Page 28 of The Reunion

Was his face really as close to mine as I remember? Was his smilethe same one he uses at photo calls, the one he wields with precision like a scalpel, carving out exactly what he wants in the world—or was it the other one, the spontaneous one he gives on instinct when he laughs? I feel an overpowering urge to find out the answerright now.

But if I look now, Bre will ask all the questions I know she’s been stifling. If I look now, I’ll have to answer them—even if I’m silent, my silence willbean answer. I trust Bre, I absolutely do. I’ll tell her everything, when and if there’s something I should tell.

Which there isn’t. There can’t be.

Ransom and I were friends first, and then we were ghosts. I’m still learning what we are now.

“We’re drilling this one first next timeor else,” she says with a grin, opening the script to the bedroom scene and leaving it faceup on my bedside table. “You’re off the hook for today.”

Dan and Xan’s house is a major upgrade from the one I remember from previous cast parties. Their old place was like a private oasis—small and secluded, the perfect place to make memories with their twin daughters—but this one is a sprawling mansion complete with palm tree–lined drive and a wishing-well fountain in the front driveway. By our final two seasons, our collective representation had negotiated lucrative deals for the entire principal cast and the writing team; between that and the success they’d had even beforeGirlbroke out, it’s safe to assume the Jennings estate is doing more than fine.

Millie and I arrive at the same time.

“This place is gorgeous,” she breathes as a smartly dressed attendant opens the door for us.

The foyer stretches to the stratosphere and is immaculately clean, decorated sparsely in dark gray and emerald to offset the white stone tiling. I can hear music and voices off in the distance.

“You’ll find everyone out in the backyard,” the door attendant says, as if reading my mind. “Go straight, then take either path at the end of the foyer—you won’t be able to miss it.”

We walk the long hallway, then turn into a spacious open-concept living area where the back wall is basically one huge window. For good reason: the backyard looksmassive. Even from here, I can see a pool and another wishing-well fountain and manicured hedges that could rival a Disney theme park’s, all of it lit with tiki torches and glowing lamplight under the dusky evening sky.

“Okay, Dan and Xan win best house,” Millie says. “This is total goals, Liv.”

My own home feels like a tiny beachside cottage in comparison—but honestly, I wouldn’t trade it. I’d get lost in so much space, living all alone.

We make our way out into the backyard, where silhouettes mill all across the grounds. Servers, dressed in the same black-and-white uniform as the door attendant, weave down the pathways carrying trays of rosé and cheese and crackers. When they come our way, I take a glass and a plate full of each.

Millie’s chatting my ear off—running commentary on the flowers, the lights, the cheese, the wine—when my eyes lock with Ransom’s. I hadn’t even seen him standing across the way, but then someone shifted and he turned his head and his eyes were just…there.

I take a healthy sip of rosé, nearly flooding my lungs instead of swallowing.Steady, Liv.All these years, I’ve tried to convince myself it was for the best that we took a step back. That I could eventually get over him, that maybe in time my feelings would fade—that maybe I’d blended fiction with reality and my feelings for him were never real at all.

But of course they were real. He’s everything a person would be attracted to, and it’s no use pretending I’m somehow exempt. He’s beautiful, he’s intense, he’s funny and kind and sincere.

He’s headed this way.

“Ooooh, where’d you get the strawberries?” Millie says by way of greeting, plucking one straight off his plate.

Ransom laughs. “Petite redheaded server at six o’clock,” he says, and Millie’s halfway across the backyard before the words have even left his mouth. His eyebrows shoot up. “She’s gotenergy.”

“She’s been talking my ear off since the moment we arrived—girl must’ve had a vat of coffee this afternoon.”

He grins. “I wonder how different all of this feels to her,” he says. “She never went through it like we did back in the day.”

“I had the same thought yesterday,” I say. Millie definitely had a healthy fan following, but it was nothing like the unrelenting attention Ransom and I experienced. “She was absolutely swarmed by photographers when she arrived at our fitting. I got Tabitha, by the way. Or, rather, Tabitha got me—I’ve got the bruises to prove it!”

He winces but laughs.

“Nice outfit,” he says.

I blush, so distracted by the compliment that it takes me a moment to realize he and I look like we coordinated for tonight. He’s wearing slim-cut black jeans—which lookgoodon him, might I add—with a gray sweater almost the exact shade as mine, sleeves pushed up to the elbows. It looks soft, and I suppress the instinct to reach out and touch it.

“Where’s a photographer when we need one?” I say, grinning. “You clean up nicely yourself.”

“Care for some bacon-wrapped figs?” a server interrupts.

“Those smell incredible,” Ransom says, taking one for each of us.

It’s a logistical challenge, eating an entire bacon-wrapped fruit in a way that’s both graceful and doesn’t require me to stuff the entire thing in my mouth like Ransom does. It turns out to be more than he bargained for, and he struggles to polish it off. I take a delicate bite—there’s honey involved, too, as it turns out, sealing the bacon to the fig—and now we’re both laughing, and sticky, too.

---