The Reunion by Kayla Olson(5)
ANYWAY. THE KITTENS.
Let’s start at the beginning.
Earlier this morning, Ransom’s former costar Liv Latimer (talk about another glow-up, amirite? And it’s not like she wasn’t already gorgeous—time has been KIND to this cast, y’all!) gave her first interview in ages to none other than America’s #1 talk show host, Jade Johnson. Liv was so kind as to remind the world of the adorable animal activism phase Ransom went through after GotV wrapped/before he went full-on sexy twentysomething. I think I still have that ASPCA calendar somewhere, not to mention I definitely still have the pair of cats I adopted after seeing a few of his cat-of-the-week posts. (Cantaloupe and Clementine send their regards.) Show of hands, who else saved some cats thanks to Ransom’s activism? Good for all of you!
If you’ve been anywhere online today, you’ve probably been equal parts mystified and entranced by the number of kitten GIFs/photos/videos being flung Ransom-ward… so now you know where it all started. Ransom hasn’t directly responded to any of the thousands of messages that have piled up, but he did post a simple directive that prompted even more of a tailspin (pun intended): “Adopt, don’t shop,” he wrote in his latest tweet, which is now pinned to the top of his feed, along with a simple yellow cat emoji. Rumor has it that adoptions have spiked all over the country today, so let me repeat: Good for all of you!
Now, if we can just get a fresh post of sexy thirtysomething Ransom snuggling a kitten or two, that would be greeeeeeeeaaaaat. Hear that, Ransom? The internet has spoken!
In the meantime, fire up your Fanline accounts and start bingeing Girl on the Verge—their twentieth-anniversary reunion show is coming up soon, and I, for one, will be dropping everything to watch.
2
My home is an oasis, afternoon light streaming through the wall of windows that overlooks the ocean. The salt air and the sea calm me on even my hardest days, while the pristine, unbroken sand is reassurance that this little slice of shore delivers the privacy I’ve craved for as long as I can remember.
I fill a tumbler with iced water and head out to the patio. Once upon a time, it wasn’t just me here—I had a boyfriend, Noah, who might have become a fiancé had he not suddenly shown his true colors the moment I picked my career back up. I’d just taken a role in an indie film after a several-years-long hiatus, and at first it was You’ll be gone for how long?, which turned into I’m not comfortable with you kissing him, even if it is part of the job, which blew up into a myriad of shrapnel from the single grenade of Honestly, I just prefer Quiet Liv to Famous Liv. He’d met me at low tide, when I’d pulled as far away from Hollywood and everyone in it as I possibly could. When I realized I wasn’t creatively fulfilled—I missed the art of it all, the challenge, the chance to slip in and inhabit someone else’s skin for just a little while—things that were in my blood every bit as much as my aversion to the press—a riptide swept through, and it destroyed us.
I haven’t been serious with anyone since. Noah was the first person I truly opened up to after Ransom, and yet—at the end of the day—when it was over, our breakup felt inevitable.
It’s possible I haven’t given anyone the chance to get that close again.
From what I can tell, Ransom took the exact opposite approach in the decade that followed our years on the show: a string of spy thrillers and huge, flashy blockbuster hits that have made him typecast for his chiseled, incredibly handsome face. (And, for the record, his body. He has definitely put in some work.) Girl after girl after girl, nothing too serious until last year, when he started dating Gemma Gardner, his literal girl next door from childhood who moved out to Glendale to open an adorable independent bookstore called the Garden. She’s petite and demure, and they’ve looked effortlessly happy together in every photo I’ve seen.
At least there’s that: They’re happy. He’s happy.
I’ve never admitted this to a single soul, but for a long time I secretly wished he wanted that happiness with me. He never thought of me like that, though, like a girlfriend—we were Liv and Ransom, inseparable best friends.
Until suddenly we weren’t.
I’ve done my best not to go down Ransom rabbit holes in the years since the show, especially in the recent months since our reunion special got the green light—a knot forms when I start to think too much about slipping into our former roles after all this time and all that happened between us.
About kissing him again on camera.
About everything else.
My phone vibrates on the glass patio table beside me: a text from Bre asking my preferences for the dinner tonight. It’s an easy choice—oysters and chardonnay, crème br?lée for dessert.
Tonight’s dinner will kick off the celebration of the show’s twentieth anniversary. Even though the reunion special itself will only be an hour-long scripted episode, Fanline is making an entire two-week ordeal out of the whole thing. Some people are traveling in from far corners of the world to make it happen—like Annagrey Siebert, who played my mother and eventually retired off the coast of Greece, or Pierre Alameda, who played my tennis coach (and, unlike me, was chosen for the part because he was a tennis professional in real life—he now coaches full-time at a tennis academy in Spain).
Others, like Sasha-Kate Kilpatrick, still live right here in Los Angeles and make the city feel too small; we’ve run into each other a dozen times since wrapping the show, and it’s been awkward every time. She and I originally auditioned for the same role on the show, so I’ve known her since the very beginning, even longer than Ransom.