The Reunion by Kayla Olson(2)
“Let’s talk about the pressure. Your character on the show—Honor St. Croix—was Miss Americana to the extreme, and honestly, it never looked like a stretch. Honor never crumbled under the pressure she felt, and from what I can tell, neither did you. How did you handle it all?”
Jade wasn’t there for my rather jagged twenties, or any of the behind-the-scenes days that led up to them. There’s a difference between crumbling and cracking. Honor and I absolutely did both.
“It all comes back to being grateful,” I say. It’s a line I’ve practiced many times over in my head, and one I think is true? “Being grateful, even for the hard things, and starting fresh each new day no matter how tough the day before felt.”
“But they did feel tough,” Jade says. A fact: not a question.
I look her straight in the eye. “People go through harder things every day,” I say, choosing my words carefully. I’ve gone through harder. “But yes, the expectations on me back then were unreal.”
The schedule, the interviews, the tours. There was pressure everywhere, so many eyes on me, always.
I loved the acting itself, though—unsurprising, given that it’s practically a family legacy on the Latimer side. The chance to escape into someone else’s skin, to be someone as perfect as Honor St. Croix while my own personal universe was falling apart? Even at a young age, it was never lost on me what a privilege that was. It worked out well that I was good at it. Good enough that no one ever had to know exactly how hard things were on me when my father—three-time Oscar-winning Hollywood heartthrob Patrick Latimer—was killed in a car crash up in the canyons during our second season.
“It certainly seemed like an intense experience for all of you when the show took off overnight. At least you clearly had chemistry with your castmates,” Jade says, eyes glittering under the lights. I know where this is going. “You and Ransom Joel seemed especially close.”
And there it is: I’ve been down this road a thousand times—in interviews, in daydreams, in sleepless nights where I tried to piece together where everything went wrong between us. We were best friends, closer than anyone else on set. The closest.
Slipping into Honor’s life was exactly the escape I needed when my father died. And when the cameras stopped rolling, it was Ransom—and only Ransom—who got the real me.
“You and Ransom were inseparable in those years, and more than a few people speculated you were secretly dating.” She leans in conspiratorially, as if it’s just us having a chat over coffee without millions of viewers hanging on our every word. “I know you both adamantly denied it, but I have to know—was there ever any truth to those rumors?”
It takes every ounce of professional poise to not break character: Liv Latimer, perfectly unruffled talk show guest. Behind my ultra-calm facade, I’m wondering how this question possibly slipped past my publicist.
“They were rumors,” I say evenly, putting on a smile that’s anything but easy. “Never anything more.”
I don’t tell her how we were so close it felt like dating sometimes, how there were days when he mattered more to me than the show itself. I especially don’t tell her about the painful drama between us at the end of our final season, the purposeful step back from our friendship—Ransom’s idea, not mine. How it felt like a breakup.
It’s always been easier to deny the rumors than to admit I once wished they were true.
“Have you and Ransom seen each other since the show ended?” Jade’s question is so casual, so blissfully unaware of all that went down between us.
“I’ve certainly seen him on social media!” I reply, deflection-with-a-smile at its best.
“Oh, haven’t we all!” Jade says, pivoting with me without missing a beat. “I admire how he uses his platform to put good out into the world. Is he really that good of a guy behind the scenes?”
That good and more, I think. So good it hurts.
“He once took in a stray kitten and kept it in his dressing room—it was an entire week before the studio found out and made him take it home!” The memory of him smuggling a bag of kitten food under his hoodie in the middle of a heat wave makes me smile for real, no acting required.
Jade’s eyes light up. “I can only imagine how many pets have been adopted thanks to his activism—did you know he even did a calendar to raise funds for the ASPCA one time? My niece gave me one for my birthday a few years ago!”
Ransom, when the clips from this interview inevitably go viral, will not love this turn of conversation. His photos have taken on a markedly dark filter as of late, veering decidedly away from teen heartthrob into GQ cover–worthy territory.
Not that I’ve been keeping up with his daily posts.
Or the six to ten stories he posts on the regular throughout each day.
Or his Snapaday Lives, which my personal-assistant-slash-best-friend Bre peeks at for me on her account every so often, just so he won’t know exactly how often I tune in to see what he’s up to.
Jade leans in, as if she’s about to tell me something extremely confidential.
“Let’s circle back to the reunion special. For those who haven’t heard, it’s an all-new hour-long episode that’s rumored to pick up where the series finale left off. Fans everywhere are dying to know—without giving away any spoilers here—will we finally get closure on that one big thing the show left hanging in the balance?”