21. Octavia
Chapter 21
Octavia
C inderella’s fairy godmother offered her one fabulous night.
She knew going into the evening that her carriage was made of pumpkins. She knew her clothing wasn’t going to last. She knew it was all beautifully temporary.
What the movie doesn’t show is how devastating it is to get a glimpse of your heart’s desire. It makes losing it so much harder than never having had it.
But I’d do it all over again.
When someone flinches at the sight of me, I close my eyes and imagine Jake barging into my apartment and telling my mother off. When I read a nasty comment online, I remember him telling me over and over that I’m the most beautiful person he ever met.
He said he’d tell me every day, and he has.
Because I remember how he sounded when he said it. He may have been my boyfriend for less time than milk can sit on your fridge shelf without souring, but it was enough to change me.
Bea comes out in her lacy dress. “You ready?”
I force a smile. “I love that.”
Bea rolls her eyes. “No one really loves what they settle for. This was our second choice, and we both know it. There’s no reason to pretend, not with me.”
“He’s still not answering?”
She sighs. “He dumped you, okay. It made no sense, but then why would he cut us all off? What’s going on that we don’t understand?” Bea starts pacing again. “We have our album shoot today, and then we have to go back home. I hate this, because he has weeks left, and I just can’t disappear and hope he’ll come to his senses. Jake’s not smart with stuff like that. You have to shove him the right direction or he gets confused.”
I hate this almost as much as the moment Jake dumped me.
Even though I felt so stupid in that fragment of time. What kind of idiot confesses her love to someone who’s about to dump her? Read the room, Octavia, geez. To make matters worse, I realized as I walked back inside that his stupid co-star May was standing on the other side of the car the whole time.
She heard my pathetic confession and his breakup soliloquy.
I’m sure they’ve laughed about it together.
Heck, I’ve laughed about it, bitterly, but still. I was truly delusional to think that I’d fit into his shiny life. I get it. No hard feelings. But it could have gone down in about two thousand and three less embarrassing ways.
I push that futile thought out of my mind, and I throw my lace-overlay mini dress on, and I force myself to at least glance in the mirror. I touch up my makeup and hair, and then I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. By the time Bea and I reach the location they chose for our shoot, we’re raring to share our ideas.
But when we get to the pin, it looks nothing like we expected.
“The Walt Disney Concert Hall?” I ask.
“It’s pretty, at least,” Bea says. “But what are they going to do with us here? We talked about fountains, town squares, and open spaces.”
By the time we park, we’re already late, and the heels we chose aren’t exactly jogging friendly. I nearly twist my ankle, but we manage to shoot inside less than five minutes late.
We’re both panting like labradors on a summer’s day, though.
Which, in LA, November almost is.
“Finally,” a woman in all black says. “Hurry back. We still have to get you dressed.”
I frown. “We are dressed. Who are you?”
“Yeah,” Bea says. “We used the approved costume budget for these. We have artistic approval over the album cover. It’s in our contract.”
The woman shrugs. “I answer to Eddy. You can follow me and argue with him.”
But when she finally stops walking and we barge through the double doors into the dressing area, Bea and I both freeze. I can’t even form words.
“What is that?” I whisper.
Bea shakes her head.
“This is what you’re going to wear.” The woman points. “Eddy’s insisting.”
It’s the gown.
I walk toward it slowly, terrified and delighted. Afraid and excited. I lift my hand toward it, preparing to brush the back of my hand on the chiffon. That’s when I notice there’s a small card pinned to the top of the dress form.
I pull out the stick pin and pluck out the card.
My name’s clear on the front, and it’s handwriting I know. Small caps—only the first letter of each word is larger, but everything is caps.
It’s from Jake.
My hand trembles.
I force myself to open the card anyway.
Dear Octavia,
I know we didn’t work out, but that doesn’t change the fact that you belong in this dress. It was designed for you, and it has to be the album cover. Wear it, and don’t turn to the left. Smile so that the whole world sees your beauty the same way I do.
They’ll be transfixed.
Shine for them, even when it’s hard. The world needs your light.
-Jake
The shoot ends up being way delayed. They have to redo my makeup entirely, because I cry so much that it runs down my face. But when the photographer shows up, and when everyone else in the band—including Bea—has changed into all black, they won’t listen to a word of protest.
“You’ll all disappear,” I say.
“We should.” Now Morgan’s crying. “We all should.”
“I think the cover should just be her,” Q says.
“Yes.” Bea nods. “I wrote every song for you.” She smiles. “Please?”
In the end, they do take some photos of just me, but I make them take photos with the whole band as well.
“We can let editorial decide what’s best,” Bea says. “If they want us there, we’ll all be on it. But the shots of just you are powerful.”
“I think they kind of frown on us peering over the photographer’s shoulder,” Morgan says.
Bea laughs. “Frowning doesn’t scare me. Jake Priest’s my brother.”
We all laugh, but it hurts just a little.
When I try to leave, the shoot director insists I take the gown with me. “I can’t,” I say. “You have to return it.”
“The studio didn’t pay for it,” the director says. “Jake paid for it himself, and he was very adamant that it was meant for you.”
It barely fits in the van—shipping it is a complete ordeal. Even so, I’m secretly delighted.
Bea and I both try going by Jake’s apartment several times, but if he’s there, he never answers the door. Eventually, we board our flights home. The movie catches up on the filming, because within a week or two of getting home, we start seeing ads for it.
I ignore them, mostly.
Though it’s nice to hear our music. A few weeks later, our album launches with just me on the cover. Well, me and The Dress. It feels like it needs its own zip code. I brace myself for the nasty comments, the cruel criticisms, and the rude digs. A few do pop up, but way, way fewer than I expected. The beauty of the dress works its magic, because the vast majority of the comments actually say they finally understand why Jake’s with me.
That hurts worse than digs about my face, honestly.
Two weeks later, we see the first official trailer for the movie, and that’s the first time I hear rumors connecting May with Jake. It’s worse than the comments about us being together after he dumped me, because I know they’re a better fit.
And fans go wild.
Rumors circulate like wildfire, some of them portraying me as a horrible shrew, while others maintain I was wronged. Plenty of others paint me as a tragic figure who made too many demands, or the femme fatale that broke Jake’s poor, battered heart.
In those, May’s the heroine who nursed him back to health, basically.
Since I know how ridiculous they all are, I should know that it’s even odds whether he’s actually dating May. But he did like her, and she is adorable, and they did work together. They kissed each other, too.
If I’m being completely realistic, I have to assume they are together.
And I need to get over it.
I try.
I really try.
At least I don’t mope around and stop living. Quite the contrary. Bea and I start working on new songs. I work with her on wedding details. We go to lunch. We make appearances, and we talk with the other members of the band.
To my surprise, they all opt to stay with us, moving to New York to work with us on the next album. Sales are better than anyone had any hope they’d be, with the movie not releasing for another six weeks yet.
Life’s truly good.
Which makes it harder, knowing how much better it could have been, if only I hadn’t badgered or irritated or weighed Jake down. I spend way too much time running through the possible areas I could have gotten things wrong. It’s a little embarrassing, or it would be if anyone else knew. I have lists all over my place.
But one week before Bea’s wedding, I wake up, I gather up all the lists, and I throw them out. “It’s time,” I tell myself. “Time to move on.”
I refuse to think about Jake. Every time I do, I sing Yankee Doodle Dandy . At least, for the first day. The next morning, I decide I should get something useful out of it, and I switch to pushups. Five pushups every time I think about him.
My arms are going to look amazing in another week or so.
It’s not like I can do anything truly stupid like drive past his apartment. Bea’s living there alone now—he had someone pick up all his stuff within a few days of our arrival back home—but it bummed me out, knowing there wasn’t even much chance of us inadvertently bumping into each other.
That didn’t stop me from coming up with other, more implausible ways we might meet by chance, not that it would matter if we did. It’s just what happens in all the movies.
I’m just hoping it’s more of a Sex and the City encounter, and less of The Way We Were .
Once Bea and I get our list of songs pulled together, I have to go into the agency office and sign the agreement. Just in case Jake might be there—we are agency siblings, after all—I get dressed in my favorite sweater, and I pull on my fur-trimmed jacket, imported from Amsterdam.
No harm in being prepared.
I’ve been doing the pushups, and I’ve been doing much better about not just randomly thinking of Jake, but I know this is the moment in the movie that I’d meet him, so I can’t help it. I look around from the moment we enter the building, until we’re escorted downstairs. Pathetically, I even make a stop at the coffee cart, desperate for a few more moments before we have to exit the building.
Bea sighs. “I kind of?—”
“Hoped we’d run into Jake?” I hate how disappointed I sound. “I’m sorry.”
“He was supposed to be my best man,” she whispers. “But he hasn’t even RSVPed.”
I’m filled with such sorrow, and frankly, embarrassment. “I’m so sorry.” I take Bea’s hand. “I’ve only been thinking about myself. He’s your brother, and he hasn’t RSVPed to the wedding yet.” I wince. “I’m so very sorry if it’s my fault?—”
She shakes my hand. “Don’t you ever say that. It’s not you—his stupid father is messing with him. Nothing else.” She hugs me tightly, which makes me feel way better.
Unfortunately, it also makes me spill my coffee. Blessedly, it’s an iced coffee, and it only dumps on me.
Unluckily, it’s an ivory blouse.
“Shoot,” I say.
“I’m such an idiot,” Bea says. “I can go get you a shirt, and you can go hide in the bathroom until I come back.” She points at the restroom sign. “I’ll be right back.”
Before I can argue with her, she sprints for the exit. She’s such a good friend. I drag myself to the back of the building, and I find myself sort of stuck. If I want to have any decent chance of cleaning my blouse, I have to take it off, but then I’m standing in the middle of the bathroom nearly naked.
There’s a pretty steady run of people coming and going, and they’re all talking about someone’s speech, so I’m guessing it’s people at a conference or a presentation of some kind that’s brought all these people to the building. I wind up compromising by dousing paper towels and using them to try and dilute and blot the unsightly stain.
It doesn’t really work. Mostly it just spreads it.
Thankfully, Bea should be here with my new shirt soon, and the flow of people has almost stopped. A moment later, there’s just one person in the bathroom, when I hear her call out, “Is there any toilet paper out there?”
“Oh, no.” I say. “Hang on, I’ll check.” I examine all three of the other stalls, and find a total of three squares. Clearly the building wasn’t prepared for this kind of traffic today. “Um, I can’t find much more, but I can get you a paper towel.” Only, I fail at that, too. I used so many trying to blot my blouse that the last woman to dry her hands finished them off.
“Actually.” I cringe a little, but I forge ahead. “It looks like those are gone, too. I’m so sorry. I can run out and get you some.”
“Thank you,” the woman says. “I really appreciate it. I have to go pick up my kid from school. I can’t hide in here all day.”
I glance down at my blouse, which is now half-covered by a brown blob, and has the notable addition of tiny, soggy flecks of paper towel that have stuck all over it.
Ugh.
I’m brushing them off as I walk out of the bathroom and run—SMACK—right into some man’s back. When he turns around, I realize our movie’s a rom com. Or at least a comedy. The man I just smashed into is Jake, and I can’t think of a time in the last month that I’ve looked more pathetic than I do right now.
“Hey,” I say lamely.
His eyes widen as he glances down at my shirt.
“I can explain,” I say.
He smirks. “I’m sure it has something to do with Bea. This has her name written all over it.”
Just then, my phone starts ringing. “Speaking of.” I show him the screen and hit talk. “Oh my word, you’re never going to believe this.”
“What?” I ask.
“While I was inside the store buying your shirt, some huge delivery truck totaled my car.”
Jake’s eyes widen, so I know he’s listening. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine, but my car looks like it needs to go in a recycling bin.” She moans. “And you’re stuck there, waiting, and I have no idea how long this will take.”
“I can help,” Jake says.
“Hey!” Bea sounds desperate. “Is that Jake, or am I hallucinating his voice now?”
He laughs.
“It is,” I say. “I just rammed into him by mistake.”
“Oh, thank goodness. The cop just got here. I have to go. I’ll call you back!” She hangs up.
“Erm, did you want me to take you home, or to a store? Or you can hide in the bathroom and I’ll?—”
“Oh, no!” I grab his arm. “The bathroom!” I point. “I left a woman in there with no toilet paper.” I close my eyes and sigh. “See, I’d used all the paper towels, and then these women used all the toilet paper, and I was the only person in there, and she has to pick up her kid.”
“So you want me to. . .what?”
“Can you go get a roll of toilet paper from the men’s bathroom?” I make prayer hands.
“The rolls are encased in plastic and they’re huge.”
“You can press a button and they come open.” I mime doing it.
Jake snorts and shakes his head. “Only you.” But he ducks into the bathroom and comes out a moment later. “I had to wrestle this out of the arms of a very beefy man.”
“I’m so impressed.” I assume he’s kidding until I hear shouting. “Wait, did you really?”
“We should go.”
I’m still pretty sure he’s kidding, but I hear some grumbling, so I grab Jake’s arm and yank him into the ladies’ room. “Were you serious?” I look up at him.
He shrugs. “Maybe a little bit.”
“You left some man without toilet paper?”
“I asked him nicely to share, and he told me—you know what? I don’t feel bad about it. They have paper towels. With a little creativity. . .”
“You could have grabbed the paper towels!” I smack my head.
“I should have thought of that.” Jake bites his lip.
I’m laughing when I hand the woman the roll the size of a pumpkin. “Good luck,” I say.
“You ready to go home yet?” Jake arches one eyebrow.
Just then, I hear a man shouting outside about someone stealing his toilet paper.
Jake shrugs. “Or, we could stay in here a little longer.”
The woman shoots out, runs her hands under the water for a very short time, and ducks out. We listen for a moment, but she doesn’t say a word about us to anyone.
“Probably didn’t want to be implicated,” Jake says. “Coward.”
I giggle.
“I’ve missed you,” he whispers so quietly that I’m not entirely positive I heard it.
“How’s May?” I ask.
“Huh?” Jake turns toward me, and I realize I’m crouched against the wall with him on my left side. That never happens. I’m always aware of my good side, and I always position people there. Even after he dumped me, there’s just something about Jake that makes me feel safe around him, even when we’re hiding in a bathroom together as a result of noble criminal activity.
“You know, when you think about it, we should be getting praise,” he says. “We did a good deed.”
“You could have let the guy use it before you snatched it,” I say.
“He wasn’t even in the stall yet, and although I hid it behind my back, he should have checked that the stall had paper before going in.”
I snort. “We’re the Robin Hood of restrooms.”
“Exactly,” Jake says. “That was my favorite Disney movie.”
“It would be.” I shake my head. “Bunch of thieves.”
He smiles. “Precisely why I liked it. Some of us do what we do for good reasons.”
“Were your reasons for cutting the Fansees out good?” I ask. “Because Bea’s really hurting.”
Jake’s face falls.
“What’s going on?” I ask. “Can’t you tell me?”
A muscle in his jaw works, but he shakes his head.
“You stole from them and your dad’s threatening to tell them?” I ask. “Because if you did take money from the Fansees, and your dad’s holding that over you, I think they’d forgive you.”
“He’s not my dad,” he snaps.
I blink. “What?”
He turns away.
“Jake, at least explain that. Do you just mean that you don’t like him, so you don’t consider him your father anymore? Because the Fansees are your real family, and I swear, they would?—”
He’s glaring at one tile on the floor, as if it punched his sister. “I’m doing this for them.”
“I knew it.” I grab his hand. “And May? Are you two really dating?”
He rounds on me so fast, I almost fall backward on my butt. “No way.”
I can’t help my smile. “No?”
He exhales loudly. “How could you even think that?”
I can’t help it. I burst into tears.
“Oh, no, don’t.” He reaches for me, and then he yanks his hand back. “It’s—I’m bad, Octavia. I don’t deserve you, believe me. If you knew. . .” The next breath he drags in is ragged. “You would run.”
“Try me,” I say.
“What?” He’s frowning.
I wipe at my tears. “I’ve spent every single day since we broke up thinking of what I might have done wrong. I’ve analyzed and re-analyzed, and I swear I’ll do better this time, if you give me another chance. I’ll be so breezy, and so easygoing that you would barely know we were dating.”
“It wasn’t you.” His eyes are sad. “I swear.”
“I’ve also gone over and over what might have made you dump me if it wasn’t my fault, and I haven’t been able to think of a single thing I couldn’t forgive.” I pause. “Well, mostly.”
“Mostly?” His eyebrows rise. “What does that mean?”
“Have you molested children?” I can’t help wrinkling my nose. “Or really committed any kind of sexual assault.”
“Absolutely not,” he says.
“Have you murdered anyone?”
He exhales slowly. “No.”
“What about stealing? Did you go back to that? Because you have all that money, and you said you don’t really spend it, but maybe when you bought my dress?—”
“Octavia.”
I turn to face him, my bad side still turned his way. “What?”
“You have to stop. I can’t tell you why, but believe me when I say this is for the best.”
“No.” I shake my head. “I don’t believe you. I never will. I think, just like you finally did with Dave’s photo, you should tell me the truth and let me decide. And if you don’t, I may never forgive you for that, for not trusting me.”
He swallows. “That’s not. . .” But then he frowns, and he seems to be thinking about it.
I strike while I have the chance, remembering that Bea said he had to be shoved. “Your family loves you, too. They deserve to know what’s keeping you away. If it’s something that makes them cut you off, well, then you’ll be exactly where you are now. If it’s not, then you’re being a real idiot.” I quirk one eyebrow. “I still love you, so I’m definitely an idiot, and they say it takes one to know one.”
“You still. . .” He drops one hand over mine. “That’s what scares me. When you hear the truth, you won’t.”
“Then out with it,” I say. “Because I’ve been trying everything to get over you, so if this truth will really help, if it does what you say, then great. I welcome it.”
He stares.
“Come on.”
“My dad’s not my dad,” he says. “He’s my uncle. My real dad’s a serial killer, and my mom fell in love with him while they corresponded back and forth. She got pregnant with me on a conjugal visit, and then?—”
“Wait, you’re saying your dad’s the?—”
“Yes.” It looks like he just swallowed a mouthful of vinegar.
“And?” I peer at him. “Get to the bad part.”
“Stop.”
“Stop what?” I’m confused. “Unless. . . Do you think that is the bad part?” I shake my head. “Jake, Adam and Eve had Cain. The frivolous, idiotic parents in Pride and Prejudice had Kitty and Lydia, and they also had two amazing daughters.” I poke his arm. “Do you know what these people all have in common?”
He shakes his head.
“Every person born has one thing in common—we only own one single thing in this world.”
“What are you talking about?” But his face already looks lighter. He looks almost hopeful.
“We all have one thing when we’re born that only we own, and that’s our choices . So stop making such stupid ones. The Fansees won’t care any more than I do who your biological parents are. You could be the son of the devil himself, and I’d still love you.”
He swallows, and then he brushes himself off, and he offers me his hand. “I haven’t heard any yelling or banging in a while.”
At that very moment, a janitorial cart rolls in, a very large woman pushing it. She shrieks when she sees Jake.
“Sorry,” he says. “So sorry.”
Of course, then she realizes who he is, and she shrieks for another reason. It takes his signature and smiling through a few moments of gushing in broken English, but we do finally escape. As we walk out of the building, I’m still lamenting my spoiled shirt. “This is so not how I wanted to see you again.”
“You could have been wearing an orange trash bag.” He takes my hand in his and interlaces our fingers. “And I’d still have said this meeting was perfect.” He jerks his finger at the coffee cart. “You thirsty?” But his eyes are sparkling, and I know he’s teasing me about the stain.
“Shut it, jerk.”
I get a few glares as we exit the building, but I can’t tell whether it’s my face, the awful coffee stain, or our joined hands.
“Thanks for the dress, by the way,” I say. “It was beyond my expectations, and?—”
“And it made that album cover. I hear the sales have been phenomenal.”
“You heard that?” I ask. “Or you illegally logged in and checked?”
He stops walking and spins me around until I thunk into him. My hands spread out across his chest. “I love you, Octavia Rothschild. I love you in an orange trash bag. I love you in a fabulous ball gown. I love you when you’re contemplating stealing toilet paper.”
“To be clear, I proposed that you ask for it. I never condoned stealing.”
He winces. “You knew who I was when you picked me up.”
I laugh. He’s right. I did. “But go on.”
He smiles. “I love everything about you, but even if you aren’t scared about who my parents are, I worry that in the future, you’ll get sick of always having to redirect my little boat before it crashes into rocks.”
“As long as we’re talking about a metaphorical boat, I’ll be fine. I hate real boats. I get sick as a dog.”
“Do dogs get sick on boats?” he asks.
“Oh my word, get back to the point.”
“I love you,” he says. “I have for a long time, I think, and I won’t run away again, I promise.”
I jab him. “You better not. And you need to RSVP to your sister’s wedding.”
“Can’t I just go as your plus one and freak everyone out?”
I roll my eyes.
“Is that eyeroll a yes or a no?”
“Definitely a no. You have to at least talk to Dave and Seren first, or you’ll be too scared to go, even with me as your shield.”
“Fine,” he says. “But you have to come with me.”
I smile, because I was hoping he’d ask.