Page 124 of The Hollywood Switch-up

Annie Banana:

Please call me

Annie Banana:

Eri, where are you

Annie Banana:

I’m flying down, I’m coming to get you

Annie Banana:

Just tell me you’re okay

Annie. Who’d warned her. She’d been so sure.

Erika typed: I’m okay

Stared at the cursor. Two words. The smallest possible lie. And she couldn’t send it because Annie was somewhere over the Atlantic racing toward her and Annie had never lied to Erika, not once, not even when the truth was ugly, and Erika couldn’t even do that much—couldn’t manage two words on a screen for the one person who deserved them.

She deleted the message and turned the phone off and pressed it facedown on the nightstand.

A knock at the door. Not Stefan’s—she knew it in her body before her brain caught up, something in the rhythm, two quick taps and a pause. Lily.

She crossed the dark villa and cracked the door open.

Lily stood on the porch, a bottle of tequila in one hand and two shot glasses in the other. She looked like she hadn’t slept either—eyes swollen, hair pulled back in a knot that had given up hours ago.

“Chica.” She held up the tequila. “I come bearing medicine.”

Erika stepped back and let her in and closed the door and they stood in the dark kitchen and Lily poured two shots by moonlight through the curtains and pressed one into Erika’s hand without asking if she wanted it.

“To men who don’t deserve us,” Lily said.

“To terrible taste in men.”

They drank. The tequila burned and for one second—one—she felt something other than numb.

Lily poured another round. Then she set the bottle down and her voice dropped.

“I need to tell you something. About Stefan. About what he’s been trying to do for you⁠—”

“Don’t.”

“Erika—”

“Whatever hero story he’s spinning, I don’t want to hear it.”

“It’s not a story.” Lily’s hands were flat on the counter and Erika could see them shaking, and not from the tequila. “He’s been trying to protect you. Him and Isabelle. For weeks. He didn’t tell you because he was afraid you’d run and he’d lose the only chance he had to keep you safe.”

“He had six weeks to tell me the truth.” She kept her voice flat. “He didn’t. He gave me a few cryptic looks and half-finished sentences and let me believe he was on my side while he was actually in a room with Isabelle and you, deciding my future for me. He told everyone except the person it actually mattered to.”

“You’re wrong about him, chica.” Lily said it quietly. Like she was placing something fragile on a table and watching it not be picked up.

“Stefan is exactly who Annie said he was.” She said it and heard how much it sounded like a prayer—something she was repeating because stopping meant thinking and thinking meant maybe Annie was wrong and maybe Stefan was telling the truth and maybe she’d just destroyed the only person who—and she could not carry that right now. She could not. “His career will always come first. That’s how they’re built.”

Lily’s eyes were wet. Erika watched her press her lips together and swallow whatever she’d been about to say, and the silence between them was the loudest thing in the room.