Page 30 of The Reunion

“Can I ask you—” he begins, but is immediately cut off by a piercing crest of feedback coming from one of the nearby speakers camouflaged as a large garden rock.

“Oops, so sorry about that! Is this thing on?” I hear Xan’s voice before I see her, holding a wireless mic over on the patio near the pool. “Thank you all so much for being here this evening—on behalf of Dan and myself, I just want to take a brief moment to welcome you to our home!”

Xan is radiant as ever, ten feet of personality packed into a petite five-foot-four frame. She’s wearing a black pencil skirt with black wedge ankle booties and a bright red top that perfectly complements her skin tone and dark wavy hair.

She goes on to thank the caterers, then gives us an overview of how dinner will work—there’s a buffet set up at the far back edge of the yard, there are tables, it’s eat at our own leisure—and continues on for more than what I would calla brief moment. I love Xan, but I want to know: What was Ransom about to ask me?

By the time she finishes, everyone is eager to move around and mingle again—I don’t manage a single word before Ford appears and drapes his arms over both Ransom’s and my shoulders.

“I heard there’s someone juggling fire back by the buffet!” he says with enthusiasm that reminds me of the puppy my mother adopted a few years ago. “Fire, you guys!”

And that’s when I know our moment is well and truly broken. Hopefully Ransom and I will get another chance to talk, alone, before the night is over.

We follow Ford down the path to the buffet—and, apparently, notone fire-juggler but three of them—picking up Millie and Sasha-Kate along the way. Sasha-Kate is wearing an especially dramatic scarlet jumpsuit, a backless halter with a plunging V-neck and wide-leg pants. Her greeting toward Millie is measured, lacking in warmth, but at least it’s not the silent treatment she was giving her yesterday.

“This looks amazing,” Millie breathes. A long table is set up at the back of the yard, draped in a thick black tablecloth. A gleaming row of silver chafing dishes holds everything we need for a fusion Hawaiian taco feast: tortillas in one, black beans and rice in the next, all followed by a bounty of mahi-mahi and fried coconut shrimp and some sort of vegan option; trays of papaya and strawberries and mango wait at the end, where there are also bowls full of fresh cotija cheese and lime wedges and soy sauce and pineapple pico de gallo and a sweet-and-spicy sauce that smells divine. I absolutely love a good taco bar—tacos are amazing in that you could eat them every day for a week and never have the same meal twice.

We soon get pulled in four different directions, so we don’t actually get to eat together. Ransom ends up in a conversation with Shine Jacobs and Bob Renfro, Ford looks genuinely interested in whatever Pierre Alameda is talking his ear off about—probably the up-and-coming tennis star he’s been coaching lately, who made it past the first round of the French Open—and Millie stands by while Sasha-Kate chats up our producing team, Nathaniel and Gabe. I’m the lucky one: I end up with Xan.

“So how was it working with Vienna Lawson, Liv?” she asks between bites of taco. We’re standing at a tall table under a gorgeous weeping willow that sways gently in the evening breeze. “Your performance inLove // Indigowas really something special. You two were obviously a collaborative match made in heaven!”

I blush; I can’t help it.

“Thank you,” I say, stalling for time. Xan practically built my career, and I’m so grateful for it. Working with Vienna was an entirely different sort of experience, though—more creative input on my part, a more mature role requiring range I never knew I had—and I’m not sure how to describe it in a way that won’t sound like I liked Vienna better.

“It was… it was a singular experience,” I finally say. “Simultaneously more relaxed and more intense than anything I’ve ever worked on before.”

More relaxed, in that Vienna and I regularly hung out in my trailer until two in the morning with a full pot of coffee, trading ideas about how to approach shooting the next day’s scene. More intense for the same reason.

Xan nods thoughtfully, working on a particularly juicy bite of papaya. I assume she’s read the various articles and interviews floating around about Vienna’s creative process; it’s no secret Vienna holds her ideas loosely and is always open to testing them, no secret that this often leads to plans being flipped on a moment’s notice in a way that stretches into long days and longer nights. It’s such a different world from the one Dan and Xan inhabit, where they bounce things off each other and bring a fully realized script to the table week after week.

“I heard from a mutual friend that she’s been working on a secret new project,” Xan says, and I can’t hide my surprise—a large coconut shrimp falls out of my taco and onto my plate. “News to you, then? I’d bet money she’s writing something with you in mind.”

“I’d be lucky to work with her again, honestly. She’s brilliant.”

Xan shakes her head. “You make your own luck, lovely. Dan and I have spoken often, privately, about howGirlwouldn’t have become what it did without you.”

“I don’t know about that—I had some exceptional material to work with on the show. Did you know there are entire college courses devoted to you and Dan?”

She makes a face, and I laugh. “The college courses I love. But if I getone more emailfrom a high school sophomore saying their English teacher is requiring them to interview a writer, I cannot be held accountable for my actions! What kind of assignment is that, anyway? Bless their hearts.” She stabs a slice of mango with her fork. “The students, I mean. Not the imbeciles who assign those things.”

This is why I love Xan. She’s brilliant and confident and grounded, and it’s always been primarily about the work itself for her, not other people giving her recognition for it. She and my father got along wellwhen they were both up-and-coming in the industry—he was the same way.

“If Fanline gives the green light on our reboot,” she says, an abrupt subject change, “we’d go into production as early as August. If Vienna reaches out to you about whatever she has in the works”—ahhh, that’s how we got onto this topic—“all we ask is that you don’t commit before clearing it withGirl’s shooting schedule, okay?” She says it with a smile, but there’s an unexpectedly hard undercurrent to her tone.

“I—oh,” I stammer, totally caught off guard. She’s assuming I’m a yes for the reboot, if it happens at all, even though I’ve been careful not to get anyone’s hopes up. I especially dislike the way she’s implyingGirlshould take priority over all other potential projects on my radar, and the insinuation that I might jeopardize the reboot by accepting a role elsewhere. I don’t know whether to be flattered or insulted.

“Don’t worry,” I go on, smoothing my words out until they’re seamless. “My agent is on top of my schedule and will work it out if there are any potential conflicts. There won’t be any issue.”

Even as the words leave my mouth, though, I know they sound more solid than they feel. More committed than I am. Hypothetically—ifI were to commit—the shooting schedule forGirlmight be fixed and predictable, but Vienna Lawson is anything but. She could get an idea tonight, draft it next week, and have everything all set up for an on-location shoot by next month—or it could take as long as a year, maybe two, for her to feel ready to go. At the very least, if she’s writing a project with me in mind, she might hope for intense collaboration in the months to come, which could become a point of contention if it started to interfere withGirl.

I need to take a breath and a big step back before I get too far ahead of myself.

“If you’ll excuse me, I need to make a quick phone call. Good to chat, Xan—thanks for tonight!”

We both know my “quick phone call” is an excuse—I should definitely touch base with Mars about what just happened, but it can wait. I follow a winding path lined with tall tropical trees, their leaves wide and green, and find a quiet corner. Dan and Xan really do havea phenomenal backyard, I think, taking a moment to justbehere in this peaceful little alcove. It’s like its own private room under the stars, a ceramic birdbath its focal point, walled off by coral honeysuckle and moonflower vines and a thriving lot of wisteria, all of it lit by a lamppost straight out of Narnia. It’s lovely, romantic. Relatively quiet.

Quiet, that is, until I hear the soft crunch of footsteps on the gravel path behind me. I startle at the sound like I’ve been caught doing something I shouldn’t, like I’m somewhere off-limits—but it’s only Ransom.

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