Chapter Text
“Hazel fucking Callahan, if this is true, you are dead!”
A death threat isn’t Hazel’s preferred alarm clock, but it definitely wakes her the fuck up. She jolts upright in bed, leftover Fight Club Instincts kicking in, only for it to be her publicist, Marjorie, who storms in through her bedroom door.
Marjorie throws a stack of tabloids on her lap. For a second, Hazel panics, thinking someone leaked her nudes or something. And then she remembers that she has literally never taken nudes, and she panics again. Because if not a sex scandal, she has no idea what this could possibly be about. Her eyes finally focus, bleary with sleep, and she looks down at the first magazine on the pile.
“Oh, fuck.”
There, on the cover of Clandestine Magazine, is a blurry, decade-old picture of her, blood-spattered and vaguely manic as she fucking brains a Huntington football player with his own helmet.
HAZEL CALLAHAN: STARLET WITH A VIOLENT STREAK?
“Tell me this is a fucking AI-generated image, or so help me God-”
“-Okay, it was self-defense,” she placates, rifling through the tabloids and finding shot after shot of her and the girls just straight-up murdering people. “And the records are sealed!”
“Oh, great,” she says. “Yeah, I’m sure if we go on the record and tell people that you and your high school friends actually, literally fucking murdered people, they’ll be totally cool as long as it was self-defense.”
“Exactly-”
Marjorie smacks her on the side of the head. “Sarcasm, Hazel! You have a movie coming out in a few months. There’s no shot in hell this is going to be cleared up by then. I’m good, not magic. Your career is- you are completely and utterly fucked.”
Tears sting in her eyes as she realizes that this is actually, honestly the end of her career. This is, as far as the general public is concerned, an unforgivable offense. She buries her face in her hands and allows herself the luxury of crying.
At the beginning of her career, when she was fresh out of high school and fell head-first into Hollywood in an effort to please her mom, she spent all her time waiting for the other shoe to drop. She’d wake up every morning and check Twitter, absolutely convinced that someone was going to narrow in on some kind of mistake from her past and the floor would fall out from under her. For whatever reason, it never occurred to her that it would be Huntington that took her down. It was only about a year ago that she stopped looking over her shoulder.
As it turns out, she should have kept looking.
When she looks up from her miniature breakdown. Marjorie is staring at her expectantly. “You done?”
Hazel nods. “Yeah.”
“Great. Let’s talk strategy.”
Her jaw drops and she looks at Marjorie like she’s crazy. “Strategy? I don’t know if you’re in denial, or something, but I physically murdered people. Me and my friends actually massacred a whole football team. And we had our reasons and shit, but those guys are dead. Rest in peace, bless their souls, gone but never forgotten, fucking… we’ll see ‘em on the other side, I guess. But I don’t think we’re going to strategize our way out of this one, Marjorie.”
“Yeah, well, it’s my whole job to try,” she says. “First things first: those other girls in the photos. Do you still talk to any of them?”
Hazel’s still-waking-up brain spins at the sudden change of topics. “Um, yeah,” she says. “All of them. Mostly PJ, Josie, and Isabel, though. They’re all in LA, so it’s… uh, easier. The four of us have a sleepover every once in a while to make sure we see each other.”
“You’re 28 years old and having sleepovers?”
Hazel shrugs. “Yeah?”
“Strange. Alright, well, I don’t think we should make a statement here, because there’s nothing to say that the public doesn’t already know.”
“So…?”
Marjorie pinches the bridge of her nose. “I guess just… Keep doing what you’re doing. We’ll reassess in a few days.”
Hazel is considering murder. (Too soon?) “You broke into my house to tell me not to do anything?”
“First of all, I have a key. And no, dumbass, I’m here to tell you I’m pissed at you. If you had told me about this, we could have gotten ahead of the story.”
“Yeah, it’s not exactly a super fun thing to talk about,” she says bitterly.
Marjorie narrows her eyes, patting Hazel on the head. “It’s not my job to make your life easy.”
—
By the time PJ walks in (unannounced and without knocking, but it’s nothing new), Hazel is out of bed and dressed. She’s leaning on the kitchen island, one hand eating ice cream as the other scrolls mindlessly through headlines about how much of a murderous, manipulative cunt she is, when the front door opens and in marches PJ, wearing her backpack (she’s too stubborn to buy a tote bag like a normal lesbian) and brandishing a bottle of champagne and a grin.
“A toast!” she cries, kicking the front door shut behind her and setting the champagne on the kitchen island. “To the downfall of Hazel Callahan!”
Hazel rolls her eyes and stabs her spoon into the ice cream, grabbing two wine glasses (because who the fuck just owns champagne flutes?) out of the cabinet. “Yeah, okay, asshole.”
PJ pops open the bottle and pours far too much into each of their glasses. “Seriously though, isn’t this fucked up?”
Hazel groans, downing half her champagne in one fell swoop. “You have no idea. The studio’s thinking about pulling Losing Battle entirely.”
“Motherfucker, really?”
“Yeah, PJ, when the lead of a movie gets exposed for manslaughter, the movie typically doesn’t do so hot. They think just cutting their losses would be better than being publicly associated with Hazel ‘The Homicidal Maniac’ Callahan.”
“Are people really calling you that?” PJ asks, the look in her eyes falling somewhere in between anger and confusion.
Hazel clicks her tongue. “Among other things.” PJ looks murderous, and all things considered, she figures it’s best to steer her in a different direction. “Hey, where’s- uh, Josie and Isabel?”
A tilted head and a raised eyebrow inform her that PJ sees right through the direction. Still, she says, “They’re doing damage control at their jobs. Josie’s pretty much okay, but Isabel’s school is fucking pissed.”
Hazel’s stomach drops. If she weren’t famous, none of this would be happening. No one would care enough to talk about some small-town high school drama, let alone every tabloid with a name worth knowing. At most, some true crime podcast would use it for some kind of bullshit girl power lesson. Instead, Hazel’s life is being ruined, and she’s dragging all her friends to the bottom with her. “Shit, really?”
“Apparently, it’s ‘uncouth’ for a third-grade teacher to have a body count- not the fun, sexy kind, but they’re probably not fans of that, either.”
“Fuck,” she sighs, leaning down and letting her forehead fall against the island countertop. “Are you in trouble, too?”
PJ scoffs. “No, it’s actually… pretty good for business.”
“Really?”
She nods, pouring herself more champagne. “Boxing lessons from a girl who fucking boxed a bunch of football players to death? People are into it.”
Hazel laughs breathlessly. “Only you.”
“What?” she asks, grabbing the ice cream and wrestling the spoon out of it. She sticks the spoon in her mouth, licking the ice cream off it, and Hazel has to physically turn her head away (under the poorly acted guise of a cough) to think.
“Only you would make a career out of, like, trauma.”
PJ shrugs. “It’s badass trauma.”
The silence stretches between them, vast and absurd. They’ve been friends their whole lives, and here Hazel is, trying to think of something to say. Eventually, she settles on, “You want to get out of here?”
It’s only after PJ agrees that Hazel realizes she doesn’t know where they’re going to go.
—
“The beach?” PJ asks incredulously.
They’re in a tiny, clearly unmaintained parking lot, looking over an equally tiny beach. Hazel shrugs, turning off the car. “You love the beach. It’s why you came to LA, right?”
PJ opens her mouth, looking like she’s going to disagree. But instead, she tilts her head and says, “Yeah, sure, but you hate sand.”
Hazel nods, grabs a beach towel from the backseat, and gets out of the car anyway, standing over the jagged, rocky hill that leads down to the beach. “Watch where I’m putting my feet, okay?”
She carefully makes her way down the rocks, stepping on the ones she knows are solid. When she gets to the bottom, she reaches a hand out for PJ, who follows in her footsteps. “What in the fuck?” PJ asks, gripping her hand so hard they both start to lose circulation. “How are you, like, good at this?”
“I found this place a couple months ago. It’s the only place in driving distance I can come without, like, having a billion pictures taken of me.”
PJ relaxes once her feet are in the sand. “Your life is, like, exhausting.”
Hazel shrugs. “I’m used to it.”
PJ looks thoroughly unconvinced, but she doesn’t argue. Hazel lays out the beach towel and sits cross-legged on it. After a second, PJ drops her backpack in the sand and sits next to her. They sit in silence for a long time, just watching the waves crash onto the shore, before PJ asks, “Do you really think they’re just gonna, like, cancel the movie?”
She hums, really thinking through the possibility. “Not if I fix my reputation, like, today. But barring a miracle… My career is pretty much dead in a ditch.”
PJ stiffens with realization and looks over at her, eyes wide. “You don’t need a miracle,” she says.
“I’m pretty sure I do-”
“No, Hazel, you need a distraction.”
She blinks. “I think a bomb would make this situation worse. Like, significantly worse.”
PJ shakes her head, her eyes glimmering with a bad idea. “I’m not talking about a bomb.”
“What are you gonna do, kiss me again?” she asks. Once the words are out of her mouth, though, she realizes that they’ve never actually talked about the kiss. PJ seems unfazed, though, as if she’s too excited about her plan to process what’s going on.
“Better. Give me your hand.” Despite her better judgment, she holds out her hand for PJ to take. “No, your left hand.”
“Why?” Hazel asks, doing it anyway.
PJ grins, holding Hazel’s wrist with one hand like she’s afraid it’s going to walk away. With her other hand, she tears through her backpack hastily. “I could have sworn… yes!”
She brandishes a ring like a weapon, and all at once, Hazel understands. She plans on telling PJ this is fucking insane, and no one in their right mind would believe it, but when she opens her mouth, the first thing that comes out of her mouth is, “Why do you have an engagement ring?”
She shrugs like this is a totally normal thing to have at the bottom of her backpack. “It’s my mom’s.”
“You stole your mom’s engagement ring?”
PJ looks offended at the very idea. “Um, no. She gave it to me! We were on the phone, and I mentioned one of my coworkers, and she got it in her head that we’re, like, in a secret relationship, or something. So she fuckin’… mailed me her engagement ring. I think it was supposed to be, like, a Super Supportive Ally thing. But the note actually said ‘I know you lesbians move fast,’ so…”
“So you threw a diamond ring in your backpack like a fucking hair tie?”
“I was meaning to mail it back,” she whines. “There’s a post office by the gym, but I keep forgetting.”
Mystery solved, Hazel remembers why PJ is holding the ring. “Sorry, your plan for a distraction is… a PR engagement?”
“A PR wedding,” PJ corrects.
Hazel feels like she’s going to pass out. “You want to actually get married? As a distraction?”
“Well, if we just, like, stay fake engaged forever- or if we pretend to call off the wedding- people will figure out that it’s not real. But if we fully get married…”
“I don’t think you understand how marriage works,” Hazel says gently. “That’s, like, a lifetime commitment.”
PJ shrugs. “You were already stuck with me forever. And if we drive each other insane, we can get a divorce in a few years when things go back to normal.”
In a few years. She’s talking about spending actual years of her life on this, and Hazel can’t figure out if she knows what she’s doing or not. “I don’t- why in the hell would you do all of this?”
Something flashes in PJ’s eyes, but she smiles and says, “Because you’re one of my best friends- you’re outranked by Josie, but that’s it- and you look like you’re about to have an aneurysm.”
“So you’re going to marry me about it?”
“You can’t tell me that’s not a positive spin. Trauma-bonded lesbians making the best of a bad situation? The headlines write themselves.” PJ puts the ring on her finger, frowns, and shakes her head in disapproval. She promptly takes the ring off Hazel’s hand.
“What…?”
“It’s not… you enough. No one who knows you even a little bit would propose with a ring like this,” PJ explains, putting it on her own hand instead. “But you would definitely propose to me with it.”
She appraises the look of it, apparently unfazed by the fact that she is wearing an honest-to-God engagement ring. Nodding her approval, she grabs Hazel’s phone out of her lap. She shoves the screen in Hazel’s face to unlock it, then opens the camera. After a brief moment of wrestling their hands into the right position, she takes the photo: their hands intertwined, engagement ring on full display, with the ocean in the background.
It’s only when she opens Instagram that Hazel snaps out of her ‘the girl I’ve been in love with since middle school just forcibly proposed to herself for me’ stupor. “Whoa, wait-”
“Chill,” PJ says flippantly. She tags herself in the post, captions it forever, and hands the phone back to Hazel. The drafted post stares at her, and she’s never felt so judged by a picture of her own hand. “It’s up to you,” she says. “If you can think of something better…”
And because she can’t think of anything better, and because Marjorie isn’t here to tell her not to do this, and because PJ is here telling her to do this, and because she is one of the stupidest people alive, she posts it.
—
“We’ll have to, like, kiss.”
PJ laughs. “Yeah, Hazy, it’s not like it’ll be the first time.”
Just the first time in ten years, she thinks. Super cool and chill.
They’re in Hazel’s car (still in the parking lot), phones turned off and tossed in the backseat as they lay out the ground rules. “No, I know,” she says quickly. “Just making sure that’s… cool.”
“You’re sweet,” she says. “But a girl would have to be, like, a hardcore Republican for me to not want to kiss her. Well, even then…”
Hazel rolls her eyes, ignoring the flare of jealousy in her chest as she decides to move on. “And no one can find out it’s fake. Not even Marjorie.”
“Josie,” PJ says. “She'll know anyway, and if we don’t just tell her the truth, she’ll stop at nothing to get us to admit it.”
Hazel hums. “Can she keep the secret?”
“Oh yeah,” she scoffs, nodding. “I’d know.”
“What? Why? What secrets is Josie keeping for you?”
PJ flushes bright red, avoiding her eye. “So we can’t date other people.”
Hazel prides herself on keeping up with fast-moving conversations, a skill she picked up when she was 18 and trying to negotiate contracts in a room of 50-something lawyers and agents, but this particular shift gives her whiplash. “What?”
“Can’t have, like, a cheating scandal, right?” PJ hedges.
Catching up with herself, she agrees, “Right, yeah. No seeing other people.”
“And we’ll have to do… I don’t know, press stuff? Public sightings, interviews…?”
It occurs to Hazel that PJ is playing some kind of game of chicken. She’s pushing the boundaries of what’s really acceptable, and it seems like the ball is in Hazel’s court. “And we should move in together.”
PJ raises an eyebrow. “Yeah,” she stammers. “Um, we need to come up with a backstory.”
Point: Hazel.
—
It’s late by the time they get back to Hazel’s, armed with vodka-spiked ICEEs that PJ refused to take Hazel’s card to pay for. They stumble inside, tipsy on the giddiness of a successful plan more than the liquor. According to the sudden onslaught of positive comments on Hazel’s post (and the fact that PJ’s follower count increased tenfold in a few hours), it looks like people already love her again. Either that or they’re just eternally enamored with the newest, shiniest celebrity gossip; now that she’s engaged, the whole manslaughter scandal is old news.
Of course, Marjorie is waiting for them, sitting on a chair in the living room like she’s just caught them sneaking in after curfew.
“I’m gonna take away your keys,” Hazel threatens, her voice unbothered and soft around the edges as she and PJ settle on the couch together.
“I have copies,” she deadpans.
“Creepy,” PJ giggles, apparently significantly more drunk than Hazel. To be fair, she poured at least twice as much vodka into her ICEE, as well as drinking some straight from the bottle.
To her credit, Marjorie rolls with it, smiling indulgently at her before turning back to Hazel. “When we were talking earlier, is there a reason you conveniently omitted the fact that one of the other girls is your fucking girlfriend?”
“Well, fiancée, now,” she corrects, wrapping an arm around PJ’s waist and pulling her closer.
“You didn’t think that maybe it would be pertinent to tell me that you’re in a relationship- or, I don’t know, that you were planning on proposing? How long have you two even been together?”
“Almost three years,” Hazel lies easily, having practiced the backstory with PJ (who is currently falling asleep on her shoulder) so many times that it rolls off the tongue like the truth. “We got together before I left to shoot Ghost Town, and we did long-distance while I was gone. At first, we wanted to keep it a secret for, like, privacy, or whatever. But we figured, if we’re getting married, people are gonna figure it out sooner or later, so we’d rather try to keep control over what people know.”
“Smart,” Marjorie says, nodding. “Now- only if you’re both comfortable…”
Hazel tilts her head, trying not to look like she knows what’s coming. They couldn’t have very well just walked in and suggested a press tour of an engagement, because Marjorie would have immediately realized what they were doing and then, presumably, buried Hazel in a shallow grave. So instead, they decided they’d let her come up with the PR stunt. Hazel feels like a supervillain executing a plan as Marjorie draws the right conclusion. “Hm?”
“We could lean into this. Use it as a distraction from… everything. But really, if it’s too much, or PJ doesn’t want to be in the spotlight too much-”
On cue, PJ murmurs something in her sleep, burrowing further into Hazel’s shoulder.
“We talked about that,” she says, absentmindedly carding a hand through PJ’s hair. “And we’d rather just tell the press about us than have them start theorizing.”
Marjorie crosses her arms, suddenly suspicious. “Why are you being this smart about your relationship, but you let a fucking murder scandal come out without any control of the narrative?”
“Self-defense,” she corrects automatically.
Marjorie’s eyes narrow. “You are awful at keeping secrets from me. And now you’re in a three-year relationship with a girl I’m meeting for the first time right now? What the fuck is going on, Hazel?”
If Marjorie finds out, this whole thing falls apart. She wants to fix this mess, sure, but there are boundaries she won’t cross - or let Hazel cross. Stunt marriage falls firmly on the wrong side of the line drawn in the sand. And if the engagement unravels, everyone will hate her twice as much and for twice as long and-
She snaps herself out of her panicky spiral and turns on the Patented Hazel Callahan Actress Charm. But when she smiles down at PJ, the no doubt lovesick look in her eyes isn’t an act at all. “She’s more important than my reputation. Of course I’m more careful with her.”
“You really are in love with her.”
Hazel’s chest aches with how true it is. She ignores it. “I proposed to her.”
“Yeah, but- I was just making sure you didn’t do something stupid.”
“What, you thought it was fake?” Marjorie stays quiet, and Hazel pretends to be incensed. “For fuck’s sake. Believe it or not, I’m not stupid enough to do that.”
—
The first thing Marjorie sets up for them is a photo shoot and interview at their cake tasting. Their cake tasting, which is for the actual cake they are actually going to eat at their actual wedding. Even though she knows they’re getting married, PJ feels far away from all of it as she sits down in a bright, airy bakery with a kitschy name. Something to the horrifically gross effect of Let Them Eat Cake, if she remembers correctly.
Hazel’s not here yet, which is awful, because all she can do is fidget with her engagement ring and feel judged by everyone else in the room. An interviewer from GRACE Magazine sits across from her and a woman flits around with a camera, mostly taking pictures of the bakery for the time being. Marjorie hovers in the corner, mostly just there to intercept if the questions get particularly invasive.
PJ’s anxiety bubbles up in her, and she’s about to make a very unsavory attempt at small talk (Have any of you guys ever killed anyone, or is it just me?) when the bell over the door dings, and in waltzes Hazel. She’s in patent leather Prada boots, a pair of light green tailored shorts, and a matching blazer. And she’s hot.
When PJ stands to greet her, Hazel beats her to the punch, kissing her and saying, “Hey, babe. Sorry I’m late, I couldn’t find my boots.”
Blushing bright red at the pet name, PJ shakes her head and leads her to the table. “No problem,” she says as they sit down. As payback, she gives Hazel a once-over, looking her down and up before she adds, “It was worth the wait.”
The compliment hits its mark, because Hazel coughs and looks away, shoving out a hand for the interviewer to shake. “Hazel Callahan,” she says, and the Celebrity Armor slides back into place.
Hazel might not even know she has Celebrity Armor, but after a decade of watching her develop it, PJ knows. It’s this mode she slips into when she can feel people’s eyes on her; she turns on the sun-bright smile, the flirty-but-not-slutty eyes, and the perfectly manicured way of speaking. PJ doesn’t dislike this version of Hazel, per se - there’s really no version of Hazel she dislikes. It’s just not the Hazel she fell in love with. She’s all shielded and defensive and nothing like the girl who fucking blew up a car - and a tree - in high school.
“Chase Lincoln,” the interviewer says, shaking her hand decisively.
When he turns to PJ, she discovers for the first time in her life that she never actually learned how to shake hands. “I’m PJ,” she says clumsily. “…Walker.”
Chase hums, pulling out his notepad. “Is that short for something?”
“Pajamas,” she deadpans. When he moves to write that down, Hazel snickers and PJ hastens to correct, “That was a joke. Sorry. It’s short for Phoebe Jane.”
Hazel takes her hand and flicks her eyes over at her, conspiratorial and communicative even without any words. Before PJ has a chance to get weird and mushy about it, a wiry man swans out of the kitchen door with a cart sporting maybe ten or twelve cakes, and she remembers why she’s here.
“Let’s begin!” he bellows, and Hazel exhales a little laugh at the way PJ jumps.
With Chase and the camera lady focused in on him, Hazel leans in and whispers, “That’s Orson Beck. He’s super famous and super intense about baking, so don’t make jokes about the cakes.”
A shiver runs down PJ’s spine at how close Hazel is, but she nods minutely. “Okay.”
Orson brings his cart over to the side of the table. “Today, we embark on a journey of flavors, textures, and joy.” She thanks her lucky stars for the heads up, because she wants nothing more in the world than to make a joke. “We will begin with a decadent chocolate sponge, brushed with rich espresso, filled with dark chocolate ganache, and finished with a delightful espresso buttercream.”
“Oh, Hazel can’t have espresso,” PJ says, knowing Hazel won’t say it for herself, and then she’ll eat the cake and have a heart attack and die. Chase scribbles something on his notepad and Orson looks murderous. “It’s the… caffeine.”
“Is this true, Miss Callahan?” he asks, like PJ just accused her of a felony.
She nods apologetically. “Yeah, sorry.”
He narrows his eyes disapprovingly. “Very well.” He proceeds to fucking grab the cake in question off the cart and throw it across the room, where it slides down the wall into an awaiting trash can. “Then perhaps something more… pedestrian.”
“Great, thank you,” Hazel says.
Orson drops a cake on the table with a disdainful thunk. “A simple carrot cake paired with simple cream cheese frosting.”
They’re each handed a fork, and they dig directly into the cake, much to Orson’s dismay. With a single glance, a decision is made. Moving in perfect sync, Hazel and PJ turn and hold their forks out to one another. The camera flashes several times in quick succession as they feed each other fucking carrot cake with as much grace as possible, and PJ figures she’s going to have to get used to that.
She likes it a lot, but she can tell it’s Hazel’s definition of a textural nightmare. A glance to her left reveals the telltale tick of her jaw and the way her nose scrunches almost imperceptibly when she’s trying to be polite about a food she hates. PJ squeezes her hand under the table.
“It’s a contender,” Hazel chirps sweetly, taking a sip of her water under the guise of ‘cleansing her palette’. Orson looks like he’s going to cry with gratitude.
Before he can give them another cake, Chase cuts in, “So, can you tell me more about yourself, PJ? What do you do for work?”
She feels her face light up. “I own a gym. We teach high school kids boxing.”
Chase obviously wants to bring up the Huntington Incident, but to his credit, he doesn’t. “Love that,” he says, nodding emphatically. “And how did you two meet?”
“We’ve been friends since kindergarten,” she says.
“I just kept coming back to her. She tries not to be, but PJ’s… she’s the sun,” Hazel says, pressing a kiss to her cheek. The camera flashes again.
It’s so blindingly romantic that for a second, PJ forgets that it’s fake. Reality crashes back into her, and she reminds herself that Hazel is a professional fucking actress. She lies for a living. It doesn’t mean anything.
“Fantastic,” Orson interrupts, clearly unimpressed. “Excellent. Let’s move on.”
Chase looks pissed, but he obliges. “Fine.”
Another cake is set on the table. “Here we have a champagne strawberry shortcake. It’s a wonderfully sturdy champagne pound cake, layered with semi-sweet chantilly cream and strawberry coulis, and topped with fresh strawberries.”
They feed themselves this time, exchanging wide-eyed looks before going back for second bites. This fucking cake is so good that PJ actually pardons Orson’s use of the word ‘sturdy’ in reference to it. Based on the bordering-on-sexual look on Hazel’s face, it would seem that she feels the same way.
“This one,” PJ says. “Pack it up.”
“There are eight more cakes,” Orson protests, hackles raised at the very idea of skipping any of his work.
“-Which we are so excited to try,” Hazel says, saving the moment with graceful, practiced ease. “This one is just so fantastic that it almost feels… unbeatable.”
His attack mode seems to be disengaged, and he nods. “Ah. Of course.” And, before Chase can swoop in with another question, he replaces it with another cake, speaking quickly to introduce it. “Lemon-blueberry sponge with a lavender filling and honey buttercream.”
The ‘honey filling,’ PJ finds out when she puts the fork in her mouth, might actually be just straight honey and sugar. It’s so cloyingly sweet that Hazel coughs next to her, which she accepts as permission to chase the cake with approximately half a gallon of water.
“Bad?” Chase asks, looking amused.
Hazel composes herself. “…Very sweet.”
It looks like Orson might commit a felony. The cake is whipped at the wall even harder than the first; it doesn’t even fall into the trash can this time, it just sticks.
PJ looks at Hazel in search of some kind of confirmation that this is as insane as it seems, only to find that she, inexplicably, has lavender buttercream above her eyebrow. “Oh, c’mere,” she says, pulling Hazel closer by the chin and swiping her thumb over the frosting.
Just to fuck with her, she licks it off her own thumb, watching as Hazel’s eyes widen in surprise. With a wink, she turns back to Chase. PJ’s in the middle of explaining how long they’ve been together when Hazel’s arm slides around her waist, dragging her even closer. It is beginning to occur to her that fucking platonically marrying the girl she’s had major, life-ruining feelings for since their kiss in high school (and maybe before then, but she’d rather not think about that) was a bad idea.
She’s in too deep to turn back now.
—
SPARKS FLY BETWEEN HAZEL CALLAHAN AND FIANCÉE PJ WALKER
Hazel Callahan and her fiancée, Phoebe Jane "PJ" Walker, were interviewed at a cake tasting yesterday, and it looks like they're in the running to be America's cutest couple!