“You were trying to get fired,” Sam says reasonably, but Fiona shakes her head.
“It wasn’t like that,” she confesses. “That makes it sound like I had a plan, like it was calculated, and it wasn’t. I wasn’t. I was just . . . flailing.”
“Nobody helped you?”
“Nobody knew,” Fiona points out. “I mean, Thandie suspected. She flat-out asked me once. But I told her she was crazy, and projecting, and that she was the one who had a crush on Jamie to begin with. I pushed her away and I pushed her away until finally—you know. She went away.” She clears her throat. “Anyway. Eventually I did get fired, obviously, but by then it was like I’d created this whole other person and I didn’t know how to quit being her. Or even if I wanted to quit.” She shrugs, looking out at the empty theater. Remembering how safe it can feel to play a part. “Sometimes I still want to be her, to be completely honest with you. She’s tough.”
“You’re tough,” Sam counters. “You’re ferocious. And that fucking guy deserves—”
“Don’t,” Fiona interrupts, holding her hand up.
Sam frowns. “Don’t what?”
“Whatever you’re going to say, just—” She shakes her head. “I didn’t tell you any of this so that you could rescue me or, like, go out and defend my honor.”
“I’ve never met anyone who needed rescuing less than you do,” Sam says immediately. “And your honor is fine. Jamie fucking Hartley’s, on the other hand—” He breaks off. “I cannot believe that asshole has just been glad-handing his way around town this entire time.”
Guilt flares fresh in Fiona’s chest at that—for years, she’s had the sneaking suspicion that in all likelihood glad-handing isn’t the only thing Jamie’s been doing all over town. She thinks again of the high school girls at St. Anne’s, how many of them there were. “I can,” she says quietly.
Sam nods. “Yeah,” is all he says, and after that he’s quiet for a long time. “Well. I’m really glad you told me. And whatever you want to do or not do is the right thing, obviously, which doesn’t mean I don’t want show up at his house and beat the living shit out of him.”
Fiona smiles, she can’t help it. “What’s that called, a Sheboygan How Are Ya?”
“A Green Bay Bear Hug,” Sam says absently.
Fiona nods seriously. “In any case,” she says, “I think have a better idea. But I’m going to need Erin’s number.”
“Oh yeah?” Sam asks, tilting his head to the side. “What for?”
Fiona is just opening her mouth to tell him when the door at the back of the theater opens and Georgie and Pamela hurry in. “We’re canceled, right?” Pamela calls, her face hidden under an enormous black hat. “There’s nothing to do but cancel.”
But Fiona shakes her head, climbing to her feet and standing tall and proud in the middle of the stage. “This is Sam Fox,” she says, reaching for Sam’s hand and pulling him upright. “He’s going to be our new leading man.”
Chapter Twenty
Sam
A week later, Sam stands in the humid dark of the tiny backstage at the Angel City Playhouse, sweating his ass off in a mothball-smelling Goodwill suit. “Can’t I just wear my own clothes?” he begged Fiona again this morning, but she shook her head and told him it was a nonstarter.
“People are going to have a hard enough time forgetting you’re you to begin with,” she pointed out, gesturing across the room at his closet. “If you wear some skinny little Hugo Boss or whatever the fuck expensive getup you’ve got hanging in there, there’s no way they’re ever going to look at anybody else.”
Sam raised his eyebrows. “It’s Tom Ford, actually,” he told her, trying without a lot of luck to bite back his smile. “And I’m sorry, was that you telling me I’m distractingly handsome?”
“No,” Fiona countered immediately, and since she happened to be naked on top of him as she was saying it, Sam didn’t argue. “It was me telling you that I’m the director, and you have to do what I say.”
Sam nodded, swallowing hard as she raked her short nails through the hair at the nape of his neck. “Yes, ma’am,” he promised solemnly, and flipped her onto her back.
Now he takes a deep breath as the stage manager calls two minutes, running his tongue over the back of his teeth. He hasn’t been in a play since he made his stage debut as the Tin Man in his eighth-grade production of The Wizard of Oz. He doesn’t think he’s been this nervous since that night, either.
“Are you going to barf?” Fiona asks him quietly. She’s dressed in full Lululemon as Millennial Nora, helicopter mom of the twenty-first century. “Because I have to say, you kind of look like you’re going to barf.”
“I might,” Sam replies, “but only because apparently this suit was soaked in formaldehyde at some point before it came into my possession.”
Fiona smiles, sliding one hand into his back pocket and squeezing. “Pretty sure that’s your cologne, cowboy.”
“Cute.” Sam nudges her back into the corner. “Didn’t they just call two minutes?” he murmurs, even as his fingertips are creeping up inside her hoodie. “Shouldn’t you be, like, centering yourself or whatever serious theater actors do?”
Fiona nods. “In a second,” she promises, tipping her face up. “Don’t smudge my lipstick.”
Sam smiles against her mouth. He likes seeing her like this—lighter, maybe. Energized about something. Earlier this week she sat down with Erin for the first in a series of interviews for a long piece set to run in New York magazine about dropping out of Hollywood—and about what happened with Jamie. “Realistically I’m not the only one he did it to,” Fiona pointed out when she asked Sam to help her set up a call with Erin. “Or even if I am, there’s still no guarantee he won’t do it again. If I can make it even a tiny bit harder for him to get away with it, then it’ll be worth it.”
“It’s going to be a nightmare,” Erin warned her immediately. “He’s going to try and make your life a living hell. And not to put too fine a point on it, but . . .”
“I’m not exactly a perfect vessel?” Fiona didn’t flinch. “Whatever he throws at me, I’ve had worse,” she said, and Sam believed her. “And I’m not afraid.”
Erin nodded. “Okay then,” she said, digging her notebook out of her massive tote bag. “In that case, let’s get the bastard.”
Now Angel City’s ancient backstage speakers crackle, a burst of static making Sam wince. “One minute,” comes the half-garbled announcement from the stage manager. “Have a good show, everyone. Full house out there.”
Fiona grins. It’s the first sold-out run in the history of the Angel City Players. Claudia and Estelle are out there. Erin is in the front row. Thandie flew in from Paris last night just in time to catch the end of their final dress rehearsal, sneaking into the back at the last moment; Sam watched as Fiona hopped off the stage and ran up the aisle to meet her, the two of them wrapping their arms around each other and clinging. Neither one of them said anything for a long time.
Now Fiona digs into the pocket of her hoodie, coming up with what looks at first like a crumpled piece of paper and tucking it into his hand. “I made this for you,” she tells him quietly. “I thought I was making it for you, anyway. I think actually I made it for me.”
Sam squints at the gift in the darkness, realizing after a moment that it’s an intricately folded bird—its tail tall and proud and delicate, its narrow beak sharp as a blade. He shakes his head, not understanding, but before he can ask what it means: “Say it again,” Fiona tells him, her voice muffled against his shoulder. Sam’s heart stops deep inside his chest.
“Fiona—” he starts, but she’s pulling back now to look at him, her expression calm and steady and sure.
“Sam,” she says. “If you meant it, say it again.”
Sam doesn’t have to ask what she’s talking about. He’s said it to her half a dozen times in the last week, in the car and in the morning and in bed buried deep inside her; he’ll keep saying it as long as she’ll let him. He’ll keep saying it until she believes.
“I love you,” he tells her as the lights go down out in the theater, his voice barely carrying over the applause of the crowd. “Fiona. I love you so much.”
Fiona smiles like the dawn coming up over the hills at sunrise. Then she ducks her head and whispers in his ear. She squeezes his hand and they step out onto the stage together, taking their places side by side.