Page 16 of For My Finale

B lossom took a deep breath before knocking on Lilah’s door. She had made a deal, after all, and she was nothing if not a woman of her word. Lilah had agreed to trial three jobs, and in return Blossom was going to clean Lilah’s cottage. Not that she was particularly looking forward to it.

The door swung open, and Lilah grinned at her, leaning against the frame like she didn’t have a care in the world. “Ah, my very own cleaning fairy. I was beginning to think that you’d forgotten.”

“Not a chance,” Blossom said brightly, stepping inside.

She looked around. She’d been expecting chaos, a house full of discarded clothes, unwashed dishes, that sort of thing.

Instead, Lilah’s cottage was… surprisingly tidy.

A little dusty in places, maybe, but nowhere near the disaster Blossom had been imagining.

Lilah clapped her hands together. “Right then. You can start with the kitchen. Those countertops are going to need scrubbing, and the sink needs polishing, too. The floor needs a good mopping. Then you can vacuum the rugs. When you get to the bathroom—”

“Hold on a second there,” Blossom interrupted, crossing her arms. “I agreed to clean your cottage, not to be bossed around like one of your personal staff.”

Lilah blinked. “I don’t have personal staff. ”

“Oh, please,” Blossom scoffed as she tied her apron on. “You’re a movie star. Of course you have staff.”

Lilah shrugged and followed Blossom into the kitchen. “I mean, technically, I had people managing things around me. But I never really had servants. I never lived like that.”

Blossom frowned as she pulled out a cloth to wipe down the counters. “Wait, are you actually saying that you weren’t raised in a Hollywood mansion with an army of butlers?”

“Not even close,” Lilah laughed.

“How did you grow up then?” Blossom asked, intrigued, as she started to wipe down the kitchen.

Lilah sat at the kitchen table, crossing her legs. “Pretty normal, I guess. Mom, dad, little house in the suburbs. I went to public school, just… normal. Then, when I was fourteen, I went to this audition with some of my friends, just for a laugh really. And, well, the rest is history.”

“And then?” prompted Blossom.

Lilah sighed. “Then it was a parade of auditions, endless work, people staring at me like I was a piece of meat and no more privacy. A lovely way to grow up, trust me.”

Blossom stopped cleaning for a moment. She looked at Lilah. “Were you ever happy?”

Lilah grinned. “Sure. I mean, the money was great, and it was fun quite a lot of the time. Especially when I was younger. But honestly, by the time I was nineteen, I wanted my life back. I wanted to quit, to go to university, maybe, to be normal again.”

“And?” Blossom asked, going back to cleaning.

“And no one would let me,” said Lilah simply.

“My agent, the producers, even my parents. Everyone told me that I was crazy, that I was throwing away an opportunity that millions of people would kill for. So I kept going, because they were right. Millions of people would have killed for my life, my career.” She let out a breath.

“Which is why it’s disingenuous of me to be telling you to have confidence in yourself, fight for what you want.

It took me years to get the confidence to quit. ”

Blossom didn’t know what to say to that.

She’d never really thought about it before, what it must have been like for Lilah.

It was easy to look at her and see confidence, fame, charm, even.

It was a lot harder to see someone who’d done something she didn’t want to do for years, someone who’d never had a private life.

Someone who was just now trying to figure out who she was without the life she’d grown up in.

“Are you happy now?” she asked.

Lilah tapped manicured fingernails on the tabletop. “I don’t know, honestly. That’s sort of the problem.” She sighed. “I left because I wanted to leave. But then I spent so long defining myself as an actress that now I don’t know how to define myself at all. I feel… lost, I suppose.”

There was vulnerability in Lilah’s voice, and it made Blossom’s heart clench.

Without thinking, she reached out, her fingers almost brushing against Lilah’s arm.

It would be so easy to comfort her, to offer reassurance, to…

to hug her. Blossom’s pulse started to race.

And she pulled her hand firmly back to her side.

Lilah didn’t seem to notice. She just sighed again, running her fingers through her long, red hair. “Anyway, enough about me. Shouldn’t you be cleaning something?”

“Unbelievable,” Blossom said, rolling her eyes and going back to wiping the counters down.

“Hey, I might be having an identity crisis, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t enjoy a little free labor,” Lilah grinned.

Blossom got back down to work, moving on to the kitchen sink. It was strange, she thought, to hear Lilah talk this way. And for the very first time, she wondered if perhaps Lilah might need someone like her. Might need her, even. That Lilah might even be lonely without her.

???

Lilah watched Blossom scrub down the sink, feeling not an ounce of guilt that she was doing nothing.

Actually, she felt something else, something…

comfortable perhaps. There was something oddly comforting about the domesticity of it all, Blossom with her sleeves rolled up and her hair in her face, diligently cleaning the kitchen as though she lived there.

There was such a lack of glamor to the moment that Lilah found herself appreciating it more than she expected.

“What was your childhood like?” she asked suddenly, simply wanting to hear Blossom’s voice.

Blossom didn’t pause in her work. “Totally normal,” she replied. “I grew up here, never left. Easy.”

“You never wanted to?”

“Nope,” Blossom said cheerfully.

Lilah frowned. The idea of staying in one place forever felt alien to her. She’d spent most of her life hopping between sets and hotels and rented houses by this point, never quite feeling like she belonged anywhere.

“It must be nice,” she said finally. “To have a home like that, to feel safe, to belong.”

Blossom did stop now. She turned to face Lilah, both eyebrows raised in disbelief. “Are you, Lilah Paxton, seriously jealous of me?”

“Obviously not,” Lilah said, crossing her arms and scowling.

Blossom studied her for a second before letting out a short laugh. “Right. That’s what I thought.” She turned back to the sink. “My life must seem so boring to you.”

“Right,” Lilah agreed, deciding it was time to find other entertainment. She stood up and made it halfway to the door before she had a change of heart.

Something gnawed at her. The lie gnawed at her. She stopped and turned back.

“Actually, your life sounds nice. Safe. Comfortable. You know who you are and what you want.” She looked down at the floor. “I guess I am a little jealous, actually.”

Blossom stopped working again, but Lilah didn’t look up at her. She felt too vulnerable. Why the hell was she telling Blossom all this? Why was being honest with her so important? She wasn’t even this candid with herself most days.

“Not everyone’s life is perfect all the time, Lilah,” Blossom said softly. “Even I know that, as optimistic as I can be. You should definitely know that. Life isn’t a movie.”

Lilah did look up now and tilted her head. “Really? You live like you’re in a movie, all sunshine and rainbows.”

“Everyone wants for something,” Blossom said.

Lilah took a step closer, watching Blossom very carefully. “So…” she said slowly. “What is it that you want, exactly?”

There was an agonizingly long moment when Blossom just looked at her.

When the air was charged with something that neither of them was ready to name.

Lilah felt anticipation coil in her belly, half-expecting Blossom to say something, to step over an invisible line.

Willing her to do it, willing her to say what Lilah was almost sure she wanted to say.

But then Blossom turned away, breaking the spell. “I want to keep my cafe.”

Lilah let out a solid, long breath. “That’s it?”

“That’s everything,” said Blossom, scrubbing the sink far harder than it deserved.

Lilah hesitated for a second, then shrugged. “I could give you the money. I’ve got more of the stuff than I know what to do with.”

Blossom’s back went rigid. “I’m not here for your money, Lilah.”

“I never said you were,” said Lilah, though now that she was saying it, she knew that she’d perhaps harbored a suspicion. After all, everyone else always wanted something from her. “I just meant… I could help you.”

“I don’t need your help.”

Lilah felt her frustration rising. “You literally just said—”

“I said I wanted to keep my cafe. My cafe. Not that I wanted you to buy it from me,” Blossom snapped, throwing her cloth down into the sink.

“Jesus.” Lilah held up her hands in mock surrender. “Alright, fine. I was just trying to help. ”

“Well… don’t.” Blossom’s voice was sharp and Lilah could feel just how deeply she’d miscalculated the situation. Blossom wasn’t impressed by her fame, wasn’t interested in handouts or easy solutions.

In fact, Blossom might be the very opposite. Blossom might currently be wishing that Lilah was just an ordinary person.

And Blossom was… leaving.

Lilah watched as Blossom grabbed her bag and stalked toward the back door, her shoulders tense, her movements stiff.

“Blossom, wait—”

“No,” Blossom said. “Just… just forget it.”

Then she was gone, the door clicking shut behind her.

Lilah exhaled heavily, putting her head in her hands. She’d gotten things terribly wrong.

She’d just assumed that Blossom would be like anyone else, drawn in by the glitz and the glamor, willing to take whatever she could get from the famous actress.

But Blossom wasn’t like that, and Lilah should have known.

She should have known from the start, when everyone was demanding to know why she’d quit her career, and Blossom hadn’t shown even a modicum of interest.

And she was upset, upset that she’d got things wrong, upset that Blossom had stalked out. But a little piece of her was also sort of… ecstatic. Because maybe, just maybe, Blossom liked her for who she really was.