“Okay.” Sam’s lips twitch, uncertain. “But that is . . . not the same thing as bed.”
“You’re right,” she says, reaching for his hand and lacing their fingers together. She can see the question on his face—Is this a no for now, or is this a no forever?—and she wants to tell him it’s just a no for now, but she doesn’t know how to say the words. “But also, waffles.”
Sam looks at her for another long moment, then nods. “Yeah,” he says, still a little breathless. “I’ve got an audition, but after that.”
“An audition?” That makes her smile. She leans back against the fridge, raises her chin. “What for?”
Sam loops her arm around his waist, steps closer. “None of your business.”
“Oh, you want me to guess?” Fiona mimics. “Why didn’t you just say so?” She thinks for a moment, stroking an imaginary beard. “Hot male nanny on an intergenerational dramedy,” she suggests. “Hot client on a legal procedural. Hot corpse on a minor CSI franchise.”
“Aw, honey.” Sam gazes at her through his eyelashes. “You think I’m a hot corpse?”
“I think you’re the kind of person they cast as a hot corpse,” she corrects.
“Understood,” he says seriously, and kisses her again. “Anyway. Want to tag along? We can go get waffles after. Or, rather, you can get waffles and I can get a sensible yet tasty grain bowl.”
Fiona thinks about it. She can see the flecks of gold in his eyes from the sunlight coming in through the window above the sink. There’s a feeling in her chest she doesn’t entirely recognize, and it takes her a moment to realize it’s happiness. “Okay,” she says, her smile slow and not entirely voluntary. “Yes.”
Outside it’s a vintage postcard kind of morning, blue sky and not too hot yet, the air with that sandy desert bite. They stop by Coffee Bean for iced lattes and Sam puts Otis Redding on the stereo. Fiona opens her mouth to make fun of him—it’s just a reflex at this point; she actually loves Otis Redding—then closes it again. She trails her fingers through the breeze outside the window and hums along.
“Oh, PS,” Sam says, as they creep along Cahuenga in the direction of the 101, “not to be a weirdo, but this thing is on the UBC lot. Just to like, give you a heads-up.”
“Oh.” Fiona blinks. UBC is the parent company of the Family Network; the UBC lot is where they filmed Birds. Fiona hasn’t been anywhere near it in years and the thought of going back there fills her with an immediate, visceral panic, a hundred centipedes scuttling around inside her body. It was stupid of her not to ask. “Okay.”
“Sorry,” he says, glancing at her across the gearshift, “is that—”
“No,” she says quickly. “No, it’s fine.”
The UBC lot is an old-fashioned studio campus with an art deco sensibility, the newer buildings tarted up in glass and steel. She’s fully expecting the sight of it to freak her out in an deep and unbearable way and she can tell Sam is expecting it, too, the way he keeps looking over at her like he thinks she’s about to jump out of the car, rip all her clothes off, and start moonwalking naked across the concrete while reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in pig latin. “I’m fine,” she informs him. “How are you, are you nervous?”
“Nah.” Sam shakes his head.
“Just that cool, huh?”
“Just that cool.” He pulls into a spot in the visitor lot and slaps his parking pass on the dashboard, checks his teeth in the rearview mirror, then turns to look at her. “You gonna kiss me for luck, or what?”
Fiona considers that. “Yes,” she decides, then grabs him by the scruff of his neck and lays one on him.
Sam winks. “We call that a Kenosha send-off,” he tells her, touching a hand to an imaginary cap before opening the driver’s side door. “See you later, doll.”
“Oh my god, you absolute turd!” Fiona calls after him, but she’s laughing. She hopes they cast him as the hot murder suspect whose alibi checks out after the second commercial break, or whatever the fuck he’s auditioning for in there.
Once he’s gone she scrolls her phone for a while, but it’s too nice to spend an hour sitting alone in the passenger seat of this farcical car, so she glances around to make sure nobody with a camera is lurking at the edges of the parking lot, then gets out and climbs up onto the hood. She leans back against the warm metal and closes her eyes, letting the sunshine make patterns on the insides of her eyelids. She’s thinking about ordering a ham and cheese omelet at breakfast. She’s thinking about changing the blocking of the final scene in the play. She’s thinking about saying screw it and telling Sam to take her back to his apartment when someone calls her name across the parking lot.
Fiona opens her eyes, scrambling upright like an instinct. Feeling her entire body go cold.
“Um,” she says, instinctively rearranging her face into a mask of cheery, girlish, Riley Bird surprise. “Hi, Jamie.”
Chapter Ten
Sam
The audition is for Hot Rookie Fireman with a Tragic Military Past, and it actually goes amazingly, mind-bendingly well. Sam is shocked, honestly; it’s rare that he can feel himself nailing something in real time, slipping seamlessly into a character like he imagines legitimate actors do. He thinks of telling Fiona she’s his good luck charm, then imagines listening to her fake barfing sounds all the way to breakfast and thinks better of it.
He says his thank-yous—“You’ll definitely be hearing from us,” the casting director says with a smile, and Sam manages not to fist pump until he gets out of the room—and heads out to the parking lot, where he finds Fiona perched on the hood of the Tesla, shooting the shit with Jamie Hartley.
“Hey!” he calls, pleased. It’s a good day. “What is this, a reunion?”
“Uh-oh.” Jamie grins, lopsided and familiar. “Can’t be using that word yet.” He looks exactly the same as he did when he played their dad on Birds of California, that extremely well-preserved look that all the network guys out here have. “Hey, Fee, he said it, not me.”
Fiona smiles. “I will be sure to keep that in mind.”
“You do that,” Jamie says, slinging an arm around Sam’s shoulders and squeezing. He smells like a redwood forest. “Man, this is a surprise. How you doing, kid?”
“I’m good,” Sam says, ducking his head a little shyly. Back when he was still on Birds Jamie used to take him out for burgers at the end of every season and ask him what kinds of projects he wanted to work on, what his favorite movies were. Even back then Sam knew it was corny how much he looked forward to it, but he always looked forward to it anyway. When he heard about Jamie’s development deal at HBO he wondered if maybe there was a chance he’d get a call.
“I love this,” Jamie says now, letting him go and clapping him on the back. “The whole gang back together.”
“Except for Max,” Sam says, for Fiona’s benefit. “Can’t forget about Max.”
Jamie frowns. “Which one was Max?” he asks.
“Oh, come on!” Sam chides. “Little redheaded kid who played the cousin, you remember.”
“Of course I remember,” Jamie says. “I called and talked him into coming aboard the other day.” He turns to Fiona. “Did Thandie tell you she signed on?”
“I—” Fiona breaks off, the disbelief written all over her face. “Thandie?” she asks. “Really?”
“I know,” Jamie says with a self-deprecating laugh. “I was surprised, too. I thought she’d be too busy with Soderbergh and Fincher to be hanging around with schmucks like us. But she said it was such an important part of her life that she’d come in and do a couple of episodes for old times’ sake.”
“That’s big of her,” Fiona mutters under her breath—or Sam thinks that’s what she says, at least. Jamie doesn’t seem to hear.
“Anyway, I’ve gotta get going,” he says. “Got a meeting inside. But it was good to see you guys.” He winks. “Nice that you still hang out.”
He hugs both of them goodbye and lopes off across the parking lot in his leather jacket like Ben Affleck about to drill a nuclear missile into an asteroid. “I love that guy,” Sam says once he’s gone. Fiona is already back in the car, buckled neatly into the passenger seat with her hands folded in her lap. “Don’t you love that guy?”
Fiona doesn’t answer. “Did you plan that?” she asks. She isn’t looking at him, instead staring straight out the windshield at Jamie’s receding back.
Sam stares at her blankly. “Plan what?”
“Running into him.”