Page 39 of For My Finale
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 reallythought 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 feltsomething 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.”
