TWENTY-FOUR
Before the Streamify contract
Maeve
I’m hysterical. Not in an “oh, she’s crying, so men call her hysterical” way. But in an “I can’t stop sobbing on the way to a panic attack” way. “We were on a break! Hitting pause! Not seeing other people ! I can’t believe he did this.”
“Maeve. Maeve. Can you hear me? Take a breath, okay?” Sarah sounds panicked through the tinny phone speaker.
My mind is racing a mile a minute, and I can’t stop it. “We were obviously not seeing other people! He went on a fucking date and called for permission when he was already there. He said he loved me! I can’t believe this. And it was a date ! And I am not fucking disposable. I can’t believe I slept with him. Fuck. Fuck!”
“You’re spinning! It’ll be okay. Just sit down and try to breathe. Fuck him.”
I drop to the floor and rest my head in my arms on the couch and try to get my breathing in check. Tears are streaming down my face and I don’t know whether the sleeves of my Tell Me How You Really Feel sweatshirt are soaked with sweat, tears, or snot. “Am I being crazy? Like, this is on him, right?”
Sarah laughs shortly and something untwists in my gut. “Uh, no, you are not being crazy. Only someone with literally no integrity would say what he did is okay. If he actually cared and wanted things to work and loved you and whatfuckingever, he wouldn’t have even considered dropping you for Cassidy. You’re not being unreasonable.”
I wipe my face and peel off my sweatshirt. The sense of loss is absolutely crushing. I knew this was all too good to be true. I can’t have Finn, have the deal, have it all. I was so stupid to believe that he really loved me. Every day of the last two years doing this show we’ve been joined at the hip, but not together. If he wanted me, he would’ve done something earlier. For an instant I let myself believe that I really was that special. The kind of girl he’d want. That the glow of the Streamify deal and making Tell Me How You Really Feel had rubbed off and made me special.
As fucking if.
“I hate that it’s Cassidy,” I whisper.
“We can hate her if you want,” Sarah offers immediately.
“I can’t even hate her!” I lament. “She was his first kiss. They have history. I’m the evil wench standing in their way in this story. And come on, who doesn’t love her! I love her! Her modeling-behind-the-scenes TikToks, her movie cameos, her “Get Unready with Me” … it’s all perfect.”
“I became an Armani foundation diehard because she used it in her Vogue Beauty Secrets video,” Sarah admits somberly.
“This isn’t her fault. It’s Finn’s. It’s his choice. Like, his actions have shown me how he really feels, and that’s that.” I try to stay strong as I say it, but I can’t. My face crumples and suddenly I’m sobbing again. Sarah murmurs comforting words as I descend into a full-on panic attack.
I’ve been dealing with panic attacks since I was twelve or thirteen. My first one was after seeing Claude win a pageant and Tiffany win a game in the same weekend. In bed that night my mind was spinning, and I started crying silently as I convinced myself I was nothing compared with them. That I would never amount to anything. That no one even liked me and everyone talked about me behind my back and I could never stop feeling like this. I thought I had died for a moment or was about to. Now I know how to recognize when my anxiety is making me think things that aren’t true, and I try to deal with them as they start. I pop a weed gummy and get in a hot bath, Sarah still on the line, while I wait for it to kick in and numb me. I just need to make it through the night, and in the morning I can deal with this.
So in the morning, I accept a date with the first guy I find on Raya and block Finn’s number.