Everyone has baggage, but it's certainly not Selina's job to carry it for them.
*****
Radio talk show host Selina Locke was just looking for a peaceful summer in sunny Barcelona, but...
( — eddie vedder; american musician, multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter best known as the lead vocalist and one of three guitarists of the american band pearl jam. )
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
SO, HERE'S THE THING ABOUT NEW YORK.
If you look up at the buildings while standing on the ground, you feel sick to your stomach. If you stand on one of said buildings and look down, you feel even worse. Selina decides to look straight ahead as she crosses the seemingly unending streets, occasionally alternating between that and looking down so she'll avoid stepping on something she shouldn't.
She could easily get a cab or call an Uber so she'd get to her family's house a lot quicker. She even considered it at first, when she first left the airport, but ultimately changed her mind; after all, she's surprisingly enjoying walking around the streets. It's completely different from Los Angeles—it's busier, more populated, grayer yet more luminous.
She thanks heavens for her navigation app, which is the only thing preventing her from getting lost, with every street and every corner looking pretty much the same. The only things that show they're all, in fact, different, are the multiple, multiple stores and the billboards.
Beverly's new movie is on one of them.
She and Harrison Ford stand back to back, staring directly at the camera photographing them, and droplets of water fall onto Selina's face as she looks up at them. Her parka's hood threatens to slip down her head, but she can't look away from it, not after everything that happened before and after Beverly landed that role—all the pain, all the drama, all the heartache.
The PR stunt from a few months ago certainly gave Beverly's career the boost her multiple teams thought it needed. She booked a movie with Harrison Ford, booked several ad campaigns with multiple companies, and her life seems to have gotten back on track, except she can't save a dying engagement no matter how hard she tries.
Selina barely has any time to dwell on her friends' relationships, knowing she has to keep moving if she wants to make it home in time for dinner. She's often stopped on the street by fans who recognize her and ask for a selfie, which seems to have fully replaced autographs in current times, and she forces herself to smile for the cameras.
It's not like she's ungrateful for her platform or for her fans, because she isn't, but she's on a schedule and she's already taking a lot longer to get home than she originally planned. She still has to put on a polite front for everyone who talks to her, knowing that, if she slips up the slightest bit, it will be all over social media.
Selina Locke is #canceled
Luckily, she makes it to her parents' house just in time to nearly be knocked down by Jersey's bear hug (which feels more like a football tackle, really). The main hallway still smells like the same old air freshener, like pine trees, and the only thing that has changed around her is the décor. They have changed the paintings and the plants, but the fluffy rug beneath her feet is still lavender.
