Hollywood Hills (16 page)

“It’ll only feel like that for a while,” Alexa promised, stroking Holly’s hair. “Especially if you know you’re doing the right thing.” Alexa had always assumed Holly and Tyler were perfectly matched, but now she saw that Holly was growing away from him. With a funny little tremor, Alexa recalled how
she’d
broken up with Tyler more than a year ago, unwittingly setting in motion the chain of events that had led her, Holly, and Tyler to where they were right now. Life was so weird.

Holly closed her eyes, remembering the light in Tyler’s amber-colored eyes, the softness of his darkblond hair under her hands. She replayed certain moments in her mind: the drizzly April morning of their junior year when Tyler had kissed her in school for the first time—right in front of her locker, his hoodie damp and his lips tasting of rain; the snowy
Valentine’s afternoon in Tyler’s bedroom when he’d traced a circle on her belly and whispered that he loved her; the two of them dancing to bad techno at the prom, laughing and sweaty as their classmates cheered them on. She felt like she was watching a film of someone else’s life. Holly felt tears slipping out of the corners of her eyes and sliding down her cheeks. Tyler had been her first love. Her first real heartache. Her first
everything.
Holly had no idea how the script was supposed to go from here.

“Did you want to wait until we’re back in Oakridge to, you know, do it?” Alexa was asking tentatively, as if she were referring to a mob hit.

“I think I’d lose my nerve by then,” Holly replied, opening her eyes to stare at the cypress trees waving under the sky. “Besides,” she added, turning to raise one brow at Alexa. “
You
wouldn’t wait, would you? If there’s anything you’ve taught me, Alexa St. Laurent—”

“Besides how to tell the difference between Chanel Glossimer and Stila Lip Glaze?” Alexa cut in. With a pang of sadness, she realized just how deeply she was going to miss her friend if things did work out with UCLA.

Holly managed a half grin. “Yeah, besides that, which, we
all
know is absolutely crucial. You taught
me that breaking up isn’t always the world’s scariest thing. I mean, look at what you did with Jonah—”

“No kidding.” Alexa lowered her gaze. She didn’t think now was the time to express to Holly her fear that, because of her impulsiveness, she’d never love again.

Holly planted a kiss on Alexa’s cheek. “I’m sorry,” she murmured.

Alexa glanced up, confused. “About what? You know I adore it when you pour your tortured soul out to me.”

Holly shook her head. “About what I said this morning—how you were difficult with boys and all that? I didn’t mean it, Alexa. You
will
make a guy happy someday. Of course you will. But it’ll have to be a guy who really
gets
you.”

Alexa gave Holly a small smirk. “Because there are so many of those around.”

“You never know where one might turn up,” Holly said as she got to her feet, wiping them off on the marble edge of the pool. She seemed to be composing herself for a moment, and then she cleared her throat. “I need to head inside and make those calls before it gets too late out there.”

Alexa looked up at her friend. “Okay. Want me to come with?”

Holly remembered how, back in South Beach, Alexa had sat by her side during another very difficult phone call. Now, though, she knew she needed to go it alone. So she told Alexa good-night and headed back inside the house, her pulse tapping at her wrists. As she made her way toward her bedroom, where her phone lay waiting on her bed, she decided she’d make the calls in order of their difficulty: Kenya first, to ask some questions about UCLA; her parents next, to discuss the college decision; and, finally…

TYLER
was flashing across the screen of Holly’s cell just as she reached for it; she’d been so deep into her thoughts she hadn’t even heard it ringing. Her heart in her throat, Holly clicked the phone on and brought it to her ear.

“Hi,” she whispered. “I was just about to call you.”
Kind of.

“Holly.” Tyler’s tone was deep and sober. “We need to talk.”

“That’s putting it mildly,” Holly murmured, unsure why she was joking. Then she realized that she
had
to make things a little lighter, or she and Tyler would be swallowed by their sadness.

“Ever since we got off the phone, I’ve been thinking,” Tyler went on, his voice low with emotion.

“Me, too,” Holly said, and sat on the edge of
her bed, studying the starry Malibu night through her drapes. “A lot.”

“I love you,” Tyler said.

“I love you, too,” Holly whispered. “But…”

“But,” Tyler replied, like a confirmation.

Holly felt the tears return, salty and familiar as they meandered down her cheeks. “So great minds think alike?” she managed to ask.

Tyler gave a half laugh. “God, Holly. I can’t believe this is happening.”

“I know,” Holly whispered. “Except it…is.”

Slowly, carefully, she and Tyler began talking, began unwinding a conversation that would flow deep into the night. Holly wasn’t sure where their talk would carry them, but that was the thing about the future. It was unknown, and unknowable, but before you knew it, you were there.

All of El Sueño was in a tizzy. Photographers snapped shots of the main house while reporters swarmed the grounds, generating a constant humming sound.

When Alexa pulled up in Jonah’s Hybrid the next morning, Miguel directed her to a parking spot behind a news van. As she pushed her sunglasses up and lifted two iced white chocolate dreams—The Coffee Bean’s specialty—from the drink holders, Alexa thought she heard the faint slapping of a helicopter’s blades overhead.
Insanity.
It was Margaux’s wedding day, so either half the world was salivating for a glimpse of the handsome brother of the bride—
or
Holly had created a raging bonfire of Tyler’s photos in the living room.

Stepping out of the car, and tucking the fat, glossy July issue of
Vogue
under her arm, Alexa saw that the guesthouse looked intact.
Whew.

Last night, when Holly hadn’t come back outside, Alexa had abandoned her post by the pool to go to bed; beauty sleep was a priority for the wedding. She’d been propped up on pillows, investigating LA salons on her laptop, when Holly had stuck her head into the room. She’d looked weary and wan, and her face was stained with tears, but she’d assured Alexa that she was coping, and that they’d talk in the morning. “Is it—over with Tyler?” Alexa had whispered from her bed. “Over,” Holly had confirmed, her face crumpling slightly as she’d pulled the door shut. First thing in the morning, Alexa had crept out of the house to run errands at the Malibu Country Mart—such as dropping off her film, buying
Vogue
, and making an appointment at a chichi hair salon—so she hadn’t seen Holly yet. But she’d been worrying about her friend the whole time.

Her Grecian sandals clicking against the flagstones, Alexa trotted past the main house, where Esperanza was standing on the sundeck, firmly telling reporters that Jonah wasn’t home and that they should call his publicist for a quote. Alexa wondered what the scene was like at Margaux’s house in the Hills—the site of
the actual wedding. As Alexa let herself into the guesthouse, she felt a thrill shoot through her; in a matter of hours, she’d be in the midst of an honest-to-goodness Hollywood event. She couldn’t think of a better way to kick off her summer—not to mention the rest of her life.

Humming contentedly, Alexa carried the iced coffee drinks to Holly’s bedroom, expecting to find her friend watching the press outside her window. Instead, Holly was kneeling on the floor of her walk-in closet, wrapped in one of the guesthouse’s fluffy white robes, her wet hair shielding her face—and looking absolutely miserable.

“Oh,
Hol
,” Alexa murmured, leaning against the closet door and feeling a swell of sympathy. “I know it hurts.” Even though Alexa had recently had her heart badly broken in Paris, she couldn’t begin to guess at the raw pain Holly was dealing with. Alexa and Xavier had had a passionate fling, not the kind of together-forever relationship Holly and Tyler had shared.

“Huh?” Holly glanced up, blinking, and then shook her head when she saw the concern on Alexa’s face. Despite her lingering pain over what had happened with Tyler, Holly felt a giggle rise in her throat. “Oh, God. It’s not what you think.”

Alexa raised one brow. Holly’s gray-green eyes were round, but they weren’t teary. “You’re not crying
over Tyler?” Alexa asked, passing Holly one of the iced drinks.

“Not now,” Holly sighed, getting to her feet and taking a sip of the frothy-sweet concoction. “I think I successfully cried myself out last night.” The dull ache in Holly’s heart deepened as she thought back to the hardest conversation of her life. She’d once read an article in
CosmoGIRL!
that had equated breaking up with tearing off a Band-Aid. On the phone with Tyler last night, Holly had decided that the amputation of a limb would be a far better comparison. It didn’t have to be a whole
leg
—maybe, like, a pinkie finger. Which, of course, still hurt like hell.

She and Tyler had opened up about everything—their frustrations, their differences, their desires. “I think we want opposite things out of life,” Tyler had said at one point while Holly had wept into the phone. Tyler had sniffed hard—which was his way of crying—and added that he never wanted to be the person to keep Holly from achieving her dreams. “You’ve been so good to me,” Holly had sobbed in response, knowing it was true. They’d finally ended the conversation by saying they’d talk again at graduation. Afterward, an emotionally drained Holly had somehow found it in her to call her parents to discuss UCLA, a talk which hadn’t been much easier. Then she’d tossed and turned the night away, sobbing into
her pillow and repeating
I’m not with Tyler anymore
to herself. The words still sounded as if they were in a foreign language, but Holly wondered if, in time, they’d begin to make sense. To feel normal.

Alexa let out a breath of relief. She knew she and Holly would get into more detail on the Tyler subject later; she was just glad her friend wasn’t completely falling apart over the boy. “All right,” she said, taking a few steps back into the room. “Then why were you collapsed on the closet floor like Paris Hilton after a rough night?”

“I was figuring out which shoes to wear—” Holly pointed down to her beige sandals, beaded gold flats, Adidas, and jellies, stacked beside the new box of Bebe stilettos. “—to my interview with the dean of admissions at UCLA.” Speaking the words, Holly felt a mix of eagerness and terror storm through her. She
still
couldn’t fathom what she was about to do in less than an hour.

“An interview?” Alexa cried, incredulous. She sat on the edge of Holly’s bed, too surprised to bring her iced drink to her lips. “How did
that
happen so fast?”

“With difficulty,” Holly groaned, rolling her eyes. Last night, she’d gone through a battle of wills with her impossible parents.
Holly Rebecca
, her mom had chided,
it’s not like you to be so impulsive.
Holly had wanted to reply that that was exactly the point, but
then her father, sounding choked up, had jumped in to say that he’d hate to have his little girl thousands of miles away for four years. Holly was sure that the only reason she’d eventually triumphed was that her parents were too wiped out from their camping trip to give an absolute no.

“I got my mom and dad to agree that I should go in for a meeting,” Holly elaborated, turning away from Alexa to pluck her A-line khaki skirt off a hanger. “But my mom flat-out refused to call the school and throw her weight around.” Holly frowned as she noticed her prom dress dangling from a hanger in her closet—its shimmery skirt was wrinkled from being folded up in her duffel. Fortunately Holly had spotted an iron in the bathroom’s linen closet earlier.

“Gosh, that sucks,” Alexa said, glancing down at her
Vogue
to hide her expression from her friend. Last night, during their poolside heart-to-heart, Alexa had supported Holly’s UCLA switch; now, in the light of day, she was secretly hoping that Holly would still end up back on the East Coast. Alexa felt as if the girls had only just cemented their friendship; it seemed a shame to let that bond go to waste.

“Yeah, but then I talked to Kenya this morning, while you were out,” Holly was saying, carrying the khaki skirt to the bed and laying it out beside Alexa. “And it turns out that she worked part-time at the
admissions office last semester, so she was able to set something up for me. Amazing, no?” Holly’s pulse spiked at the thought of her UCLA future, which now seemed truly within reach.

As long as she didn’t screw up the interview.

“Holly, you
do
realize it’s not every day that colleges let people change their minds at the last minute?” Alexa asked, opening her
Vogue
to a Catherine Malandrino ad. “I mean, you’re not
guaranteed
a spot in the freshman class, are you?” She shot a long, level look up at Holly.

“Thank you, O Voice of Doom,” Holly replied, lightly jabbing Alexa’s shoulder. “I thought you were
rooting
for me to live in Cali full-time.” As Holly set her iced drink down on her bedside table and reached for her comb, she heard the cacophony of raised voices and ringing cell phones outside her window. The paparazzi may not have been pawing through the trash last night, but they’d sure made up for it this morning. Holly wondered, then, if this was what life in California would be like—until she reminded herself that she wouldn’t be spending her college years on an estate in Malibu. Which was actually kind of disappointing.

“I changed my mind,” Alexa said simply, then
sipped at her drink. “I want you close at hand in case I have any romantic crises at Columbia. Don’t you know by now that I’m a selfish bitch?” she added, her eyes glinting as she grinned up at her friend.

“Listen,” Holly said, combing out her damp hair. “Can you please do something
non
-selfish today and figure out what we should get Margaux as a wedding present? And we need to leave a gift for Jonah, too,” she added as she scooped her gold hoop earrings out of her makeup bag. Holly knew her parents would never let her live it down if she forgot to give a token of thanks to her host.

“I guess,” Alexa sighed, How was she supposed to shop for a guy whom she’d just rejected? Her favorite things to buy for boys—flannel boxers, crisp buttondowns, designer aftershave—would feel
way
too loaded for Jonah, and besides, what was there that the actor couldn’t already get for himself? “How about we divide and conquer?” Alexa offered. “I’ll take care of Margaux, you get the goods for Jonah?”

“I don’t think I’ll have time,” Holly protested as she pushed one of the hoops through her ear, and Alexa rolled her eyes. “I still need to ask Esperanza if there’s a fax machine in the main house that I can use—I’m supposed to bring my latest report card to the interview. And then Kenya’s coming to pick me
up, and
then
I need to iron my dress before the wedding—” Holly paused as she felt her earring bang against the ring on her finger.

Her Claddagh ring.

Oh, yeah.

Her throat tightening, Holly reached down and tugged lightly on the ring. It slipped off her finger with little resistance. She held it in the warmth of her palm for a moment, sending it a silent good-bye, before she slipped it deep into her makeup bag. As she zipped up the bag, she found herself blinking back tears.

Now she really was ready for her interview. Ready to start anew.

“Hol?” Alexa said softly, feeling a pang of regret as she noticed how upset her friend was. Alexa reminded herself that, whenever she’d been distraught over a boy, Holly had dropped everything to comfort her. Alexa knew she
could
be ridiculously selfish, but maybe there was a way to alter that somehow. “Good luck with the interview and don’t worry about the presents,” Alexa added firmly as she reached up to squeeze Holly’s arm. “I’ll take care of everything. I promise.”

Setting down her boxy shopping bags, Alexa sank into a free chair in the elegant Peach Grove salon. It
was more than ninety outside, and hazy—not exactly prime weather for an outdoor celebration. Even in her strapless floral-print sundress, Alexa’s collarbone was damp with sweat, and her thick hair was sticking to her back.
Not for much longer
, Alexa thought as she reached for an issue of
Variety.
She felt a beat of hesitation; did she really want to be doing this? Alexa wondered if Holly, at UCLA, was feeling similarly—looking forward to the change, but scared of it, too.

Alexa was rarely scared. But if this haircut got messed up, she’d have to deal with looking
less
than drop-dead beautiful in front of most of Hollywood—and, if E! turned their cameras on her, the
world. Maybe this is stupid
, Alexa thought, biting her lip. She remembered that crucial rule of facials—-always leave three weeks between an avocado skin peel and an event. Who in their right minds scheduled a haircut on the day of the biggest wedding to hit LA in ages? To calm her nerves, Alexa opened
Variety
and flipped past an article on weekend box office predictions. Then she noticed a small blurb on Oren Samuels, who she remembered was Jonah’s agent, accompanied by a photograph. Alexa was reading his client list—apparently, he represented Margaux and Paul as well—when she heard a voice above her.

“Alissa Sant Lauren?”

Alexa glanced up from
Variety
to see a tall, stunning
guy with mocha-colored skin and close-cropped, dyed-blond hair, wearing the salon’s distinctive peachcolored apron over a black shirt and slacks. Besides Jonah, he was probably the hottest guy Alexa had seen yet in Hollywood, which made her forgive his name slipup.

Only she’d bet anything that he wasn’t into girls.

“C’est moi,”
she announced, standing up. “Alexa.”

“Aramis,” he replied, flashing a wide smile. “Come this way, sweetheart.”

Scooping up her bags, Alexa followed Aramis through the salon, passing framed snapshots of Chloë Sevigny, Camilla Belle, and Margaux Eklundstrom herself. In between flowy peach drapes, pouty-lipped models slouched in black swivel chairs. Waifish stylists with Chinese-symbol tattoos on their midsections blow-dried and snipped and sprayed over a thumping soundtrack of Franz Ferdinand. Alexa settled down in one such swivel chair, and Aramis ceremoniously draped a gauzy peach cape over her. There was no going back now.

“Well?” Aramis asked, pouring a dab of scented oil into his palm and then lightly massaging Alexa’s scalp. “What would you like to do with these gorgeous golden locks?”

Alexa gulped, watching her reflection in the tall
mirror. Beneath the mirror lay an array of scissors, clips, and combs—all weapons that would tear into her most prized possession. Feeling like she was breaking up with a beloved boy, Alexa let her eyes drift shut and remembered some of the best times she’d shared with her hair: all the high, sleek ponytails, the better to show off big dangly earrings; all the tossings over shoulders, the better to finish off a point she was making; all the sneaking into boys’ mouths and hands during wild kissing sessions.

Then Alexa opened her eyes. It was time to let go of the past.