Gonna win big?
Somehow I doubt it. I typed and deleted, typed and deleted, typed, Leanne seems cool, but I thought you said you weren’t seeing anyone
[Thinking-typing dots]
I don’t know if I am
Ok?
Do you ever let things play out a little with someone just kind of to distract yourself?
That’s maybe the only thing I’ve ever done
I think Travis Day has a thing for you
[Emoji with the flat mouth and flat, pained dashes for eyes] Does Leanne know that’s what’s up?
Unclear
Distract yourself from what?
Also unclear
I typed, deleted. Typed, deleted. I think I miss you a little. I sent it before I could think more.
[An eternity of the three dots, then nothing.]
* * *
—
I woke up early, restless and bothered, itchy for something to happen. I ate a room-service breakfast while staring at the city, the desert, all of it pale and washed-out. The days here were the nights’ ashes.
Oliver was already in the greenroom when I came in with Augustina and M.G., and his beauty, so familiar, popped in my face. I could almost hear it. He opened his arms and said, in a small, sad voice, “Hey.”
I knew everyone in the room was watching us when we hugged, but when I looked, their eyes snapped away. Oliver steered me to a couch.
“How have you been?” I said, awkward, shifting around, black leather squelching under me.
“Good.” He nodded. “Yeah. Better. I had a hard time for a while.”
“I’m really sorry. I wanted to tell you that. We never talked, so—”
He held up a hand in deflection. “Let’s not.”
“Okay.” I didn’t know what he wanted me to say, or not say.
“How are things with Jones?”
“I was never with Jones.”
“I’m seeing someone.”
I wasn’t remotely surprised, but I said, “Really? Who?”
A young guy in a headset and lanyard hurried over and squatted beside us. “Guys, I’m so sorry to interrupt, but I’ve been asked to let you know we’re running slightly behind. It’s going to be a minute. Thanks so much for your patience.”
When the guy had hustled off, Oliver said the name of the actress who was taking over as Katerina, and I laughed a high, incredulous trill. Startled faces swiveled, bounced away again. I whispered, “Isn’t she seventeen? You do know that’s illegal?”
Irritation and mild pity came into his eyes, as though I were some pathetic low-level bureaucrat avenging my own insignificance by clinging to arbitrary rules, and maybe I was. “She’s an old soul. I was seventeen when I met my ex.”
“And look how well that worked out.”
“I don’t regret it.” He gave me a tragic look. “I never regret loving someone.”
“Must be nice.”
“Meeting her really helped me get over you.”
Even though deep down I’d never believed he loved me, I was struggling to resist his plaintiveness. He leaned closer, emanating tender melancholy, and I understood that the best and easiest thing I could do would be to join him in his version of our story, to cut loose the tangled mass of what had really happened.
“It’s really nice to see you,” he said.
I pulled a veil of wistfulness over my face. “Yeah. You too.”
The door opened, and Alexei came in.
* * *
—
“We’ll always be friends,” Oliver said during our panel, blasting his light out at the crowd like Moses parting the Red Sea. “I only want good things for Hadley. She’s an amazing person.”
We were sitting side by side at a long table in front of a backdrop of the endlessly repeating convention logo. People held up their phones, recording. I summoned a cloying smile. I said Oliver and I still cared deeply about each other. I said I would miss the franchise and the Archangel family, but I was looking forward to moving on. I was excited about the future. Alexei was standing just off the edge of the stage; I didn’t dare look at him. I’d barely looked at him in the greenroom, either, afraid everyone would see me blazing bright for him, afraid he’d see it.
A screen rolled down. The lights dimmed, and there was Archangel, golden and frozen. There I was in chains. There was Oliver on a throne.
Light reflected back on the audience. I watched them watch my image, their faces all angled up at the screen like it was going to feed them. But Alexei, when I dared glance at him, was watching the actual me. Sometimes I imagined meeting him again for the first time but under different circumstances, if he were divorced or had never married, but then we would have been at the mercy of a different Olofssonian system of a different past, pushing us forward through a different network of chain reactions. Maybe then there wouldn’t even have been a flicker. Or maybe then there would have been love, or enlightenment.