The Reunion by Kayla Olson(16)

“This is amazing,” I breathe, licking a bit of melted chocolate from my finger.

“You can thank me in information,” she says with a pointed look.

I ignore said look, choosing to focus instead on how clear the sky is, and on how so many bright white moonbeams catch on the waves as they roll in to shore. I’ve sat out here, thinking, on so many nights just like this. Usually, I sit out here alone.

“Okay, so,” I say, testing the feel of words on my tongue. “You obviously know Ransom and I were best friends for basically the show’s entire run, and that we very much aren’t anymore.”

“As your current best friend, I’d just like to take a moment to point out how extremely patient I’ve been in never prying for details on exactly what happened there,” Bre says, popping a piece of popcorn in her mouth. “Especially since you are clearly still interested in keeping up with him via my Snapaday account.”

I laugh. “Noted. And thank you.” We would have had this conversation ages ago, had I not changed the subject every single time it came close to coming up—I can tell she’s wanted to ask. I look out at the sea, watch as the tide crashes on the shore.

“Start at the beginning,” she says, with another bite of popcorn. “I want to hear everything.”

“Our first day on set,” I begin, “we were both so nervous and trying not to show it.” That day will forever be seared in my memory. “It was his first big role—he’d never landed anything major like that before—and everything was so new to him. I’d been on some movie sets, at least, watching my father, so I was a little more comfortable. But it was the first time either of us had been in the spotlight ourselves.”

My father had been so proud of me that first day, and his presence made me feel calmer. In later seasons, I missed him terribly. I still do.

“Ransom and I became fast friends,” I go on. “He was always making me laugh—I went through some incredibly hard weeks, and he somehow always knew exactly the right thing to say or do to make me feel better. Especially after what happened with my father.”

The accident happened on a blisteringly hot day, early in our second season: my father died in a car crash up in the canyons, trying to outrun a paparazzo who’d followed him there.

“I hadn’t had five minutes to process the news before twenty microphones were shoved in my face,” I say. “Ransom was the one who pushed them away.”

I decided then and there to never give an interview about my father, never answer a single question or give even the barest hint of comment on the subject. In my mind, the press had taken everything from me, and I had nothing more to give.

But oh, did they ask. They asked and asked and asked, and when I refused to answer, they talked about that.

Ransom was my safe space.

“No wonder you were so close,” Bre says, reading my mind.

“Oh, yeah. We were inseparable after that.” I grin, thinking of how many dark days I might have had if not for the brightness he brought to my life. “We went everywhere together and could practically finish each other’s sentences. I remember entire conversations on set where neither of us said a single word.”

“But you never dated?”

Her tone reminds me of the very first time a reporter asked if we were dating—the question caught me so off guard it made me laugh. Absolutely not, I replied on instinct. We’re just friends.

I’d never thought of him as anything other than my best friend until that moment—but then the next time we were together, I started noticing things. The distinct color of his eyes, so many shades of light green that always seemed to catch the light. The angles of his cheekbones. His lips, his smile. The way his face lit up every time he saw me. The way he gave me his full, intense attention; the secrets we shared only with each other, our highest hopes and deepest fears.

There was a time I thought he might feel the same way—I could have sworn he was about to kiss me one time, on a flight to Shanghai for our world tour—but I was wrong. Wrong about all of it.

Definitely just friends, he told a reporter while doing press in Shanghai that same afternoon, less than an hour after confiding in me that he had a crush on someone else. He was dating her by the end of the tour.

I kept my feelings to myself—better to keep my best friend than admit how I felt and risk losing him altogether—and we stayed close, somehow even closer than before. Over and over and over again, we got the same question that started it all: Are you secretly dating?

Over and over and over again, we replied, We’re just friends.

“Not each other,” I finally tell Bre. It sounds more bitter than I intended.

“Ah,” she says, fishing around in the popcorn bowl for a piece of dark chocolate. “Clearly, it didn’t work out with whoever he was dating.”

“It did not,” I say evenly, an understatement. “Some huge drama went down, and they broke up. Over me.”

Bre’s quiet, taking it all in. “And that’s why you and Ransom aren’t close anymore?”

The crisp crests of the ocean blur, deep black waves blending into foamy surf. “He said he thought it would be best for us to take a step back from our friendship—that no one would ever want to date either of us if they thought we were in love with each other.”