Winning Hollywood's Goodest Girl

There’s no time to waste. I’ve got a flight to catch.

Harrison

There’s a war inside my heart, and sadly, I’m weaponless against it.

A loud, pounding knock hits the wood of my apartment door, and I choose to ignore it.

I don’t care who is on the other side of that door. They can just fuck right off.

I’ve been back in my New York apartment since insanely early this morning and I’ll be honest, what used to feel like home feels like a foreign country where I don’t speak the language.

How in the hell did everything get so screwed up?

When I first got here, I felt guilty for leaving LA, even though she told me to, even though she refused to see me or talk to me. I didn’t want to leave. Hell, I don’t even know if leaving was the right thing. She’s so close to her due date, and what if she needs me or what if something happens or what if, what if, what if….

I can name an infinite number of reasons why I wanted to stay, why it feels wrong that I didn’t stay, but there’s only one reason I have left—she didn’t give me any other choice.

Mostly, though, when I arrived in New York, I felt unsettled and heartbroken about not even getting to have the goodbye conversation I deserved. I even broke down and tried calling Rocky again. It rang and rang, but ultimately, she never picked up. So, I texted.

Me: Please, Rocky. I just want to talk. Say the word, and I’ll hop on a plane back to California.

Me: Fuck, I hate this. We should be together, baby. Not apart. This feels wrong in every possible way. Please…just talk to me.

No answer.

My next step was to take out the one bottle of whiskey I keep in my apartment and drink enough to make me numb enough to pass out. I know I never would have slept without it, and I just wanted a few hours to stop feeling this agony. It may have seemed logical at the time, but drinking like a fucking alcoholic after going months without having anything was a piss-poor idea at best.

My throbbing heart now has a compadre to keep it company—my head.

Long story short, company is not at the top of my list to receive a warm welcome.

The pounding on the door gets harder though the longer I ignore it, and stopping the spiky shards of spear-like agony that shoot through my brain with each thump is most definitely of the highest priority.

As such, I have no choice but to compromise by opening the door and then mitigate the consequences by bolstering it with a swift second action—telling whoever it is to fuck right off.

I stride to the offending sound, turn the lock, and grab the knob to rip it open to reveal my new nemesis.

The irony hits when I see who it is. Joke’s on me. There’s nothing really new about this nemesis at all.

I sigh. “What are you doing here?”

Cap shrugs, shoving me out of the way with a hand to my chest and stepping inside without invitation. “Checking on the biggest schmuck in the Western world. Tell me, what’s it like to find out the truth that the rest of us knew all along?”

“What’s that?”

“That Raquel Weaver is too good for you.”

I cringe and walk away from the open door. “Gee, it’s so sweet of you to come by to try to cheer me up.”

“Aw, dude, come on. You know I’m just kidding.”

I turn toward him slowly, crossing my arms over my chest. “You’ll excuse me for not laughing, but as of yesterday, we’re no longer together. So, yeah, the wound’s a little fucking fresh.”

“I know,” he says, completely unfazed. As if he somehow already knows that Rocky and I broke up. Jesus Christ, has it already reached the fucking media? But before I can even entertain that thought process, he adds, “That’s why we came over.”

“We?” I ask, just as the sound of my apartment door closing behind me startles me into turning around. All I can do is blink.

Literally every single one of my closest friends—Kline, Georgia, Thatch, Cassie, Wes, Winnie, Trent, Greer, Quince, Emory, Milo, Maybe, Ruby, Theo, and Lena—are standing in a big group, just inside my door. They all wave at once, as if choreographed.

“What the hell?”

Finally, it hits me that Cap led with an insult as a way to distract me so that the rest of our ridiculous friends and their wives could slip through the open door.

“We’re here, dude. And we’re not leaving until we’ve completely broken you of things like crying and moping,” Thatch says.

“And to make sure you keep up with your hygiene,” Greer adds with a wrinkle of her nose.

“Guys, I’m fine,” I say, knowing full well I don’t mean it. “And how in the hell do you know—?”