Semi drove Alice to Cafe Paris for what was about to be the biggest meeting for Alice's career. They had come up with a list for Alice to follow after she was visibly shaking from anxiety.
"You know how you are Alice, especially when you're nervous. You get all confused and make no sense, so take it easy!"
"I don't know what you mean, I make all the sense."
"See! That made no sense! Okay, let's go over it again. When the waiter says enjoy your meal, you don't say..."
"You too..."
"That's right! Actually, avoid you too as much as you can all together. It's a minefield waiting to be tripped."
Semi went on for a while with more advice, such as "sit up straight but not too straight like you're a doll" and "try to hide your obnoxious laugh" and "be calm", which only made Alice worry more.
They had gotten there a bit earlier than expected, and Semi was dishing out her last pieces of advice. "Don't go in yet! Being early is almost as bad as being late! You'll look desperate." Alice never understood this. Being early was exponentially better than being late in her opinion. Alice also never understood the fashionable part of being fashionably late, but perhaps this was due to the fact that Alice had never really gone out of her way to be fashionable at all. She hoped she looked good enough for this fancy restaurant that pretended to be a cafe despite mostly serving alcohol instead of coffee. But not so overdressed that she looked pretentious. She had never been to Cafe Paris, how did people dress in there? Do you have to cross a threshold of attractiveness to be allowed to enter? These were the thoughts spiralling in her head when she caught bits and pieces of what Semi was nagging her about.
"You're about to meet Taylor Slow, the most shrewd person in our industry. They say she has almost everyone who's anyone under our fingers. They say nothing can even shake her. She's Fearless."
The severity of the situation started to dawn upon Alice.
"Rumor has it that Harry Styled had promising acting potential when he was studying with Taylor in Yale's renowned drama school. They say they were in the same year, and worked together on a handful of student projects which was how Taylor got discovered. But no one has been able to dig up those projects since. I tried myself and could only find articles written about their early work. But perhaps that's just their PR team doing their jobs."
Unable to take anymore of both Semi, her own thoughts, and jittering from anxiety in the truck, she opened the car door to leave.
"Pray for me, I'm going in," Alice said breathing deeply.
Alice could catch snippets of "but...hey!...call me when you're done!" as she power-strolled towards Cafe Paris. She didn't need to hear Semi's whole sentence to understand what she was trying to say, which made Alice wonder why we're encouraged to use full sentences all the time when it clearly just wasted time.
Alice forcefully opened the door in an attempt to be more confident, only to overestimate how heavy the door actually was. For such a fancy restaurant, it sure had flimsy doors, which she promptly made everyone in the restaurant aware of as it crashed into the wall. Alice's realized her mistake too late, and ran towards the bar as she tried to escape the scene, grabbing a seat just far enough to distance herself from both her own ludacris entrance and the entrance to the restaurant.
She shot a nervous glance around the restaurant, half trying to find Taylor, and half accessing the damage. What she saw was a colorful array of characters, some dressed to the nines, and others dressed for steins. There was a gentleman in a tailored suit, and a girl in jean shorts and a Hollister top across the table from him, staring back at Alice. Her breathing quickened. She quickly looked away and found a lady in the corner of the room in an simple, elegant white summer dress with her legs crossed speaking with a man with curly hair and a loud, floral shirt with rolled up cuffs and bracelets that could be found in artisan markets, who thankfully seemed too enticed in their own conversion to have noticed anything that transpired. A few other patrons had looked up, but most had found their partners or food much more interesting after they saw Alice. She tried to calm herself, sitting back into her seat when the bartender put down a drink in front of her. "Gin and tonic for the lady."
Just what I need, Alice thought. But how did he know?
"If you're trying to get noticed, you don't need to try so hard. You're great on set already."
Alice saw the two light-brown-eyes and a boyish smile from the set greet her. Alice started to ease, as her brain stopped scuttling now that it had something familiar to cling onto right after going into perceptual overload. The smile held up his drink.
"Zayne, I work on the set as well, just usually not close to the cameras."
"Hi, my name's..."
"Alice, right? Semi's friend?"
So he knew Semi as well! Alice started to feel her brain steady itself more. She didn't realize she had stopped panting.
"Yeah, she's my BBFL! How do you know Semi?"
Zayne looked confused as he mumbled "B-B-F-L" to himself, but thought better than to ask what it meant. Alice caught his lips' confusion but felt it was funnier than embarrassing. She started to sip her drink as he went on.
"We're usually together on set around the same time, actually. I play unfortunate Casualty Number four. Semi actually talks a lot about you, you two must be very close."
A self-alert started to go off inside Alice. "Wait, what did she say about me?"
Zayne laughed almost as if on queue. "Nothing you should be embarrassed about."
Alice squinted her eyes. She couldn't tell if it was the gin warming her or her anxiety. "She didn't tell you about New York did she?"
Zayne smiled his boyish smile and shrugged. Alice found herself smirking as she let the mystery sink in. Zayne's eyes flicked towards the door, the bermuda triangle of regret that Alice had just managed to forget. He forgot his smile and for a moment, Alice thought she saw a glint of despair.
"I think she's looking for you" Zayne said, clinking glasses with Alice's gin. Alice managed to finish her drink in one go before managing to pull herself together to look back at the mess she had just escaped. "Watch out, I heard she tends to bite."
"Do you?" Alice replied coyly. "Thanks for the drink" she tried to tell Zayne, trying to rush and be sincere simultaneously but failing to do both.
"You too..." Zayne blushed.
Taylor was already making her way to a private table, leaving her assistant Harry Styled standing nearby waiting impatiently for Alice.
As Alice gathered her things she could feel the burning regret of the gin inside her stomach she had just downed creeping near her throat. She had been on overdrive until just the past ten minutes, and forgot how important this meeting would be, and how scared she was and now is not knowing what it could be about or lead to.
After such a kerfuffle of an afternoon, Alice couldn't tell whether she was too drained to respond or whether Zayne was just a good listener. But she did know she wished her new friend could tag along as well. And Semi, she needed Semi there now. Her brain became ungrounded, swirling in spastic thoughts mixed with gin.
