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“God, this is stupid.”
“It was your idea.”
“So? Nobody’s perfect, Flynnigan. Even I’m allowed to have a stupid idea every once in a while.”
It’s far from Carrie’s best comeback, but give her a break, it’s been a weird couple of weeks. After Julie played the Orpheum, Carrie started to feel like everything she thought she knew was actually a lie. She felt twisted, topsy-turvy, like the very world she lived in had been tilted on its axis. Suddenly, being a famously successful musician didn’t seem to matter so much anymore. Working herself and her group to the bone to someday escape her dad’s shadow didn’t seem to matter anymore.
Keeping up a years-long feud with Julie and Flynn that she didn’t even remember the origins of definitely didn’t seem to matter anymore.
And then, well. People at school—people Carrie thought were her friends—started being total jerks to her, just because Julie and the Phantoms was quickly becoming more successful than Dirty Candi, and because Carrie’s dad had some kind of nervous breakdown in the middle of a Panic at the Disco concert (he’s fine now, she thinks, but it made all the tabloids), and because Nick broke up with her and wouldn’t even look at her now and everybody knew that they weren’t going to get back together this time.
And you know what? Yeah, maybe Carrie deserved some of that, cause she’s for sure been a jerk to all those people first. But that didn’t stop her from getting angry and snapping back at all the people making fun of her for getting dumped by Nick Danforth-Evans of all people . And it didn’t stop her from acting on instinct, desperate as always for the right kind of attention, and announcing to the entire cafeteria that actually she broke up with Nick and anyway, she’s dating someone else now.
And then news traveled fast and Carrie dug herself into a pit of generic details and gender-neutral pronouns, and now she’s standing outside her house, about to attend a standard PR meeting with her dad and his lawyers (the same meeting she brought Nick to a year ago, and six months ago, and two and a half months ago—basically every time they broke up and got back together again).
It’s the Wilson Family Significant Other NDA Signing Meeting. And she’s going to one with Flynn.
“Did you want to, uh… go over the plan or whatever?” Flynn asks from their spot on the exact opposite end of Carrie’s front porch. She looks as confident as ever, if a little hesitant to look Carrie in the eye.
Carrie shoots her a patented glare, tries to ignore the floaty feeling in her stomach that might be guilt for getting someone else wrapped up in her bullshit and might be something else entirely that Carrie would really prefer not to think too hard about right now. “The plan,” she snaps, “is we go in there, you act like you’re in love with me, you sign a couple documents, you let me do all of the talking, and then you get your fifty bucks. Capiche?”
“Fifty bucks and you leave Julie and her band alone,” Flynn corrects, glaring right back.
Carrie rolls her eyes. “Yes, okay? I’ll leave Julie and her precious holograms to run themselves into obscurity. They hardly need my help. Now, can we just get this over with, please?”
As soon as the words are out, she flinches. The please was too much, it was too earnest, too sincere, Flynn is gonna figure her out, they’re gonna know she didn’t just do this to escape mild high school humiliation—
But Flynn just scowls, waves a hand toward the front door as if to say, go ahead, and Carrie breathes what she hopes to be an imperceptible sigh of relief.
But then, “Wait,” Flynn says just as Carrie’s reaching for the doorknob.
“Ugh, what?”
Flynn leans against the wall next to the door, arms crossed over her chest, giving Carrie a frankly infuriating smirk. “Before we go in there… I never got to ask. Why me?”
“What?” she says again, hoping her makeup covers the blush she can feel coloring her cheeks.
“Why me?” Flynn repeats. “You wanted to make up an SO to get people off your back about Nick, sure. But you could’ve said anyone. Heck, you could’ve told your dad it was fake and avoided all this lawyer shit. Why waste fifty bucks and an hour of your time pretending to date me?”
Carrie is a born and bred Performer. Carrie is Trevor Wilson’s daughter. Carrie knows better than anyone—probably better than is good for her—how to straighten her spine, paste on a bubbly smile, and sound as convincing as physically possible as she lies, “Well, I couldn’t pick someone I actually liked, or they might fall in love with me.”
Flynn’s confident expression flickers, causing a sickening feeling of reluctant triumph to burn in Carrie’s chest.
“Plus,” she adds, tossing her hair over her shoulder, “it had to be someone at school or people would think I’d made it all up, but I was purposefully vague about the details of my new significant other, including gender identity, and, well… you’re the only person I know who uses they/them pronouns.”
Flynn blinks, startled. “You—I—didn’t realize you… knew that.”
“Of course I knew.” Carrie tries not to be offended. “God, Flynn, I’m not a total heartless bitch. We were friends once.”
“Yeah, but I came out after we stopped being friends.”
“And then you put your new pronouns in all your social media bios. What, did you think I unfollowed you or something?”
Flynn’s frowning at her, their shoulders tense, looking confused and more upset than Carrie thinks the situation warrants. “Honestly, Carrie? I kinda assumed you’d blocked me.”
Carrie sucks in a breath, forces herself to let her guard down just enough to rid her voice of any insincerity or antagonism as she says, “No, of course not. It’s not like it was your fault I was fighting with Julie. It was only right that you took her side.”
She tries not to sound too bitter about it. She’s over all that—mostly, anyway. The look Flynn’s giving her is a little too pitying for Carrie’s liking. She sniffs haughtily and turns away from their scrutinizing gaze. “As for my dad, he’s been going through something lately, and he seemed really happy to see me bouncing back so fast after Nick. So I figured I’d humor him or whatever.”
Flynn’s hand slips into hers, and when Carrie looks at her in surprise, their face is softer than Carrie’s seen it in years. “All right then, Carebear. Let’s do this thing.”