“Don’t flatter yourself,” Sam says easily. “He’s a writer, too.”
Fiona makes a face. “You shouldn’t be here,” she hisses, jerking her head toward the theater door. “None of those people know who I am.”
“Wait.” Sam frowns. “Seriously? I thought you said you’d been doing this for like a year and a half.”
Fiona shrugs. “Did any of those folks in there strike you as particularly avid viewers of the Family Network?”
Sam considers that. In fact, most of them looked like the kind of people who would proudly announce that they didn’t own a television at all, and the rest suggested a strict diet of PBS and Frasier reruns. Still, a year and a half is a long time. “It’s very Method of you,” he says finally. “I admire your commitment to the work.”
Fiona doesn’t laugh. “Did you need something?” she asks.
“Yes, actually.” Sam nods, fishing around in his pocket until he finds the tiny post. “You left this in my car,” he tells her, holding it out. “You can thank me later for bringing it back to you.”
Fiona breathes in. “I—shit,” she says softly. She’s quiet for a minute before holding her palm out; Sam drops the earring inside. “Thank you.”
He nods. “I gotta say, you didn’t strike me as a pearl earring kind of girl.”
“I’m not,” Fiona mutters, though he can’t help but notice she slides it back on right away, double-checking to make sure it’s secure in her earlobe. Checking a third time.
“You got it,” he assures her. “I don’t think it’s going anywhere.”
“Yeah.”
Neither one of them says anything for a moment, the silence stretching on just a beat too long not to be awkward. Sam tries to think of a natural way to segue into a conversation about Birds—after all, that’s what he supposedly came here to talk to her about, the only reason he drove all the way the fuck across the city—but to his utter shock, what comes out of his mouth is: “What are you doing tomorrow night?”
If Fiona is even one-millionth as surprised as he is, she doesn’t show it: “Scalping tickets outside the Staples Center,” she deadpans immediately. “Washing my hair. Cleaning the inside of the K-Cup machine.”
Sam tilts his head to the side. “I didn’t know that was a thing you had to clean.”
“Most people don’t,” Fiona says.
“Sounds like a busy night.”
“I’m a busy girl.”
Sam nods slowly. “Well, Cinderella,” he says, “in case you happen to get through all your chores. I’m meeting some friends for drinks around nine, if you want to come hang out.”
“Where?” she asks with a smirk. “Like, the Chateau Marmont?”
“No, smartass,” he says, though the club he names admittedly isn’t that far off, in terms of vibe, and Fiona bursts out laughing.
“Look,” she says once she’s pulled herself together, and Sam isn’t sure whether he’s imagining that for a moment she looks almost fond of him. “I get why you want to do this reboot. Clearly you’ve got some pretty significant cartel debt, and I can respect that. But I’m not going to do it, no matter how many different ways you try to leverage whatever crush you think I had on you back when I was eighteen.”
That gets Sam’s attention. “You had a crush on me?” he asks.
“Oh my god,” Fiona says, rolling her eyes so hard he thinks she can probably see her own brain. “We’re not talking about this.”
Sam smiles. “We’re talking about it a little, though.”
“We’re not,” Fiona assures him, but her cheeks are definitely getting pink.
“Okay.” He thinks for a moment. “Listen, you don’t have to do it,” he promises. “The show.”
“Oh, I know I don’t.”
“No, obviously, that’s not what I—” Sam breaks off. “I just mean I won’t bring it up again, that’s all. But you should still come to drinks tomorrow.”
Fiona shakes her head, just faintly. “Why?” she asks.
“Because I want to see you again,” he tells her. “With no agenda. Is that so hard to believe?”
“Yes,” she tells him immediately. “It is extremely hard to believe.”
“Well, it’s true.” He takes a deep breath. “Fee. Come meet me tomorrow night.”
Fiona makes a big show of sighing, this full-body situation like she’s trying to make sure it reads all the way to the very back of a theater. They’re standing close enough that when she shifts her weight his knee brushes hers, just for a second; Sam feels the contact all the way up his thigh.
“Fine,” she says at last, rotating her neck like possibly she’s gotten a cramp just from the physical strain of having to talk to him, “but only so you’ll leave.”
Sam nods seriously, biting the inside of his cheek to keep from grinning. He feels like he landed a part he didn’t even know he was auditioning for, and he tells himself it’s just because he’s happy to have won. “Uh-huh.”
“I mean it,” Fiona warns him. “Don’t say anything else.”
He mimes zipping his lips and throwing away the key. See you tomorrow, he mouths, then holds up nine fingers in case somehow she’s forgotten. Fiona groans.
Sam heads back out into the steamy pink twilight, where someone has let their dog—at least, Sam hopes it was a dog—drop a steaming dump beside his right front tire. It takes an hour and fifteen minutes to get home, with traffic. He hums along to the radio all the way there.
Chapter Seven
Fiona
“Is that what you’re wearing?” Claudia asks the following night, standing in the doorway of Fiona’s bedroom with her arms crossed.
“Uh, yup.” Fiona looks at herself in the mirror. She’ll be damned if she’s about to get dressed up to meet Sam Fox of all fucking people so she’s wearing her usual jeans and boots and tank top, a hair elastic looped snugly around one wrist. “Why?”
Claudia shrugs. “I just think maybe sometimes you don’t realize the message you’re sending, that’s all.”
“Oh?” Fiona eyes her in the mirror. “And what message is that, exactly?”
Claudia seems to know better than to answer. “Will you just let me do your hair, at least?” she asks, padding barefoot across the carpet. “I’ll be quick.”
Fiona sighs loudly. “I guess.”
Claudia’s smile is megawatt, which almost makes this ridiculous masochistic stroll into Mordor worth it in advance. “Thank you,” is all she says.
She makes Fiona sit on the bed while she coaxes out the tangles with a wide-tooth comb, careful not to tug too much. Fiona closes her eyes, tilts her head back. She’s always liked having her hair played with; she used to fall asleep in the makeup trailer on set sometimes, while the girls straightened and curled and teased and braided her into Riley Bird. Even all these years later it’s the one form of physical contact that’s never made her feel itchy or weird.
“There,” Claudia says finally. Fiona opens her eyes, peering at herself in the mirror on the back of the closet door. Claudia’s done something with the flat iron to smooth the frizz out; she looks nice, but not like she’s auditioning for the role of a florist slash amateur detective on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries.
“Thanks,” Fiona says, touching it tentatively.
“No problem,” Claudia tells her. “You’re pretty. Also, and I’m just going to make this pitch one more time, you should change your shirt. You’re going dancing with the Heart Surgeon, not out to hunt vampires or scavenge canned goods during the zombie apocalypse.”
“That’s what you think.” Fiona huffs out a breath. “I’m not trying to date him,” she reminds her sister.
“Why not?” Claudia asks immediately. “You should date someone.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re lonely.”
Fiona blinks, the baldness of it catching her up short. Back when she was in the hospital Pam was always trying to get her to make ridiculous pronouncements like that, to emote all the goddamn time: I feel lonely. I feel angry. I feel betrayed. Fiona could never quite get the words out, even though she liked Pam and wanted to do a good job at therapy. The whole thing made her feel, quite honestly, like a giant fucking chump.
She doesn’t say anything to Claudia for a minute. Then: “You know what?” She shakes her head. “I’m not going to go. You need somebody to quiz you on your Spanish—”
“Estelle will quiz me,” Claudia says immediately, then marches over to the window and shoves it open. “Estelle!” she yells, voice carrying across the backyard like a Klaxon. “Will you quiz me on my Spanish so that Fiona can go out?”
Estelle, who’s reading her Kindle and vaping on her patio, thrusts one thumb into the air. “You bet I will, señorita!”
Fiona rolls her eyes.