“Well,” Seamus said, turning to her and putting his hands on her waist. “We can keep on tolerating each other when I’m back in New York in two weeks.” He smiled, and then leaned down to kiss both of Alexa’s cheeks. “I was thinking of something when I couldn’t sleep this morning. I’ll be doing some writing and reporting for The Observer, but I’d love to try photography as well. Would you be interested in being my private tutor?” His eyes twinkled with mischief.
It had occurred to Alexa that morning that she would only be starting college while Seamus was starting his first job. But she could tell from his expression now that he saw her as his equal in every way. Alexa felt a flood of gladness; suddenly, life on the East Coast without Holly didn’t seem nearly as bleak. “I have to warn you that I’m very strict,” she replied, standing on her tiptoes in the sand to kiss the birthmark beneath Seamus’s ear. “There may be some punishment involved if you don’t do your homework,” she added teasingly, slipping her hand beneath the collar of Seamus’s shirt, and he pulled her tighter against him, laughing into her hair.
“I don’t think I realized before,” Seamus said, wrapping his arms around her. “We’re both journalists, Alexa. No wonder we’re always butting heads.” Gently, Seamus rested his forehead against Alexa’s, making her pulse race. Here was a guy she could butt heads with forever, and never find boring or predictable. She was angling her head for a kiss when she heard Holly shouting from the hill above the beach.
“Alexa, we need to pack and we can’t miss this flight!” Holly hollered in her most responsible voice. Alexa saw she had changed out of her running gear into her Seven jeans, a white tank, and long green beads. “Oh, hi, Seamus,” she added, waving.
“Hey, Holly!” Seamus grinned at her. Then he turned back to Alexa and took her face in his hands. “Congratulations, graduate. Call me right afterward tomorrow, okay?” As he brought his lips to hers, Alexa realized that even though she was kissing a beautiful boy on a Malibu beach and the late afternoon sun was reflecting off the water, she didn’t feel like she was in a movie. She felt like she was in her life. And that was even better.
When Alexa returned to the guesthouse, she found Holly in a packing frenzy, making organized piles of her clothing in her room. “I called my parents from Runyon Canyon,” Holly reported, carefully folding her new dress in tissue paper. “My mom has to be at the school, like, two hours in advance, but my dad and Josh can come get us from Newark and zip us over.” As Holly picked up her makeup bag, the glint of something gold inside caught her eye. My Claddagh ring, Holly realized, sifting through the tubes of clear gloss to remove the ring. Holly felt the familiar ache in her throat, and she quickly tucked the ring into the pocket of her jeans. She felt it would be her good-luck charm for the plane.
“I’ll miss El Sueño,” Alexa was sighing, trailing her fingers along Holly’s floor-to-ceiling windows. “I’ll even miss Esperanza.” The sight of Jonah’s assistant going wild last night had really improved Alexa’s opinion of the woman.
Holly chuckled as she zipped up her duffel. “I’ll bet anything she’s too hungover this morning to remember either of us.”
As if Esperanza had heard them from the main house, the hallway intercom buzzed right then. When Alexa answered, a sheepish-sounding Esperanza asked if the girls were in need of the Hybrid that day. “Mr. Eklundstrom was planning to drive Ms. Durst home in it,” she explained.
Aha! Alexa thought, intrigued. So Charity had won over her costar after all. Suddenly, Alexa wondered if she could ever read Us Weekly again. Now that she knew the truths behind the gossip, it all seemed less exciting somehow—though she couldn’t wait to read about Margaux and Paul’s Icelandic honeymoon.
After Alexa assured Esperanza that they no longer needed the Hybrid—but asked if they could have the limo to take them to the airport—she retrieved the photo for Jonah from her bedroom and placed the gift on the kitchen counter, where Jonah had left his welcome gift. She attached a note leaving Jonah her cell number. She wasn’t sure if the actor—or his impulsive sister—would ever really stay in touch with her, but she hoped Jonah might hang out with her and Seamus when he was in New York to film his favorite romantic comedy.
By the time Alexa and Holly had cleaned up the guesthouse and sufficiently shoved all their belongings into their bags, the limo was waiting outside.
“Our last time in a limo,” Holly said wistfully as she and Alexa slid into the soft leather interior.
“Speak for yourself,” Alexa laughed, closing the door. “Though then again, you’re the one who’s moving back here. Maybe you’ll end up a big-shot director one day.”
As the limo drove down the Pacific Coast Highway, the ocean flashing by the windows, the girls were silent, each remembering her experience in the golden city.
“Who knew one week could change so much?” Alexa started to ask Holly as they approached LAX, but then she noticed that her friend was sleeping, her light-brown head resting peacefully against the seat. Alexa reached out to pat Holly’s arm, remembering how their one week in South Beach had also altered the course of everything. She and Holly could certainly get a lot done in a short amount of time.
Including make it to graduation—if they were lucky.
After their two uneventful flights, Alexa and Holly were standing impatiently in line to exit the plane at Newark Airport.
“It’s almost seven thirty,” Holly moaned, checking her watch. Back in Las Vegas, their flight had also been delayed and they’d taxied down the runway in Newark for what seemed like hours. Holly knew her dad was waiting in the arrivals area, tapping his watch while Josh complained about how Holly was always late to stuff. That—combined with the knowledge that she’d be seeing Tyler very soon—made Holly’s stomach twist with anxiety. She seemed to have lost her California mellowness somewhere over Kansas.
Alexa had been feeling absolutely Zen the whole flight, mentally composing a music mix for Seamus, and reading all the inaccuracies about Margaux’s wedding in the New York Post’s Page Six. Now, as the line finally inched forward, she was starting to worry. She did like to arrive fashionably late to certain events, but she knew fashionably late wouldn’t fly at graduation.
After making it through a hellish wait at the luggage claim, the girls finally burst into the arrivals area, bags in hand, stumbling a little as they ran. Holly’s father, wearing a navy blue suit, his dark bushy eyebrows raised in expectation, was waiting for them, while Josh slumped into a chair nearby. Her brother looked surprisingly handsome in a suit, Holly thought, but, predictably, he was scowling at her. She knew her family way too well.
“I’m sorry!” Alexa cried guiltily as the girls flew toward Mr. Jacobson. It was now after eight o’clock—and the drive from Newark to Oakridge took about an hour. If there was no traffic. “It was my fault!” she added as Holly threw her arms around her dad. “I thought they lost one of my bags—the Prada one, actually—but by the time I went to ask security, it was coming down the carousel and Holly grabbed it…”
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Mr. Jacobson said, patting Holly’s hair with his free hand. “I’m just glad my wandering girls are back. At least for a little while,” he added, smiling down at Holly, who smiled back at her dad, relieved to be home—for a little while.
Meanwhile, Alexa watched the two of them silently, feeling a pang of envy; she didn’t get to experience that kind of parental affection too often.
“Now, let’s go,” Mr. Jacobson said, turning businesslike again. “Your mortarboards and gowns are in the car—Alexa, I stopped by your dad’s this morning to pick yours up, since I figured you wouldn’t have time to go home and change.”
“We can’t put our gowns on over jeans!” Alexa exclaimed, gesturing down to her True Religions. She shuddered to think how Paz Ferrara or Margaux Eklundstrom would react to such a fashion atrocity.
“Well,” Holly said, looking at the collection of luggage at Alexa’s feet. “We have skirts and dresses in our
bags, don’t we?” She glanced at her father pleadingly. “Dad, if Josh can bring in the gowns, it’ll take us, like, two seconds to run to the ladies’ room, and change and fix our hair—”
But Mr. Jacobson was already striding across the sunny airport, carrying as many of the girls’ bags as he could. “You can change in the car,” he announced over his shoulder. “Come on, Holly. Get up, Josh. Your mom is going to kill us.”
“Ugh, gross—I can’t believe my sister is changing right behind me,” Josh was groaning fifteen minutes later as Mr. Jacobson tore down the highway, and Alexa and Holly were shifting uncomfortably in the backseat, trying to give each other enough space—and to tug off their jeans without flashing the world.
“Shut up, Josh,” Holly grunted, creatively sliding feetfirst into her drawstring white skirt, but almost falling off her seat in the process. When her Claddagh ring tumbled out of the back pocket of her jeans, Holly reached down to retrieve it.
“Yeah,” Alexa said, attempting to wriggle into her strapless floral dress and slip in her dangly silver earrings all at once. “If you’re going to be a suburban teenage boy, you’d better get used to girls being half-undressed in your backseat. Sorry, Mr. Jacobson,” she added quickly when Holly’s father shook his head reprovingly.
As Alexa and Holly stuck their arms through the long sleeves of their black gowns and did speedy makeup fixes in their compact mirrors, Mr. Jacobson drove the car as fast as he dared down Oakridge’s quiet, tree-lined main drag. Alexa, her tube of Chanel gloss poised above her lips, looked out the window to see Suzy’s Salon, the redbrick library, and the pizza parlor flash by. It felt strange to be so abruptly thrust back into small-town Oakridge after five glittery days in La-La Land, but Alexa smiled at the familiar sights; no matter how fabulous the destination you were leaving behind, there was always something comforting about homecoming.
“Jeez, Dad,” Josh commented as Mr. Jacobson made a sharp turn, wheels screeching, and Oakridge High came into view. “You’re gonna get arrested.” Glancing over his shoulder at Holly, Josh added, “That would be the most exciting thing to happen to the Jacobsons in years, huh?”
I’ve had enough excitement to last me a while, Holly thought, holding her breath as she saw the numbers on the car’s digital clock switch to 8:58. A second after her dad squeezed into a parking spot in the Oakridge lot, she and Alexa tumbled out of the backseat, adjusting their gowns around their knees and carefully fastening their caps on their heads.
“Is it just me, or is this the most unflattering piece of headgear ever invented?” Alexa asked, as she flicked the braided gold tassel out of her face and tried to straighten the boxy mortarboard. With Josh and Mr. Jacobson leading the way, the girls hurried across the hot parking lot, Alexa’s sling-back sandals clicking on the cement. The school’s football field, where the ceremony was being held, loomed in the distance. “What, you like mortarboards?” Alexa asked Holly when her friend didn’t answer right away.
Holly stopped for a minute before they reached the field, shading her eyes to look at Alexa. “No…it’s just that…” The sight of her friend, standing before her in a long black gown, with the black mortarboard cockeyed on her blonde head, was at once strange and wonderful. “We’re really graduating,” Holly said, shaking her head in amazement. The whole morning had passed in such a whirlwind that she hadn’t had time to fully process where she and Alexa were rushing off to. In a way, Holly was glad that they’d just come from California; if she’d had the night before to prepare for graduation, she probably would have been a sobbing nervous wreck right now.
Alexa sized Holly up as well; her childhood friend looked adorable in her cap and gown—though, if they’d had more time, Alexa would have recommended that Holly wear her strappy black sandals instead of her beaded gold flats. But whatever. “That we are,” Alexa said, adjusting the strap of her Nikon camera on her arm. She was so ready to wrap things up.
“Girls!” Holly’s dad was hissing, waving them over to the entrance of the football field. “You won’t really be graduating if you don’t get over here now! They’re starting!”
Oh, right.
Running into the stadium, where Holly’s mom was already up at the podium, Holly went left and Alexa went right. Both girls apologized in loud whispers as they stepped over legs and feet on their way to their assigned alphabetical seats. Meanwhile, Holly’s dad and Josh took their seats in the back with the rest of the families. “Today, you are about to begin the rest of your lives,” Holly’s mom was intoning as Holly, her heart pounding, took her seat beside Eliot Johnson, who’d been Alexa’s first real boyfriend.
Holly looked over her shoulder to study the sea of students, each of whom she associated with a different memory. There was Meghan, her dark eyes wide and hopeful, and Jess, who was watching the proceedings with a skeptical expression. Then she saw Tyler, and her heart beat faster; he was facing forward, looking incredibly serious, and she wondered if he’d seen her dash in late. She began to stress about how things would be between them once the ceremony was over—until Holly caught sight of Alexa. Her friend flashed her a thumbs-up sign—and then crossed her big blue eyes, a gesture that never failed to make Holly laugh. And she did laugh then, bringing her hand to her mouth, and feeling her fears ease.
With that, she faced forward and waited for the rest of her life to begin.
It’s over! Alexa thought, jubilant, as she elbowed her way into the packed gymnasium, her rolled-up diploma under her arm, and her camera bag on her shoulder. She’d endured two sweltering hours of countless speeches (“It’s up to your generation to save the environment!” some congressman had chirped while Alexa had fought to stay awake), streams of graduates marching across the field to collect their diplomas (Alexa had fairly flown over the grass to get hers), and finally, a happy shower of black mortarboards in the air. Now, as relieved graduates and proud parents met up in the gym, it seemed the only reward was…fruit punch and sugar cookies?
Alexa shook her head, regarding the lame spread on the table under the basketball hoop. Of course, less than twenty-four hours after Margaux Eklundstrom’s lavish affair, pretty much anything would seem pathetic. But this was truly depressing. Alexa was concocting a plan to throw her own graduation party at her house that night—maybe she’d invite Holly, Portia, Maeve, and some of Holly’s track friends over for guacamole and icy Coronas—when she spotted not one, but two, familiar faces across the gym.
Her parents.
Yes. Alexa’s father was there, as she’d assumed he’d be. But so was her mom. Impossible as it seemed, Gail Wilson-St. Laurent-Feldman had remembered her daughter’s graduation.
Alexa hurried through the crush, passing her friends Tabitha and J.D., waving to Portia and Maeve, who looked as if their LA curiosity was killing them, and noticing Holly standing off to the side with Meghan and Jess. When Alexa finally reached her mom and dad, she paused, gripping her diploma. Socially at ease with almost anyone, Alexa often found herself tongue-tied around the two people who’d known her the longest.
“Félicitations, chérie,” Alexa’s dad finally said, handing Alexa a bouquet of daisies and kissing her on each cheek while Gail looked on, a wry smile on her lips.
“Merci, Papa,” Alexa replied, answering in their native French because she knew her father would appreciate it. “Mother, you made it?” she added, not bothering to disguise her surprise.
Gail ran a bejeweled hand over her tight blonde bun. “I snuck in while that dreadfully boring congressman was rambling on,” she sighed, rolling her ice-blue eyes. “I nearly fell asleep.”
“Same,” Alexa laughed, feeling a flush of pleasure. She hadn’t expected her mother’s presence at graduation to mean this much to her, but Alexa felt suspiciously lighthearted. Maybe she’d needed to travel all the way to California and back to realize she did care what her mother thought of her. “By the way,” Alexa added. “Thanks for putting in a good word for me with Paz.”
Gail beamed, a
nd extended one arm to envelope Alexa in a quick, let’s-not-wrinkle-my-silk-blouse hug. “Of course, darling. You know I’m very proud of you.” She pulled back, glancing at Alexa’s dad, who was smiling and looking misty-eyed. “We both are.”
Alexa gave a happy sigh, clutching her flowers and diploma to her chest. It was beyond weird to see her long-divorced parents standing side by side. But she also sort of enjoyed the feel of the three of them grouped together for the first time in years—like an actual family.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the gym, Holly was too busy dealing with Meghan and Jess to search for anyone in her family—or for Tyler.
“Okay, you are so busted, Jacobson,” Jess was saying, hands on her hips as she and Meghan stood before Holly, blocking her path of escape. “When Tyler told us you were in LA for the week, we were sure he was bullshitting us—until Meghan called me last night, freaking out.”
“I saw you on E!” Meghan exclaimed, her brown eyes taking up half her face. “What were you doing at Margaux Eklundstrom’s wedding?”
“It’s a long story, you guys,” Holly sighed, running her fingers through her bangs, which had been squished by the cap. “And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about it before I left. It just all happened so fast…” Wait until I tell them I’m going to UCLA! Holly thought, shaking her head. At least her friends weren’t as pissed at her as she’d feared.
“We saw you dancing with some cute guy!” Jess interjected, sounding both scandalized and monumentally jealous. “He looked very into you. Does Tyler know?”
“Do I know what?” Tyler asked, appearing behind Meghan and Jess, looking handsome and scholarly in his cap and gown.
Holly gulped. She hadn’t expected Tyler to catch her so off guard; she’d wanted some time to prepare before seeing him, to compose herself and rehearse a speech in her head. Now, that didn’t seem like a possibility as Meghan and Jess went off to find their parents, calling back to Holly that she owed them a full report on her mystery trip.