Page 39 of Marisol Acts the Part

My acting skills save me from having to tell Dad and Jerome the truth.

When I blame my general unease on period cramps, they immediately clam up and leave me be, returning with a hot-water bottle, dark chocolate, and an offer to bring dinner to my room.

Jamila shouldn’t be home for another hour, so I’m killing time watching mindless YouTube videos.

I’m considering grabbing a serving of the Impossible Meat ropa vieja Abuela dropped off for us yesterday—she’s convinced I’ve been eating rabbit food whenever she’s not around to feed me herself—when Dad reappears in my doorway.

“Hey, munchkin,” he singsongs after knocking on the cracked-open door, unusually chipper for someone who grounded me not that long ago. “You doing okay?”

I set aside my computer to peer up at him from my cocoon of blankets, where Bruiser’s fast asleep on my lap. “I’ll survive,” I reply, poking out a hand from under the sheets to scratch the top of her head.

“Great, great,” Dad mumbles, staring down at his shoes. “So, you have a visitor, actually.”

Immediately, I perk up. I don’t think it’s Jamila because she was scheduled to be shooting until at least eight tonight, and it’s barely past seven. Kevin, like me, is still grounded and forbidden to leave his apartment past five. Even to visit his favorite cousin.

“It’s, uh…Miles,” Dad says cautiously, interrupting my brainstorm.

Oh. Well, can’t say I saw that coming.

“I can tell him you’re not up to seeing anyone if you want,” he continues, almost too eagerly. Like he’s dying to kick Miles to the curb. “We’ll let him down easy.”

“N-no, it’s fine. He can come in.”

Dad frowns, his brows knitting together. “You’re sure?” Over his shoulder, I spot Jerome peering out from their bedroom, mouthing “We can make him leave” to me.

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

Dad doesn’t seem convinced but doesn’t argue either way.

With a sigh, he heads back toward the door, and I do my best to make myself look presentable.

There’s not much that can be done about the Cheeto dust on my fingers and staining my comforter cocoon, but Bruiser does a very helpful job of licking up most of it once I accidentally jostle her awake.

I wipe my fingers on a napkin, toss my hair into a messy bun, readjust my Avalon Grove hoodie, and shove my laptop beneath a pillow before Miles can see that I was considering renting The Prince Who Saved Christmas.

Seeing him in the doorway to my cramped bedroom is startling. His designer short-sleeve sweater and three-hundred-dollar sneakers are a stark contrast to the chipped paint on the walls and bite marks in the door from Bruiser throwing a fit last week.

“Hey,” he says, giving me a wave with his free hand—a cardboard box in the other—but remaining outside of the room. “Mind if I come in?”

“If you can find space.” I scoop Bruiser up, clearing enough room for Miles to cram himself onto the edge of the bed. He looks like he’s been shoved into a clown car, his shoulders up to his ears and all six feet of his legs pressed up to his chest like he’s trying to curl into a fetal position.

“You never texted, so I brought you these…in case your day got worse,” he says before I can ask him why he’s here. He sets the box down between us.

Bruiser leaps into action, eagerly sniffing the box with intrigue as I examine the logo printed along the lid.

“You went to Doughnut Plant?”

I don’t bother waiting for an explanation before throwing the box open, unveiling six of the most beautiful doughnuts I’ve ever seen.

Ages ago, I spent my (unemployed) nights researching places Miles and I would go to when I came to visit him in the city.

Museums and coffee shops and jazz clubs and a dozen different restaurants and bakeries.

Doughnut Plant was at the top of the list.

“You mentioned you hadn’t tried them yet,” he says with a shy smile, shoving his hands into his pockets.

Warmth rushes through me. I’m touched that he remembers something I said in passing to Esther during lunch last week.

In the dim light of the sunset, I see the boy I fell in love with.

The one who drove through peak LA traffic to bring me to the beach.

Who learned the lyrics to every single Olivia Rodrigo song so we could belt them together on the drive home.

Who grew up with me, who taught me what it means to love and be loved.

Hard as I might try to deny it, that boy hasn’t gone anywhere. Changed—matured in ways that floor me—but the same, deep down.

“Thank you,” I whisper, not trusting my voice not to crack before helping myself to a black-and-white doughnut, moaning around my first bite.

“As good as you thought?” he asks with a chuckle.

“Better.” Instead of wolfing down the rest in two more bites, I split the doughnut in half, handing the unbitten side to him.

While Bruiser attempts to nab a piece from me, silence settles between the two of us. The question of why he’s here—and with doughnuts, no less—hanging in the air.

“I’m sorry about today,” he says finally, after I’ve finished my first doughnut and started on a second.

My hand stalls, a PB&J doughnut midway to my lips. “For what?”

“For not standing up for you.”

“But you did?”

“I could’ve fought harder, though,” he insists, frowning. “We filled out that form ages ago, and we didn’t know what it was for. He can’t hold you to that.”

Slowly, I lower my doughnut, but make sure to keep it out of Bruiser’s greedy, wet reach. “It could’ve been worse.”

It’s a half-hearted lie and we both know it. My time on The Limit hasn’t been easy, but today was by far the worst. I’ll gladly never wear pink for the rest of my life if it means I don’t have to be locked in that box again.

Well…maybe give up pink for a year.

Miles shifts closer to me, the mattress groaning and sagging beneath his weight.

Bruiser quickly abandons her doughnut endeavors to crawl into his lap, pawing at his hoodie until he cradles her like a newborn baby, the way he always did whenever he came to visit.

She closes her eyes, nuzzling happily into his hand when he scratches beneath her chin.

Seeing her so happy and comfortable shouldn’t make tears prickle the corners of my eyes, but it does.

Realizing that I’m not the only one who has missed having Miles in my life.

“You can leave the show, you know,” Miles says after Bruiser has had her fill of pets and has fallen back asleep in his arms. “Rune has been a dick to you, and you don’t deserve to be treated like that.”

“I can’t leave,” I protest, pulling my knees up to my chest and hugging my arms around them. “He’ll blacklist me. I’ll never get another role like this again.”

“He can’t do that. Sure, he has clout, but he doesn’t own Hollywood,” he says with a roll of his eyes, though I highly doubt that’s true.

We both know from experience that everyone knows everyone.

For an industry that claims to always be welcoming in new talent, it’s small as hell.

And in a world this small, Rune has plenty of power behind him.

“And I thought you weren’t interested in these types of shows anyway? ”

“Well, I wasn’t,” I mutter bitterly, considering biting my tongue before I say anything I’ll regret. “Until someone called me unserious to Stars Weekly. ”

Whoops.

Actually, no. It feels good to finally call Miles out.

Air it out in private instead of over text or in hushed whispers on set.

Months have gone by, and I can’t shake off the hurt of him going behind my back and telling the media about our breakup before I even had time to process it.

Like he was orchestrating one of the lowest moments of my life behind the scenes for weeks.

“Shit…” he mutters, running a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry, Mari. I didn’t mean it like that, I swear.”

I don’t say anything because I’m not sure if I believe him. As I replay that night in my mind yet again, it’s impossible to figure out how he didn’t mean it that way.

“My reps wrote up that statement for me, and I didn’t know how else to say that we broke up, so I went with what they suggested,” he says, and the softness of his voice convinces me that he probably is telling the truth.

It’s impossible to reconcile the boy who was my first love with the boy who crushed me in a matter of minutes, but I’m starting to understand now.

Maybe the boy I loved was buried under that awful breakup speech after all, following orders instead of speaking from his heart.

“So your reps told you to break up with me?”

The thought feels like a gut punch. First Jamila, and now possibly Miles—the industry that’s given me everything I’ve ever wanted, determined to get in the way of me falling for the people who make me feel light as air and warm as sunshine.

Does Hollywood have a vendetta against me? Is it because I said matcha is overrated?

“No!” he replies a bit too quickly, as if he was eagerly waiting to break up with me instead of getting nudged into it by his team. “I mean…we both saw it coming, didn’t we?”

My gaze drops to my kneecaps, vision blurring for what feels like the hundredth time today. “No.” I pause. “Did you tell anyone you were thinking about breaking up with me? An insider for that article said we’d been on the rocks for months.”

Miles sighs, taking his time responding.

“Maybe one of the guys from the show? I…I thought we were going in different directions. Me coming here. You staying back in LA. Without Avalon Grove, we barely saw each other, and I figured it’d be easier to do a clean break while we were on good terms before we attempted long distance and things got worse. ”

“What if they didn’t get worse, though?” I ask, voice hoarse.