Without a second thought, I push back from the table and dart out of the kitchen, trailing Caroline’s strawberry-blond ponytail up the wooden stairs.
“Don’t follow me,” she says without looking back.
I do anyway, down the familiar hall to the doorway of her bedroom, where she whirls around to look up at me, brown eyes aflame.
“Arden. Get this through your head. We’re not friends.” Caroline points to herself and then to me, finger tapping lightly against my chest. “We were friends, but we aren’t now, okay? You made that clear when you left.” She slams her bedroom door shut between us, and the wood practically grazes the tip of my nose.
I take a deep breath and lean my forehead against it, thinking about the reasons I never came home, the reasons I didn’t call. Reasons that Caroline couldn’t possibly understand.
Part of me wants to leave again now, abandon my plan and head for the Hollywood Hills. But I think of what Grams said and force myself to reach out and turn the knob. I ready myself to dodge anything she might throw at me as I push inside, but instead I find her typing away loudly at her desk in the corner.
“Caroline, listen. I didn’t come here to intrude on your family dinner. I came to say I’m sorry. And I know those words aren’t enough, but I am. For what it’s worth, I bet your dad’s right. This could be a big opportunity for both of us, and I’d hate for you to miss out on it because you’re mad at…” I trail off, waiting for her to say something, to acknowledge me in any way at all, but she just keeps her back to me, working away.
“Did you hear me?” I follow up. Still nothing. “Caroline. Can you look at me? Talk to me? I’m trying to—”
“Give me a half-assed apology?” she mutters under her breath.
“Oh my God.” I throw my hands up, exasperated. “I’m just trying to have a conversation. What are you even working on over there?” I ask, walking up behind her.
“My portfolio for my Columbia application.”
Portfolio?
I look above her desk and find a bunch of framed articles hanging on her wall, a first-place plaque for a Pennsylvania statewide journalism contest next to them. And then I remember the newspaper article hanging on Grams’s refrigerator.
“All these prizes for your articles… You must be a shoo-in.”
“Yeah, well, those awards might not be impressive enough. They have a four percent acceptance rate. I’m not a ‘shoo-in’ for anything,” she bites back.
I take a second to chew on it.
I can’t make her accept my apology, but maybe she doesn’t have to in order to do this with me. Maybe it just needs to benefit us both.
I take another step forward, as I come up with something I know will get her to sign on. Something she’d be out of her mind to turn down.
But Lillian is going to kill me.
“You can write it,” I blurt out.
Her fingers finally stop clacking against the keys.
“What?” she asks, cocking her head slightly to the side, even though she’s still staring at her computer.
Got her.
“You can write the article for Cosmopolitan,” I tell her.
She does a one-eighty in her swivel chair to face me. “You’re bluffing. They would never let me write it.”
I continue quickly, wedging my foot into this gap before she changes her mind and shuts me out again. “They’ll do it for Arden James,” I reply, because we both know it’s the truth. “How do you think a feature byline in one of the most widely distributed magazines in the world would look in your portfolio? Columbia would probably be begging for you to come study journalism with them.”
I look at her expectantly as she sits there, looking shell-shocked by my proposal.
“That is what you want, right?” I ask, and she nods. “See, you and me? Like it or not, we’re the only ones who can help each other right now.”
She spins back around in her chair and sinks her head into her hands. Her elbows rest on the desk, and her fingers rake through her hair like it’s the hardest decision she’s ever made.
Come on, Caroline.
“We don’t even have to be friends again,” I add, just in case that’ll tip the scal—
“Fine,” she says immediately, like a punch to the left kidney.
“Fine?” I ask. “To the article or not being friends?”
She faces me again, a few strands of hair now loose from her ponytail, but ignores my question, asking instead, “When is it due?”
“Uh…” I think back to my phone call with Lillian from the plane. “Due first thing Christmas morning. It’s going live on Christmas Day. I’ll be gone and out of your hair the next day, and my agent already came up with the title: ‘Twelve Days of Arden James,’ since we’ve got twelve days until then if we start tomorrow. She was going to have the interviewer follow us for twelve wholesome holiday dates.” I make sure to put air quotes around “dates.” “We both know I’ve been photographed out with a girl once or twice…” Caroline snorts and raises her eyebrows, but I ignore her. “So, for the sake of me not looking like a cheater, we’ll frame it like we’re childhood best friends who are finally together after pining for each other all this time. So you could just sort of… I don’t know. Write down how great it is to finally be together, to be spending the holidays falling in love with such a humble, down-to-earth, small-town gal like—”
“Just stop,” she interrupts me again. “I’m not going to write some bullshit fluff piece for you. If I’m going to do this, it’s going to be on my terms.”
“Okay, okay.” I put my hands up in surrender. Jeez, she really takes this seriously.
“And obviously there has to be some sort of fake breakup down the road. I don’t have any desire to be your fake fiancée. Let alone your fake wife.”
“Obviously,” I reply. Caroline Beckett, my wife. HA! “So, what’s the plan then, Rachel Maddow?”
I see her shake her head at that, but for the first time there’s a hint of the corner of her mouth pulling up. She doesn’t answer once again, though, so while she types God-knows-what on her laptop, I take a spin around her room.
It’s very different from how I remember it. The walls have gone from white to a deep green. Polaroids of the two of us have been replaced with pictures of her new group of friends looking down at a camera that must’ve been on the ground, judging by the angle. The flash blew them out and you really can’t even tell one face from another, but you can tell from the poses they’re real friends. One thing I haven’t found a lot of in LA. I walk over and lightly touch the corner of another photo, this one with Caroline all smiles while a black-haired boy with rich brown skin has an arm slung casually over her shoulder. On her other side, a girl with bright blue eyes rests her head on Caroline’s other shoulder. I think I might recognize her from art class back in middle school, but I haven’t thought of it in so long it’s hard to be sure.
“All right. So, I like the title and I like the twelve dates idea,” Caroline speaks up finally from where she’s been typing away, but my mind is still on the photo.
“Who are they?” I ask, pointing to it.
She lets out a long sigh. “My friends, obviously.”
Clearly I’m not going to get more than that, so I move to the bookcase, fingers trailing along the top shelf, where a few more journalism awards and plaques rest against the wall.
“Impressive.” I pick one up, a first prize for a Pittsburgh journalism contest, and hold it up to her. “When did you get so interested in journalism?”
“The summer after you left.” She clicks her pen a few times. “There’s a ton of cute stuff we could do around Barnwich right now. I mean… even with the decline, this place is full of holiday activities. So we won’t have any shortage there. But how can we…” Her voice drifts off as she taps her chin in thought.
I pick up the Columbia coffee mug from her bedside table. “Why Columbia?”
“Arden. I’m supposed to be the one interviewing you.”
Resigned, I put the mug back and plop down on the end of her bed to wait quietly as she thinks. Eventually she smiles to herself and starts typing again, so focused she doesn’t even notice a strand of hair falling into her face.
“I’m going to come up with twelve questions, one for each date. Twelve deep, personal questions that give people a look into the real Arden, not just ‘Arden James.’ ”
“Pfft, good luck with that. I don’t even know who the real Arden is,” I say, before realizing what I just admitted. “I mean… never mind.” I shake my head.
Caroline peeks over her shoulder at me and gives me a once-over. Then she closes her laptop and gets up, so I do too. We walk toward each other until we meet in the middle, right by her doorway. “Well, you better figure it out if this article is going to get me into Columbia,” she says, and then firmly guides me right out the door and back into the hallway.
“Wait.” I reach my hand in and catch the door before she can shut it in my face again. She looks at me, annoyed, but this is important. “People will recognize me when we’re out and about, so we’re going to have to pretend to date the entire time, not just in how you write the article. We have to make it convincing.” I wrap my fingers around the door handle and meet her eyes, my heart pounding with… excitement? Yeah. I think I’m actually getting a little excited about this new role I get to play. “Think you can do that?” I ask.
She nods, but I can see her biting the inside of her cheek, a tell that she’s nervous.
I pretend I don’t notice.
“Good,” I say as I step back into the hallway. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I head down the hall, slowing as I approach the steps I’ve walked down hundreds of times, a rush of memories washing over me. Running down to catch the school bus. Scrambling up to watch a rom-com instead of doing our homework. Tiptoeing back and forth to get a midnight snack, trying not to step on the creaky second-to-last step. Caroline’s hand brushing against mine the last time…
For just a moment, a strangely familiar feeling swims into the pit of my stomach. A sort of warmth that I can just barely remember, because I haven’t felt it in four years.
Because I don’t want to feel it anymore, I remind myself. What good would it even do to patch things up? My life will never be here again.
So I start down the stairs and keep moving forward like I always have. Like I always will. Knowing that time and distance will chase these feelings away again when my twelve days are up.