Floss slipped and fell near the lizards, sneaked theatrical tastes of the corn. When her Post-it—Be relatable!!!!!—lost its tack and fluttered down from the cabinet, she used tape to put it back up.
Craig would walk in midmorning, often with a box of strawberry shortcake ice cream bars from the Gristedes next door. Aston ate around four of the bars every day. Craig would shove the box in the freezer, then cast an irritated look at Orla. “Is there coffee?” They would all sit together and go through the press clips and the tweets. Floss would bite her nails over anything mean, but Aston would just bellow “ooooooh,” like someone else had been called to the principal’s office.
Then Mason and the crew would materialize in the hallway, ready to shoot until lunchtime. Orla noticed, as time went on, that almost all the scenes were the same: Aston would say something grossly sexual to Floss, Floss would throw a pillow at him, and Orla would snort and say “you guys” from what had become her mark—the cushion Mason liked her to sit on had a little X of tape on it now. The only note she ever got was to make her eye rolls bigger, to exaggerate the motion for camera.
In the afternoons, there was nothing to do, but Orla got nothing else done. Her book was always there on the screen before her, but distractions were everywhere, endless. Now, in addition to watching Danny, she had to watch Floss, and herself. She would sort through Twitter and Instagram to see who was down at their door; at any given time, up to a dozen fans stood at the barricade, hoping for a glimpse of them. Now they brought squash out of love—and Melissa, in her opportunistic wisdom, had begun having Floss, trailed by paparazzi Melissa called to come, walk the squash down the street to a shelter. (At least, that was what they did until the shelter begged them: please, no more squash.) Now they just threw it away.
Orla would end up, often, going down to see the fans in person. She would put on foundation and lipstick and pretend to have somewhere to be. She would act surprised to find people waiting for her. She would lean in for their selfies. She could not deny the warm feeling it gave her, all these people glad to see her, even if she knew she was a distant third on their list. Once, ten minutes after meeting a girl who told Orla she was her “spirit animal,” Orla stood in line behind her at the Jamba Juice down the block. “Yeah, it sucks,” the girl was saying, on the phone to someone at home. “But we did see the roommate. I forget her name.”
One March day she was doing this, squeezing hands and moving down the line, when she came all the way to the back of it and—impossibly—there he was. He was pressed against the metal barricade, grinning and clutching the bar so hard his fingers had turned white. In the flesh was the phrase that came to her mind, and she understood it for the first time. She had to keep double-checking his face, his body, to make sure it was really him. And it was, and now every doubt Orla had felt, fixing her fate to Floss’s, dissolved. So a model had fallen. So her book wasn’t done. So she had been fired. So her mother wasn’t proud. So what? He was here. It had all come true.
“Hey there, star,” he said, and she could tell he had practiced it. But she didn’t care.
Orla reached up and took off the sunglasses she had recently paid three hundred dollars for. Floss had sat on the counter at Bergdorf’s, legs swinging, egging her on. “But what if I break them?” Orla had said. “Then you get another pair,” Floss had answered.
Orla pulled him out of line with everyone watching, some of them calling her name, all of them raising their phones. She knew she should have waited until they walked inside, but she found she couldn’t wait another second. She hugged him, the sun bleeding into her eyes as she rested her chin on his shoulder. When she heard herself speak, she found it wasn’t just Floss who had tweaked her natural vocals. This was her voice from home. She hadn’t heard it in ages.
“Danny,” she said, the way she used to sound catching in her throat. “Danny. Hi.”