A week after I’d groomed Magnus, Shelby was hanging out with Allan, which meant that I had all the time in the world to watch Noah Douglas movies. It was strange watching them now, knowing that I’d had conversations with him and he wasn’t just this actor performing on my screen, but a real, interesting, and all-too-attractive person.
I woke up and decided to have belgian chocolate ice cream for breakfast. Why not? Nobody cared when you had yogurt for breakfast, and it was basically the same thing. I was halfway through the first Duel of the Fae movie when my phone rang. I glanced at the screen. It was Shelby.
Before I could even say hi, she cut me off with, “Don’t say no.”
I paused the movie. I’d heard that tone in her voice before. She was about to beg me for a big favor, and she knew I wouldn’t like it. “Why would I say no when you haven’t even asked me yet?”
“Just promise you won’t say no.”
“Fine. I won’t say no.”
“Perfect. I need you to be a seat filler at the Academy Awards tonight.”
“No,” I responded. What if I did that and I ran into Noah? What if he thought I’d changed my mind? That I was sending him mixed signals? I mean, it would be a fair accusation, given that all I felt were extremely conflicting signals all the time where he was concerned, but I wanted to put that little footnote of my life down at the bottom of the page where it belonged and move on.
“But you were so good at it!” she protested.
“It’s not really a skill.”
She tried again. “You just promised you would!”
“I can’t be held to any promise where you tricked me into agreeing first.”
“Juliet, I need you.”
I closed my eyes. She knew I couldn’t resist when she said that. “But I have plans.”
“Sitting on our couch eating ice cream is not a plan.”
How did she know I was eating ice cream? “But I already threw away the lid. I feel committed to finishing.”
I could almost hear her rolling her eyes over the phone. “Not an excuse.”
“Okay. I don’t have anything to wear.” That ought to work.
“I rented your dress yesterday.”
“What?” I stood up. “You knew this yesterday but you waited until right now to ask me?”
“Because I know you left things weird with Noah and I didn’t want you to talk yourself out of it. Harmony called me yesterday and said she’d been so pleased with how well we did a couple of weeks ago that she wanted us to work as seat fillers again.”
“As I’ve already mentioned, you do not have to do anything to try and please this unpleasable woman.” Shelby’s mother had died about a year before Shelby got cancer, and her dad had never been in the picture. Sometimes it felt like Shelby was hoping Harmony would become a replacement parent, and I wished she could see that it wouldn’t happen.
Shelby sighed. “I get that, but I feel like she’s making an effort in asking us to come back. If she’s extending an olive branch, I have to take it. Please?”
It sounded less like an olive branch and more like a way to find a regular source of unpaid labor, but I wasn’t going to rain on Shelby’s parade like that. I put the ice cream in the freezer, although it was basically toast without a lid. It would get those gross ice crystals all over it. The things I did for my best friend. “Okay. Where’s the dress?”
“Yay! It’s in your closet. I put it in there last night while you were sleeping.”
I went into my room and found the dress hanging there, just like she’d said. “You snuck this in here like some kind of awards season Santa?” I pulled it out, and it was another plain black formal gown in my size, and it was actually long enough. That was always pleasantly surprising whenever it happened. It was a simple one-arm dress that fell into a straight sheath. I wouldn’t be able to climb over anybody’s legs in this dress. I grabbed my Converse shoes. When it came to the rest of me, fortunately I had a best friend who loved dressing up, so I’d been taught how to manage hair and makeup well enough on my own.
“Yes, I’m your Academy Awards fairy godmother, and I’d do it again. Okay, I arranged for an Uber to come pick you up in half an hour and bring you here.” She told me my name was on the list and then ran over how to get through the different levels of security. She reminded me to bring my driver’s license.
“I’ll see you soon,” I told her. Then I spent the next half hour rushing around the apartment like a crazy woman, trying to get ready. I didn’t let myself think about Noah.
Okay, that was a lie. I thought about him constantly. He was going to be there. He’d been nominated for Best Actor for The Last Goodbye. I thought he deserved to win, but Chase Covington had played an alcoholic drinking himself to death and for some reason professional people in Hollywood thought his performance was better and had been giving him all the awards. I didn’t get it.
The car arrived and dropped me off at the first stage of security, where they went through my clutch. When they opened it, I realized that I’d forgotten to pack any snacks. This was very disheartening, since I knew I had hours and hours of waiting around in front of me.
I made it through the labyrinth of security guards and three other checkpoints before finally making my way into the Dolby Theatre. A guard directed me down a long hallway that he told me led backstage. There were even more guards standing along the wall who would stop me to verify that I was supposed to be there and kept pointing me down the same hallway.
The level of security was ridiculous—it was like a military operation. Like the president of the United States was going to appear.
Shelby was waiting for me backstage. She waved when she saw me, her whole face lighting up. She patted the empty folding chair next to her. Harmony had set up a quick meeting with her seat fillers to run over the rules for that evening. She passed around two clipboards together and told us there were two separate forms to sign. The first were the liability/publicity release forms that let them put us on camera. The second was a serious-looking nondisclosure agreement that said I wouldn’t talk about being a seat filler at this particular show. Well, given that my mom would only be vaguely interested and my best friend was sitting beside me, I figured it was fine to sign, as I had no one else to tell. Especially since Allan signed his without hesitation. The meeting of hers dragged on for what felt like an eternity since so many people were actually reading the releases, so I ended up watching the monitors behind her instead.
They showed the red carpet, and I saw various entertainment reporters and television hosts arriving and joining their crews. Some of them seemed famous enough that they were taking pictures with the fans who were sitting in raised bleachers along the red carpet. The whole area buzzed with excitement and anticipation.
Then the celebrities started to arrive, and you could tell every time one of them got out of their SUV or limo, as a muffled roar went up from the fans. We could hear it all the way backstage.
Although I wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone else, I was watching for Noah. Celebrities came in two by two, but no Noah. A jealous twinge went through me at the idea that he was going to bring a date. I wondered if it would be the same woman as last time. The one he claimed he wasn’t dating.