Jane Austen Goes to Hollywood(53)
Author: Abby McDonald

It was over, she saw that now, but worse than that, it had always been over. Dakota had just been too much of a coward to ever say it to her face.

“Hey, D, get in the damn car!” Reed’s yell came from through the tinted window, and the limo began inching its way slowly back toward the street. Dakota looked between them, torn.

“Hallie . . .” he began, those blue eyes pooled with regret.

Hallie cut him off. “Go,” she spat, something new forming: a sharp blade in her chest that cut through the melancholy haze that had shrouded her ever since he left. “Go to your precious after-party, with all your fancy new friends. It’s what you wanted, isn’t it? To be seen. To matter.”

She was shaking — not with grief, or any of the pitiful emotions she’d been weighed under for so long. No, this was rage, chasing the icy numbness away with a furious power. Hallie peeled his leather jacket off and thrust it at him. “Go!”

“Please, you don’t understand. . . . It’s not just about me. I have the band to think about. . . .” Dakota looked to the car, then back at her. He seemed suspended there a moment: caught between them, unmoving, with an unreadable expression in his eyes.

“Dakota, sweetie.” A honeyed voice emerged from the limo. “They’re holding our table!”

Dakota seemed to sag. He took one final look at Hallie, took the jacket, and slid into the limo. The door slammed shut, the tinted window slid up, and slowly, it rolled away — leaving Hallie there in the dark alley with nothing but her thin vintage dress and a bitter rage so thick she could taste it.

“Hallie?” Grace approached her, wide-eyed. “What happened? Are you OK?”

Hallie spun around, turning her back on the club, and the crowd, and her terrible humiliation. “It’s over,” she told Grace bluntly. “It couldn’t be more over. Let’s go home.”

He changed his mind.

That was the thought Hallie wrestled with the entire trip back home, fighting to keep her blazing new anger contained through airport security lines and the bright, cheerful sound of holiday carols at every turn. He’d changed his mind.

She sat, fuming in the dim silence of the first-class cabin. All around her, people were dozing, or staring glassy-eyed at their seat-back screens, but Hallie felt like yelling at the top of her lungs. How could he? She didn’t think it was possible; it shouldn’t be allowed! To make promises one day, then turn around and be with someone else . . . ? Of all the reasons Hallie had imagined to explain Dakota’s silence, this had never even figured. And why would it? She had meant it, every time she said she loved him. She had believed with all her heart and soul that they were made for each other, that the future they planned would actually come to be.

And he’d believed it too! Even in her fury, Hallie couldn’t bring herself to think he’d lied; that the words murmured softly to her late in the night were all false. An act. No, Dakota had loved her, which made it even worse. Because if mankind was really so fickle — acting as if love could be stumbled out of, as easily as fallen into — then her whole philosophy on life was a joke. Dakota hadn’t just broken her heart, he’d shaken Hallie’s very faith in love itself!

By the time they touched down at LAX, her rage had hardened into an almost Zen-like calm. If it was Zen to craft a voodoo doll of your ex-boyfriend out of plastic straws and a cashmere sleep mask, that is. Hallie was happily twisting its malformed limbs by the baggage carousel when her cell rang.

“Is it true?” Ana Lucia demanded. “We all said it couldn’t be, but my stylist swore his cousin did makeup for her at the premiere and they were, like, all over each other!” There was a hushed whisper in the background.

“I’m talking to her,” Ana Lucia said, voice muffled. “Shut up! So?” Her voice got louder. “What the hell is going on?”

Hallie took a few steps away from Amber and Grace, hoisting Amber’s parade of excess baggage onto the carts. “It’s true,” she admitted quietly, the words burning her from the inside out. “I found them together, in New York.”

Ana Lucia gasped. “She walked in on them!” she told her audience. “Totally caught in the act!”

“No, not like that,” Hallie hurried to explain, before the story was all over Hollywood. “Ana Lucia? Hello?”

Another rustle, and then Ana Lucia was back on the line. “So, I don’t get it. Was he cheating, or did you break up?”

“It’s . . . complicated,” Hallie answered slowly. There was a call from across the concourse: Grace waved her over to where they were waiting with a driver. “Listen, I have to go, but I really need to get out. What are you guys doing tonight?”

“We were heading to Soho House,” Ana Lucia replied. “But, are you sure you’re up to it? Maybe you should just chill. You know, alone time.”

“I’m fine,” Hallie insisted. “Really. See you guys there.”

Hallie hung up, determined. That was it: she needed to go out, and have a fabulous time, like nothing was wrong. Show Dakota and all her friends that she couldn’t care less about him and his tabloid bimbo. She was fine — better! — without him.

Hallie hurried out front of the terminal and bundled into the waiting car. “Hey, Amber, you remember you offered to loan me that dress one time. The black one with the —”

“— asymmetrical neckline and amazing diamanté shoes?” Amber finished. “Why? Are you hitting the town?”

Hallie nodded. “Just hanging out with some friends, but I want to look . . . spectacular.”

Amber winked. “Say no more. I’ll get my stylist over ASAP, and we’ll have you looking like a supermodel in no time.” She pulled out her cell phone. “Philippe, sweetie, I need you!”

Hallie felt a strange wave of affection. Amber may act like Miss Gold Digger nineteen fifty-two sometimes, but at least she cared.

Unlike some people.

The brief pause for goodwill passed; Hallie’s anger returned with a vengeance. She would show him. She would show them all. Hallie Weston didn’t mope around, heartbroken — at least, not this time. She would rise, triumphant. She would win this goddamn breakup, and she would do it all in four-inch designer heels!

But it turned out not to be so simple. From the moment Hallie stepped out of her cab that night, resplendent in Amber’s borrowed outfit, the only thing anyone wanted to talk about was . . . Dakota. New friends from Ana Lucia’s clique; random acquaintances she’d met at a Take Fountain show three months ago — it felt like everyone Hallie had ever met in Hollywood was lining up to demand the inside scoop on the breakup, and give her that knowing little smile, like they didn’t believe for a second she was really so happy to be rid of him.