled and entitled,” Dylan said, looking down at her half-empty glass. “I was a brat on Spellbound ’s set, and I treated you like I was a brat, and I’m sorry. You deserved better than that.”
Silence for a second, then Blair took another sip of wine, set it down.
“Well, shit,” she said. “Words I never thought I’d hear Dylan Monroe say.”
Dylan gave her a small smile. Her heart was pounding, palms sweating, but this was right, so she pushed through the anxiety and just let herself feel it , as Eli said. She’d spent her life fighting negative emotions, because negative emotions always meant chaos for her as a kid—they were like harbingers of disaster, rather than what they really were. Just feelings. Normal responses to shitty situations.
“I know,” Dylan said. “And I’m sorry for that too.”
Blair nodded.
“I think you’re amazing,” Dylan said. “You’re talented, smart, and classy. You’re pretty badass.”
Blair smirked and lifted her glass. “I’ll drink to that.”
They both took a sip, but then Blair sobered a little. “Look, Dylan, I appreciate this. Thank you.”
Dylan shook her head. “It was a long time coming.”
“Yeah, it was. But for what it’s worth, I recognize your—” Blair sighed, hesitated. “I get that the way you grew up wasn’t easy.”
“That’s no excuse to be a dick.”
Blair laughed. “No. But it explains it a little, at least.”
Dylan laughed too, and then they sat there, people dancing and whooping around them, finally a comfortable peace between them. A real one. Air cleared, shit owned.
And god, it felt good.
It felt good just to be honest, to take responsibility for her choices. Dylan had been putting shit on her parents for so long, and sure, they held their share of the blame for a lot of things, and like Blair said, that explained a lot, but this was Dylan’s life.
Not Jack’s or Carrie’s.
And Dylan decided its shape and path.
“Hey, you two,” Iris Kelly said, approaching their table. She had on a pair of navy high-waisted pants covered in yellow suns and moons and a green crop top. Her red hair was long and thick, tiny braids woven throughout. “I’ve been looking for you. May I?” She gestured to the other chair at the table.
“Please,” Blair said, sliding her wineglass out of Iris’s way.
Iris sat, took a sip of her own white wine. “I just wanted to tell you both how wonderful you were. Truly, I couldn’t have imagined a more perfect Eloise and Mallory.”
“Really?” Dylan asked.
Iris laughed. “Really. That surprises you?”
“A little,” Dylan said, laughing too. “Took me a while to find Eloise.”
“She did it though,” Blair said, winking at Dylan.
“She absolutely did,” Iris said. “Thank you both. This has been a dream come true for me.”
“Thank you for writing a kick-ass queer romance,” Dylan said, lifting her club soda.
“I’ll drink to that too,” Blair said.
Iris beamed and they all clinked glasses and took a sip, then Iris glanced around the room.
“Where’s your girlfriend, Dylan?” she asked. “Ramona, right?”
Blair just widened her eyes at Dylan, as though waiting for the answer too, even though Dylan knew she already knew what had happened between them.
“I’m not sure,” Dylan said, her stomach tightening. “She’s not my girlfriend.”
“Oh,” Iris said, making a yikes face. “Sorry. Put my foot in my mouth. I tend to do that.”
Dylan waved a hand. “It’s fine.”
An awkward silence filtered between them.
“Okay, I’m just going to keep my foot in my mouth and ask what happened,” Iris said.
Dylan managed a weak laugh, then shrugged. “We just…” She trailed off, shook her head. “I fucked it up. Wasn’t honest, was destructive. The usual self-sabotaging behavior.”
Iris pursed her mouth. “I know something about that.”
Dylan perked up at that. “Do you?”
Iris laughed. “Oh my god, yes. My partner and I had a rocky road to getting together.”
“Stevie Scott, right?” Blair asked.
Iris grinned, as though just her partner’s name filled her with light. “That’s her.”
“So what happened?” Dylan asked, suddenly ravenous for some camaraderie.
“I fucked it up,” Iris said, smiling at Dylan. “Wasn’t honest, was destructive. The usual self-sabotaging behavior.”
Dylan smiled back, and then Iris told them about her and Stevie’s journey, which started out as a disastrous one-night stand, turned into fake dating so Stevie could save face in front of an ex, and resulted in falling in love.
“That’s wild,” Blair said, “but I went through something similar with my partner.”
“You did?” Dylan asked.
Blair nodded. “When Harlow suggested moving in together a few months ago, I totally freaked out.”
“Sounds about right,” Iris said.
“It’s just so huge, you know?” Blair said. “A million doubts flooded my brain—what if they didn’t like me once we lived together? What if they hated the way I made coffee, or that I need, like, three blankets when I sleep even in the middle of summer?”
“Oh, that is annoying,” Iris said, but nudged Blair’s arm with a smile.
Blair grinned. “Letting someone in is always a little scary. No matter who you are or what you’ve been through. But it’s always worth it.”
“And I will cheers to that,” Iris said, lifting her glass.
Blair laughed, clinked her glass with Iris’s again, but Dylan was lost in thought. Maybe Iris and Blair were right. Maybe most people were just terrified that they wouldn’t be loved if someone saw them for who they really were. As Dylan sat there in Four Leaf, she realized that pretty much summed up her entire life.
She was scared.
All the time.
That no one would ever really love her.
Not Dylan Monroe. But her .
And it wasn’t just Ramona. It was her parents and past friends Dylan shoved out of her life for that very reason, every lover she’d ever had.
“Well, shit,” she said, then gulped at her club soda, letting the bubbles burn her throat all the way down.