And here, the seconds stretch out in silence, static and the faint sound of three slow breaths. “That was selfish of me to say. This… this whole message is selfish. I’m glad you never listen to these. I just needed to say it, I guess. So I can learn to let you go.”
* * *
Dev listens to the message over and over until he falls asleep to the sound, and when he wakes up Tuesday morning before seven, he has thirty-six missed calls, some from the crew, but most from numbers he doesn’t recognize. There are dozens of texts and emails, and he shoves his phone under his pillow. He climbs out of bed, hides the jean jacket in the back of his closet, and goes downstairs for coffee. He has half a mind to ask his parents what happened on last night’s episode to prompt this unprecedented deluge, but when he comes into the living room, he’s taken aback by the presence of people who are not his parents in his house first thing in the morning.
He’s so shocked, it takes him a good minute to register it’s the Ever After crew. In Raleigh, North Carolina. A week before they film the live finale.
“What. The actual. Fuck?”
He isn’t sure if he’s asking this question of his parents, who are shuffling around the kitchen getting coffee for their guests, or if he’s asking the guests. Skylar Jones is staring at his baby pictures on the wall. Parisa Khadim is helping herself to coffee creamer in his parents’ refrigerator. Jules Lu is asking his mother where she got her house slippers. Ryan Parker is sitting in front of his parents’ desktop computer.
“It’s the printer-connection thing,” Dev’s dad is saying. “You fixed it last time you were here, but then the flashy light started flashing again and it keeps making that noise.”
“It’s fine, Mr. Deshpande,” Ryan says patiently. “I can fix it.”
Dev is going to lose it. “Seriously, what are you all doing here?”
They all stop what they’re doing and turn to face him for the first time in three months. For the first time since Maureen Scott threatened Charlie and he snuck away in the middle of the night to leave them to clean up the mess.
At first, no one moves. Then Jules—with her baggy jeans and her topknot and her *NSYNC concert T-shirt—walks across the room like she’s going to embrace him. She punches him in the arm. “Some best friend you are. You wouldn’t answer any of our calls, you asshole.”
“Ouch. So, you flew to Raleigh to punch me?”
“No,” Ryan says as the printer runs its test page. “We flew to Raleigh to make you watch.”
It’s then that Dev realizes the first episode of Ever After is cued up on his parents’ wall-mounted TV. It’s frozen on Mark Davenport’s cheesy grin as he stands in front of the castle fountain.
“No.”
“We don’t want to hold you down for the entire thing, but we will,” Jules threatens.
“I actually brought rope in my carry-on,” Skylar adds.
Dev doesn’t understand why they’re doing this—why they flew three thousand miles to make him watch a season that is over and done. Why can’t they let him move on from this?
“Watching is the least you owe him,” Parisa says angrily. She quite obviously flew here to murder him. He doesn’t really blame her.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t watch.”
His mother crosses the kitchen in her silk pajamas with his dad’s robe thrown over the top, confidently entertaining Hollywood producers and publicists in her kitchen like she does this every day. “How about this, Devy… why don’t I make frittatas for everyone, and we’ll put on the first episode. If you hate the first episode, we don’t have to watch the rest.”
His dad does his best attempt at a stern face. “Your friends did fly all the way from LA, and it would be rude to make that all for nothing.”