“IT’S REALLY COMING DOWN OUT THERE, isn’t it?” Vanessa said, her eyes shifting to the window.
“Look at me, Vanessa?” Sophia said gently. Vanessa’s eyes automatically moved forward, then up, allowing Sophia to finely apply the smoky gray shadow along her lower lids.
“Sorry,” Vanessa said, her voice a little breathy—no doubt from nerves. After all, one didn’t go to the Golden Globes every day. “Today is just too important for rain! It’s like I’m being punished!”
It was 3:30 in the afternoon. The Golden Globes show began at 5 PM West Coast time. The red carpet procession began around four, with massive stars, newcomers, Hollywood power players, and the occasional briefcased accountant all posing for the hundreds of cameras, trying not to be disconcerted by the explosion of flashbulbs and Ryan Seacrest’s probing questions.
The car would be coming for Vanessa any minute, along with her hand-holding publicist from the movie. Her sprawling bungalow in West Hollywood was only a few minutes from the Beverly Hills Hilton, where the Globes were held, but she didn’t want to miss her chance to walk the red carpet.
Although, the weather might have other ideas.
Vanessa stood in the middle of her living room in her couture gown, a bronze-peach shade of satin that would no doubt wrinkle the second she sat down, but at the moment looked flawless against her white skin and chocolate hair. She had a few hundred thousand dollars in jewelry dangling from her ears and her wrist, borrowed from a Beverly Hills jeweler who had sent a security team when they delivered the box. Her hair was set in loose 1940s finger waves that Kip had worked diligently on. Now, it was Sophia’s turn. Paper tucked into the dress’s high collar and a T-shirt smock protected the gown as Sophia applied the last of the shadow and mascara to Vanessa’s eyes, bringing out their bright green irises, and set off perfectly by the meticulous arch of her brows, and the tiny mole at the corner of her eye.
Vanessa was an exceptionally beautiful woman. She knew it. It was part of her job. But today . . . today her beauty had to be unparalleled. She knew that, too.
And it was Sophia’s job to make that happen.
Unfortunately, at the moment Vanessa wasn’t really cooperating. And neither was the weather. The former was a complete bundle of nerves, the latter, merely a huge annoyance to a town used to temperate winter sunshine.
“It is totally punishment! I should have listened to my spiritualist,” Vanessa was saying, “and done a complete cleanse of my body’s aura weeks ago. An offer to the weather-gods.”
If Vanessa was being punished, so was George Clooney, Steven Spielberg, and a couple hundred other people with a lot more sway in Hollywood, and presumably, with the weather-gods.
But Sophia didn’t say that. Instead, she traded her shadow brush for a mascara wand, and began to apply the final layer to Vanessa’s eye look. “Don’t worry, the rain has been in the forecast for ages, I’m sure the Golden Globes people are prepared for this,” Sophia said soothingly. She glanced over at Kip, who, with a nod, fetched a bottle of purified volcanic spring water from Vanessa’s assistant, and brought it over. (Volcanic spring water being much like mountain spring water, only much more expensive.)
“And this mascara is waterproof, so at least we don’t have to worry about that.”
“What would I do without you, Sophia?” Vanessa said, reaching out to grab Sophia’s hand. “Oh!”
Vanessa retracted her hand, as if she’d touched flame. In reality, all she had done was screw up Sophia’s concentration, and knock her brush hand, centimeters from Vanessa’s eye, into Vanessa’s cheek.
“Sophia!” Vanessa cried, flinching back. “Oh God, my eye—is my eye okay?”
Kip and Vanessa’s personal assistant—a recently acquired employee, an early twenties phone addict who dressed more fashionably than her salary surely allowed and who Sophia was pretty sure was named Marjorie—rushed over to attend to the drama.
“Everything’s fine,” Sophia said soothingly. “Just a smudge on the cheek. Entirely fixable.”
“You didn’t get my eye?” Vanessa asked weakly, reaching for a hand mirror.
“No, your eye is perfect.” She took a wipe and carefully blotted the slash of black off Vanessa’s cheek.
“Good . . .” Vanessa said, taking a deep breath. “I’m so glad you’re going to be with me tonight. Especially if I start crying.”
Sophia smiled. Vanessa was not only nominated, but she was presenting an award—best supporting actor in a TV movie, series, or miniseries—so she got to have a select crew of people to attend to her needs backstage in the greenroom. Touch-ups, dress issues, etc. Especially useful if she won, and started bawling her eyes out.
Sophia was excited. The only time she’d ever been backstage anywhere, was when Alan, her first husband, had gotten them tickets to see *NSYNC at the Coliseum back when they were dating. Of course, he got scalped tickets and it was for the wrong date, so there was no concert to attend, but they did sneak around the backstage of the theater, diving behind boxes and speakers to avoid security guards with no peripheral vision.
“I think the black smudge could work,” Kip joked. “It looks very Clockwork Orange.” He knew that Kubrick was Vanessa’s favorite, and knew this would make her laugh.
“Or it looks like Sebastian after he got that fish to the face,” Sophia added, and Vanessa let go into a full-on fit of the giggles.
“Oh my goodness, when he showed me that picture, I nearly lost it!”
Sophia’s smile faded into surprise. “Sebastian showed you that picture?”
“When he was over here yesterday,” Vanessa said after a moment. “He was dropping off some of my stuff from Deegan’s.”
Sophia nodded. That made sense. Vanessa and Sebastian were friends, but they weren’t stop-over-anytime friends. But Vanessa and Deegan, the band’s lead singer, were still working through their breakup-slash-divorce, and Sebastian sometimes played go-between. To Sophia it sounded like being in eighth grade, passing messages between warring parties.
“It looked like you guys had a blast in Baja,” Vanessa said, as Sophia returned to fixing her cheek and finishing up her eyes.
“We did.” And they had.
Baja had been exactly what Sophia and Sebastian had needed—a dream of a vacation, four days, five nights lazing about the beach and pool, being pampered.
They had gotten a bungalow of their own. And since Sebastian had dropped Vanessa’s name, and the name of the band, they got upgraded to having their own concierge—aka, their own butler. It was a silly amount of indulgence that Sophia was not about to say no to.
“I don’t want you to worry about anything,” he’d told her. Well, he’d told her stomach. “Hear that, little person? There’s nothing here that’s going to stress out mommy at all.”
Yes, Sebastian was stomach-talking intense about the baby. But it wasn’t that surprising to Sophia—he was always intense. When Sebastian turned his bright-eyed focus on you, you felt like the only person in the world. It was beyond seductive.
The problem was when he wasn’t with you. Things tended to slip his mind, and other things—people, gigs—suddenly took priority.
But Sebastian knew this about himself, and he was trying to improve upon it. Hence Baja. Nothing but sun and each other to wrap themselves up in.
Sebastian had even told her to not pack anything—he would take care of it. And she was greeted by their butler, a glass of sparkling apple cider, and an entire wardrobe filled with bikinis and filmy wraps.
In fact, the only things he had insisted Sophia bring were the period costume from the wardrobe department, and the blood pressure machine he had presented her with at Christmas.
It was really too bad she spent most of their time together silently worrying about Maisey.
She’d told Sebastian about the Stanford rejection. She expected him to be appropriately livid. To feel the unjustness of the decision the same way that she did. Because she had been livid. After the initial heartbreak of watching her daughter shut herself away into her bedroom, Sophia spent the entire next day (once Maisey had left with her dad for Christmas having had a minimum number of sympathy pancakes that Sophia had woken up early enough to make) poring over the internet for clues about Stanford’s admissions guidelines and the average test scores, school transcripts, extracurricular activities of those admitted.
If anything, Maisey was OVERqualified, her mother-brain determined. Sure, it seemed like being on a robotics team and having won a Westinghouse science competition would have been ideal . . . but Maisey wrote beautifully! She had basically done AP English–level work as a sophomore! She gave back to her school via tutoring! Surely, Stanford had just mixed her daughter up with a different, lesser, Maisey Alvarez.
It took everything in her power to not call the school in an angry rage. First, because she didn’t want to be one of those helicopter parents who has controlled everything to the point the kid gets to college without knowing how to do laundry or make a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. And second, because it was the holidays and Stanford’s admissions office was closed, according to their voice mail.
But Sebastian hadn’t reacted with the same vehemence that Sophia had. Instead, he’d just shrugged one lazy, sun-bronzed shoulder and said, “Well, that’s how it goes, you know?”
“How it goes?” Sophia had repeated.
“I mean, she’s swimming in a bigger pool now. Same thing happened to the band when we tried to move from our hometown to the city. No one wanted us. We had to go to Europe to train. You know, like the Beatles.”
“What on earth do the Beatles have to do with my daughter not getting into her dream school?”
“Nothing,” Sebastian answered. “Just . . . I mean, I could have told you Stanford wasn’t for her. She’ll get over it. Figure out what level she’s supposed to be.”
“Level?”
“Not everyone is supposed to hit the Billboard charts, is all,” Sebastian said, and flipped over in his lounge chair. “Next time the butler comes around can you ask him for another Corona?”
But having known her daughter for seventeen years, Sophia wasn’t as able to let go of the problem quite that nonchalantly. And she spent the vast majority of the vacation worrying about it.
So much so, that the Fish-to-the-Face incident occurred mostly because of it.
Sebastian had always wanted to try deep-sea fishing. So, as his Christmas present, Sophia had chartered a boat, complete with an experienced fisherman to take him out. Sebastian’s face had lit up like a little boy getting his first bike.
“When do we leave?” he’d asked.
“We? Hon, this trip is just for you.”
She’d actually been looking forward to not going. Not that she didn’t want to be around Sebastian all the time, but she needed a couple hours on the phone. She wanted to confirm with Vanessa’s publicist the dates she’d be needed for awards shows. She wanted to get the schedule for the first week back on Fargone after break.
And she really, really wanted to call Maisey.
But Sebastian had looked at her with those puppy-dog eyes as if she was his entire world, and leaned into her in that way she couldn’t resist. She knew she was going to give in to him. And he knew it, too. It was just the way he was. And so, instead of spending the morning on the phone, she spent it on the high seas.
Bent over the railing, trying to not lose her breakfast.
It had nothing to do with morning sickness. The last time she had gotten on a boat, she’d been a chaperone on a whale-watching trip with Maisey’s Girl Scout troop.
Everyone saw whales except for Sophia. She saw her lunch mixed with Dramamine hit the water.
But Sebastian had been so happy, thus she sucked it up, and tried to be happy with him. But her mind kept going back to Maisey. How she must be feeling. What she was doing.
What she was telling her father.
Sophia knew that Maisey had told Alan about Sebastian, long ago. But did he know about the baby? It’s not as if she owed him any explanation—their lives were only intertwined because of Maisey now, and they’d rooted themselves in a solid script of co-parenting for several years. Heck, Alan had remarried and had toddlers running around! He couldn’t judge her on getting pregnant.
But she knew he would.
She knew that in some eyes, because of this baby, she would be seen as a lesser parent.
But surely her pregnancy wasn’t Maisey’s first concern right now. Surely, she’d told her dad about Stanford, and he cajoled her out of her stoic silence on the matter and got her ice cream and talked to her logically about next steps.
There was a silver lining. There had to be.
Because Maisey was a remarkable person, who no doubt would find what she needed to do and . . .
She’d find . . .
“Hey, babe?” she’d called out to Sebastian.
“Hold on, hon, I think I’ve got something on the line!”
“I wanted to ask you . . . we were talking about Maisey, and you said she’d find her level. What did you mean by that?”
“Huh? Just what I said, babe. Can you grab that net? I want to be ready.”
“You said some people aren’t meant to hit the Billboard charts.”
“Uh-huh . . .”
“You didn’t. Hit the Billboard charts, that is. Your first album flopped in the States.”
“Wow, harsh much?” The line tightened. “Oh shit! I’ve got one—it’s trying to escape!”
“If you’d stayed at that level, you wouldn’t have ever found success. But you went to Europe and got better, and got recognized for it. It took work. So . . . why should Maisey try and find a ‘level’ to settle for?”
“Um, I don’t know, hon,” Sebastian replied, now actively in a tug-of-war with what must have been a gargantuan fish, judging by the way his arms were straining. “I was just saying that she’s a smart kid, you know? But there are a lot of smart kids. But . . . she’ll be fine.”
“Right . . . right,” Sophia said, dubious as she thought over his answer.
“It’s coming! It’s coming!” Sebastian cried, winding up the reel. Their hired fisherman guide rushed over to help steady Sebastian. “Babe, the net! The net!”
But she had still been contemplating Maisey, and as such, the net in her hand was long forgotten. She snapped out of it just in time to rush over, and see Sebastian reel in a really big reddish fish, which they were to later learn was a mullet snapper. However, it wasn’t the fisherman who told them that, nor was it the chef who was waiting on shore to prepare their catch for lunch. Instead, it was Google, who also informed them that the mullet snapper was a strong, fighting fish. And fight it did.
With a slapped tail to the side of Sebastian’s face, the snapper managed to break the line, do two flops on the deck of the boat, and jump itself back into the sea.
So, instead of having a fish by which to tell the story, Sebastian ended up having a black eye.
Luckily, he had a sense of humor about it . . . eventually.
The period costume from wardrobe might have helped soothe his hurt feelings.
All in all, Sophia was glad to have had the vacation, but was equally glad to get back to her life, and get to work.
If only Vanessa would let her work.
“There,” she said, finally finishing up Vanessa’s eyes. Vanessa immediately grabbed the hand mirror again, and examined her reflection. Sophia held her breath.
“Great,” Vanessa said. “Perfect.”
“All right!” Sophia said, pulling up a stool. “Sorry, I just need to sit down a second.”
“Oh! Of course!” she said, her perfectly done eyes going wide. “I never thought—of course you should sit down. I know nothing about being pregnant. I don’t want to be the cause of your blood pressure going crazy.”
Sophia blinked twice. She’d never told Vanessa about the risk of preeclampsia. She didn’t necessarily want to tell anyone that didn’t need to know. Not only was it personal, at this point, it was entirely theoretical. And it would automatically make people treat her differently, as if she were a fragile flower, instead of a woman whose body was doing what it was meant to do.
Sebastian, obviously, did not have the same concerns.
But as Sophia settled onto the kitchen stool in front of Vanessa, she couldn’t help but be grateful that at least Vanessa understood. If the blood pressure machine taught them anything on the Baja trip, it was that afternoons saw a (slight) spike, so best to take a minute, get a glass of water, and breathe.
“Oh no! How are you going to be able to sit at the awards?” she worried. “It’s not like you have a seat at the table.”
“They have chairs in the greenroom,” Sophia replied. She assumed. She didn’t actually know. “But I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me. Now, all we need is the lips and you are going to destroy everyone tonight.”
“Hmm . . . I don’t know if ‘destroy’ is the right word.”
“Slay?” Sophia tried.
“Conquer!” Kip said, and Vanessa clapped her hands.
“Conquer! I like it. Oh, but not in that shade.”
Sophia looked down at the lip palette in her hand, full of bold reds. Earlier, she and Vanessa had picked out a shade that coordinated with the rest of her face but also contrasted beautifully with the peach of her dress. It made her face stand out, while the satiny nature of the gown made her look like a nearly naked sylph.
“You want a different red?” A slight difference in shade wouldn’t make too big a difference. “Maybe something with a bit more wine?”
“No—no red at all. Let’s go with . . . this!”
Vanessa had grabbed a tube of gloss. Not lipstick, not a paint—but a gloss with such a high frosted shimmer it might as well have been a trip on X from the late ’90s.
In fact, it might have been from that ’90s episode of Fargone they did.
“That’s . . . that’s a peach lip gloss,” was really all Sophia could say.
“Right—peach! It will go with the dress.”
“It will make the bottom half of your face merge with the rest of your body and disappear,” she said before she could stop herself. “We need a bold lip color for balance.”
“So, that just means my eyes will stand out more,” Vanessa said, and flipped the lip gloss to Sophia.
“Vanessa, I really think—”
Vanessa’s exuberance shuttered, her face going full ice queen in less than a second.
“You think I don’t know my own face?”
“Of course not,” Sophia said gently.
“I’m sorry.” Vanessa softened immediately, back to her sweetheart self. “This is too important to screw up, is all. But . . . you do what you think is best.”
Vanessa held out the tube of lip gloss to Sophia.
The room was completely silent. Kip watched everything closely. Even Marjorie had glanced up from her phone.
Vanessa had told her to do what was best. And what was best at the moment, was not putting on the right deep red shade of lipstick . . . but instead preventing a total Golden Globes pressure-cooked meltdown.
She took the tube of lip gloss, and sat down across from Vanessa in the chair.
As she applied the horrible, frosted peach abomination, she thought about how she could persuade and assuage Vanessa in the car on the way to the show. If she showed it to her in different light, perhaps—maybe she could argue it didn’t get enough sheen with the lack of sunlight on the rainy red carpet.
This was only temporary, she decided. There was no way she would let Vanessa hit the red carpet looking like an old-school Britney Spears. Surely she had enough time to—
“That’s Blake,” Marjorie said, as her phone dinged. “The car’s here.”
Almost simultaneously, there was a knock on the door.
“Hello, hello, hello!” a sharply suited man of about thirty said as Kip swung the door open for him. “There she is!” he said as soon as he spied Vanessa. “You look incredible. Amazing!”
“Blake,” Vanessa simpered, and slunk over to give him air kisses. “You always say I look amazing.”
“This is a special level of amazing. This is something as of yet unachieved.”
Vanessa transformed under the attention of the young but-not-too-young publicist, who scrutinized her appearance with the eye of a connoisseur. And a salesman.
“Are we ready to go?” he asked. “I have your ticket packet, of course. And everyone’s badges.” He held out lanyards for the three of them. Kip and Sophia took theirs and placed them around their necks. Marjorie glanced at hers, uttered a brief “cool,” and let it dangle from her fingers as she went back to texting.
“We are all set,” Vanessa said. “Just let me grab my bag . . . ugh, Swarovski crystals are so heavy . . . do you guys have everything?”
Sophia and Kip nodded. Sophia was just putting the last brush back in her kit when she heard Blake’s low hum of concern.
“Mmmm . . . what about your lips? Are we doing color?”
“ . . . color?” Vanessa said. “We went with peach, right, Sophia?”
Sophia looked from Vanessa to Blake. And somehow, barely managed an answer.
“Well . . . we talked about a red—”
“You should have gone with it. This peach—it’s not going to pop in pictures. And you need to pop.”
Vanessa glanced over at the mirror by the door, and gave herself a long hard look.
“Yes. You’re right. God, Sophia—I can’t believe you were going to let me out the door like this!”
“I . . .”
“Ugh, just fix it, okay?”
“Absolutely,” Sophia said, and hopped off the kitchen stool so fast, she got slightly dizzy as she stood.
It was only a moment. She didn’t even wobble. But it was enough that Kip took her arm to steady her.
“Sophia! Are you okay?” Vanessa cried out.
“I’m fine. Thank you, Kip. Just stood up too fast.”
“Have you been drinking?” Blake asked, sharp. According to Vanessa, Blake hadn’t wanted her to hire Sophia. He’d wanted her to use a makeup artist the PR firm had on retainer for awards season. But Vanessa refused, because of how close they were.
“No!” Sophia cried.
“She hasn’t been drinking—she’s pregnant, Blake,” Vanessa said, harsh. Then, she glanced at the clock. “Oh, we have to get in the car. Kip—can you do my lips on the way?”
“I can—” Sophia began, but was immediately cut off by a shake of the head.
“Sophia, I’m sorry—I should have realized this would be too stressful for you. You can’t even stand up without getting light-headed—I don’t want to worry about you passing out in the greenroom when I have so many other things going through my head. And with this lip color? I have to wonder if your eyesight is affected.”
Sophia’s jaw dropped open. It’s possible she made a series of sounds. But it was also possible that they in no way resembled words.
“So? Kip? Can you do my lips?”
Kip, shocked, looked from Vanessa to Sophia. “Uh . . . sure.”
“Then let’s go!” Vanessa put on her best starlet smile, and threw her shoulders back. Blake opened a wide umbrella, and threw open the door.
“Oh thank goodness!” Vanessa said. “It looks like the rain is clearing.”
And with that, she swept out the door, Blake and Marjorie in tow. Kip looked down at Sophia. Quietly, she handed him her kit with all the paints, powders, brushes, and emergency supplies Vanessa might need.
“Go,” she whispered.
He hesitated.
“It’s okay. Just go.”
And with that, Kip was out the door.
Leaving Sophia in the middle of Vanessa’s living room, wondering if she would ever be able to get an Uber in this close proximity to the Golden Globes.