Chapter Thirty-Three
THE SECOND I walk through my door, I go into prep mode.
I wish I had time to enjoy being back in my own space, but traffic was crawling and now I only have three hours to pick an outfit, shower, and do full hair and makeup before I meet Rebecca for a pre-dinner drink.
When I toss my bags into a pile next to my bed, I pray that I have some clean underwear somewhere.
The nerves hit me in full force about halfway through my shower.
Everything I’ve been working toward—for the last three months and also every minute since my first drum lesson twenty-some years ago—rides on the connections I make tonight.
Even this apartment I’ve called home for the last two years depends on me securing a job that pays well enough that I can keep it.
The pressure chokes me. I’m so out of sorts that I fumble through my bathroom routine; I even nick both of my knees with my razor, something I haven’t done in years.
Standing in front of my closet wrapped in a towel with two tissue dots to soak up the blood, I decide that I hate everything I own.
I don’t have anything that says professional chic and also nice enough to impress a bunch of rich gatekeepers.
I make it as far as putting on a bra and underwear when I hear footsteps outside my door, followed by the key turning in the lock. My heart leaps into my throat and, like an idiot, I freeze. If I’m about to burglarized, it’s going to happen while I’m almost naked.
My front door bursts open and a tornado of hair, arms, and screams barrels through my apartment. Amanda and Rosa descend on me while I stand there, paralyzed first by fear and then by surprise. It takes them a good five minutes to calm down enough that they can laugh at me.
“Hermana, what the hell is going on?” Rosa exclaims as she takes in all the clothes that have been ripped out of my closet and are now strewn around the floor.
“Hold up,” I say, hands up in front of me in a sign of defeat. “What are you two doing here?”
Amanda flops on my bed, still in her blue winter coat, right on top of a pile of shirts I just deemed ugly five minutes ago. “You didn’t think we’d wait until tomorrow or the next day to see you, did you?”
I sigh and let my hands fall to my side. “Well, yeah. You know I have to go to that dinner tonight.”
Rosa smirks as she takes a step back and eyes what I’m wearing. “Speaking of—nice outfit.”
“That’s why we’re here,” Amanda adds. “We knew you’d freak out about what to wear, so we brought options.”
It’s then that I notice two things: first, that I’m still in my underwear, and second, that Rosa draped a black garment bag over my computer chair.
I grab my towel off the floor where I dropped it and wrap it around me so it’s tucked under my arms. Rosa sheds her pink coat and tosses it on my bed before picking up the garment bag and unzipping it with a dramatic flair.
“We know how much you love that dress Amanda bought in that Nordstrom sale last year,” she says.
Amanda nods. “And that one sweater Rosa got last winter. The boatneck one with the gray stripes.”
The flurry of fear, surprise, and anxiety dissipates as my sisters start pulling clothing options out of the bag. Of course they showed up for me. They knew I’d panic, knew that I’d want to put my best possible foot forward tonight.
As Rosa holds up different options against my body, I think of Oliver—how he has no siblings, no one who barges in to help when he needs it the most. I think about that conversation by the bay, where he all but told me how lonely he was, and all the ways he’s tried to become the kind of friend a friend would like to have.
“I think the black sweater with the silk skirt,” Rosa proclaims.
“Agreed,” Amanda adds.
I look down at the garments that Rosa pinned against my towel-clad body.
It’s a lovely black sweater with a V-neckline that shows just a little bit of my chest without being too risqué.
The fluidity of the skirt adds a touch of refinement without being too formal.
I know both clothing items well; I’ve borrowed them before, separately, for different occasions.
I blow out a sigh of relief. “Oh my god, thank you.”
“Don’t sweat it,” Amanda replies. At some point during Rosa’s game of pin-the-outfit-on-the-sister, she took off her own jacket and is now lying on my bed in jeans and a sweater. “How long till you have to leave?”
“Hour and a half,” I reply after glancing at my phone.
“Great. Sit down,” Rosa demands as she clears the clothes and junk off my computer chair. “I’ll do your hair.” My sister shoves me into the seat and starts combing through my damp curls with her fingers. “Jesus, it’s gotten long.”
“And you can catch us up on everything,” Amanda adds, with a wink just for me.
As much as I’m steamrolled by the two of them, I’m incredibly grateful—not just because they knew to show up with the best of their clothes or that both are keeping different secrets of mine, but because they’re my sisters.
When I walk into the Old Town Bar at 6:45 sharp, I feel as confident as possible given how much is at stake for me.
My outfit looks great after Amanda steamed it and Rosa managed to style my curls into an elegant low twist that somehow looks effortless even though I have about ten bobby pins jammed into my hair.
The two of them even stayed behind to put all my clothes back into my closet so I don’t return home to a disaster. Hopefully not alone.
The low-lit space is hopping, so I have to squeeze through crowds before I even make it to the bar.
Rebecca is already there, a martini in front of her, her black coat draped over a chair next to her to save me a spot.
Her hair is different; it’s grown out enough that she now has curtain bangs to frame her green eyes. Otherwise, she looks about the same.
“You made it back in one piece!” she exclaims when she sees me.
She hops off her stool so we can give each other a quick hug. I do a brief pass of her outfit to compare it against my own, then sigh with relief when I see she’s wearing a soft-gray turtleneck tucked into wide-leg black trousers. Totally comparable to my own ’fit.
“That’s debatable,” I reply as we each slide onto our barstools. “What a whirlwind couple of months.”
“No kidding. When you told me you were on your way to Maine for this, I was shocked. Of all places! Maine!”
I nod and shrug at the same time. “Right? Turns out that was exactly what we needed. But how are you? Did that superhero movie of yours finally wrap?
The bartender drops by then, so after a quick glance at their drink menu, I order a winter Aperol spritz to keep the alcohol content low. I can’t let myself get too muddled before meeting the people with the power to hire me.
“Yes! Fuck, thank god,” Rebecca mutters before taking a generous drink of her martini.
“This was my first time working with this director and he’s very old-school, so Barlowe didn’t even get a glimpse of the movie until the first picture lock was done.
Which means that my job is insanely rushed and difficult, even when I’m working with a legend like that.
I literally cried tears of relief when my director approved the musical cut.
” She pauses to shudder. “Don’t get me wrong, it was a great experience, but I am so glad I have some time off before I’m needed for Lineage.
That’s why I’m in New York. I’m spending the holidays with my family here. ”
“Barlowe?” I ask. “As in, Robert Barlowe?” When she nods, I continue on. “What’s it like, working with Oliver’s dad?”
A look of surprise registers on her face. “You’ve never met him?”
“No.”
Her expression turns thoughtful as she considers my response. “I guess that shouldn’t surprise me,” she says. “You know he never once came to Juilliard to see Oliver? Not even at graduation. I looked for him everywhere because I wanted to introduce myself like the nosey bitch I am, and… nada.”
I think of everything Oliver’s shared with me—about how he felt like little more than baggage to his parents, how not close his family is—and find myself nodding. “I know,” I say. “I remember.”
“Anyway, to answer your question: Robert is just like Oliver was ten years ago, but more of an asshole,” she says with a breezy air.
“He is absolutely married to the job and only speaks when he has something very important to say, which means you’d better be listening, because he is not going to repeat himself.
He will only record at Abbey Road Studios, so I had to haul my ass to London for a few days while they laid everything down.
The weeks that followed were the most stressful experience of my life. ”
My spritz arrives then. I buy myself some time when I take a drink. Hearing about Oliver’s dad through Rebecca, after everything I learned in Maine, feels like taking a knife to the gut.
“Well, you did it! And now you have a big superhero credit to your name,” I manage with enough cheerfulness that it comes out sounding authentic.
“True.” There’s a triumphant gleam in her eyes while she considers her own hard-won success. “Speaking of Oliver—how has it been, working with him?”
“Good. Really good, actually.”
“Really?” she asks, the skepticism in her voice made all the more obvious by the way her eyebrows raise.
“Yeah, really,” I reply with a laugh. “We had kind of a bumpy start, but once we found our groove, we were in it.”
She blows out a breath as she leans back. “Whew, that’s good news. I have to admit, I was a little worried you two might kill each other given the way you were at each other’s throats in college.”
“We weren’t at each other’s throats.” I cringe at the description and take another drink. “We just… didn’t understand each other,” I finish lamely.
“That’s not how I remember it,” she replies with a smirk.