Will was wrong about the movie, actually: in fact it features four exploding spaceships, plus an intergalactic car bomb and an extended slow-motion sequence of Charlie catching half a dozen fireballs to prevent them from hitting an orphanage. Also, it is three hours long. By the time they make it back to the house, all Lilly wants to do is shuffle upstairs, peel her dress off, and crawl directly into bed: Her head hurts. Her feet are killing her. And her neck and shoulders are crunchy and aching with a weird, black anxiety she can’t shake. She has no idea what Will was after with her tonight, sidling up to her in the lobby with his dopey jokes and interested expression. She was expecting it to make her feel good to be a jerk to him, and it did for a minute, but then he fixed her with that wounded, baffled look, like a dog who’d been locked outside in a rainstorm, and just like that Lilly wasn’t having fun anymore. Leave it to Will Darcy to be one of those people who can dish it out but can’t take it, she thinks darkly, except for the part where that didn’t actually seem to be what was happening.
Ugh, she hates him. She hates him!
But also, he did not look completely terrible in that suit.
She fully intends to climb under the covers with an episode of Golden Girls and forget this night ever happened, but when she detours into the kitchen to pull an eye mask out of the freezer she spies Colin out on the patio. He declined Charlie’s invitation to the premiere tonight, standing in the upstairs hallway outside the dressing room and subjecting them all to a lengthy monologue about the scourge of superhero franchises and the flattening of the cinema landscape as they slithered into their shapewear on the other side of the door. From the looks of things, he’s still going at it, clutching a tumbler of whiskey and gesturing wildly at—
“Charlotte?” Lilly asks, sliding the door open and stepping out into the warm blue night. “What are you doing here?”
“Hi to you, too,” Charlotte says with a laugh. She’s curled in a lounge chair with her legs tucked underneath her, her red hair loose and lovely; she’s holding a glass of white wine in one hand. “I drove over to borrow my mom’s old Silver Palate Cookbook—”
“And I was practicing my crow pose on the front lawn,” Colin pipes up.
“Like one does,” Lilly agrees immediately, ignoring the chiding look Charlotte shoots her from across the patio. It’s fine, she wants to explain; Colin has never registered a snarky comment in all his days on this miraculous green planet. His own lack of self-awareness is thicker and more impenetrable than Major Fantastic’s nuclear shield.
Sure enough: “We got to chatting,” he continues, cheerful and oblivious. “I don’t know if you know this about me, but I’m a huge foodie.”
“You know, I might have guessed that.” Lilly turns to Charlotte. “It’s great that you came by, actually. I’m having a girl talk emergency.”
“You are?” Charlotte asks, looking at her a little oddly. “Right now?”
“Uh, yup,” Lilly says. “I just remembered. Sorry, Colin, do you mind if I borrow her for a minute?”
“Not at all,” Colin says magnanimously, pulling his phone out of his pocket. “Charlotte, I’m going to text Caitriona and get the name of that Korean barbecue place she was telling me about so you can check it out. She always knows all the best spots.”
Charlotte always knows all the best spots, actually, on account of being a highly regarded chef and restaurant owner, but she doesn’t tell that to Colin and somehow Lilly manages to resist pointing it out on her behalf. “I’d love that,” is all Charlotte says, then gets up and follows Lilly into the kitchen, Arthur heaving his furry little body up off the slate and trotting dutifully along. “What’s up?” she asks Lilly, once the door is safely shut behind them. “Did something happen at the premiere?”
“What? Oh no,” Lilly says, taking the bottle of wine out of the fridge and topping Charlotte’s glass off; then, on second thought, she pours one for herself, too. “Well, I guess so, kind of, but that’s not why I wanted you to come in here. I was just rescuing you.”
“Rescuing—what, from Colin?” Charlotte laughs. “He’s not actually that bad, you know.”
Lilly makes a face over the bowl of her wineglass. “Oh, please.”
“He’s not!” Charlotte insists. “I mean, he likes to talk, clearly, and he did just use the word foodie, but he’s really kind of sweet once you get to know him.”
“I’ve known him my entire life,” Lilly reminds her immediately, “and I can say with confidence I have not found that to be the case.”
“That’s . . . not really the same thing.”
Lilly shakes her head. “You’re losing your edge,” she accuses.
“I’m not like you,” Charlotte counters. “I don’t have an edge.”
Lilly isn’t sure what that means, exactly, but suddenly she’s too exhausted to parse even one more weird social interaction this fine evening. “Okay,” she concedes around a yawn, holding a hand up before draining her wine in two long gulps. “I’m going to bed. You’re on your own, old friend.”
“You know,” Charlotte promises with a grin, “I think I will somehow survive.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Lilly says, blowing her a kiss as Charlotte heads back outside onto the patio; still, she glances behind her one more time before she pads up the stairs to her room.