He doesn’t get the firefighter gig.
“It’s fine,” Russ reassures him across the table at Soho House, his perpetual tan an even deeper shade of toasty after his trip to Tulum. “It’s going to get canceled after two episodes anyway. Derivative.”
“Did they say anything?” Sam asks, picking at his salad. The early afternoon sun shines cheerily over the crowded patio, but instead of filling him with a buzzing kind of energy like usual, today it just makes him feel like an imposter, like someone who has no business being here in the first place. He might as well be wearing a sandwich sign that says Out of Work. Shit, he might as well be wearing a sandwich sign with an actual advertisement on it. At least then maybe he’d be getting paid.
“Just that they’re going in a different direction,” Russ says, shaking his head in a way that makes Sam suspect that is not, in fact, all they said. “Look, don’t pack your bags just yet, all right? Something always comes along.”
“No, I’m not,” Sam says, frowning a little uncertainly. “Wait, who said I was packing my bags?”
“It’s an expression, Sammy.” Russ looks at him a little strangely. “Take it easy, will you?”
“I’m easy,” Sam mutters, which is of course a lie. What he is is an out of work never-was with $27,000 in credit card debt and a ridiculous electric car he’s pretty sure is about to be repossessed. What he is is a guy who doesn’t know how he’s going to pay next month’s rent. Just for a second, he thinks about asking Russ to float him until he books something, but that would make him desperate—that would make him poison—so instead he pastes a smile on his face and signals the waitress across the patio for another vodka tonic.
“I’m easy,” he says again.
He goes off his diet. He smokes a lot of weed. He reads Weetzie Bat, which is a weird fucking book—an eighties fairy tale about a version of LA he’s pretty sure never actually existed, with a lot of white girls wearing headdresses in a way that feels distinctly not okay. Still, he thinks he gets why Fiona would have liked it when she was a kid. It’s about finding people who love you no matter what inadvisable shit you go out and do, drinking too much or running away from home or accidentally impregnating a witch who casts spells using Barbie dolls. It’s about making a family where there wasn’t one before.
Sam lets out a quiet groan, tossing the book onto the coffee table and telling himself he doesn’t miss her. It keeps hitting him at weird moments: finding one of her hair elastics in his bathroom, scrolling past some creepy fucking murder documentary Netflix now thinks he might enjoy. He clicks her name in his contacts list a thousand times—thumbs the screen to dial, even—then immediately hits the button to end the call before it can connect. For fuck’s sake, what does he think he’s possibly going to say to her? He’s never felt like such a piece of shit in his entire life.
He fucked it up, that’s all. Of course he did; he always does. It was only a matter of time. He remembers the last time he saw her before that day at the print shop, the cast party his last season of Birds. It was at some trendy restaurant in West Hollywood—long since closed now—with exposed brick and industrial lighting, the tall warehouse windows flung open to the cool night air. He’d bummed a cigarette from one of the sound guys, and when he headed out into the alley to smoke it he found Fiona sitting on an overturned bucket beside the dumpster, wearing a dress stitched with a million purple sparkles and reading a skinny paperback book. Her eyes widened at the sight of him. “What are you doing out here?”
Sam blinked, then recovered. “Looking for you, obviously.” He held up the cigarette, leaning back against the wall of the restaurant beside her. His thigh brushed the side of her arm.
“Obviously.” Fiona used her index finger to mark her page: King Lear, he saw when he glanced at the cover, which he’d never read but which looked like a total downer. “Since when do you smoke?” she asked, eyes narrowing as she watched him light up.
“Since when have you been paying attention?” He shrugged. “Awhile.”
Awhile like since right now, truth be told—in fact he’d only wanted one for the sake of something to do with his hands. He’d been weirdly edgy all night, awkward in conversations, fighting a strange feeling of embarrassment at being at this party in the first place now that everyone knew he wasn’t coming back next season. It felt risky to be leaving a job without having anything else lined up, even though Russ, his new agent, kept saying he was going to start booking films no problem.
Now Fiona was quiet as Sam took a drag, then held her hand up wordlessly for the cigarette. Sam looked down at her, surprised, but handed it over, the tips of his fingers grazing hers. She inhaled, then passed it back, the silver smoke heavy around her face in the half dark.
“So,” he said—doing what he always did when he felt like he was out of his depth, which was turn on the charm—“you gonna miss me?”
Fiona laughed out loud. “No,” she said decisively. “In fact, I’m looking forward to being the prettiest person on set for a change.” She leaned her head back against the brick and looked up at him, all eyelashes and collarbone. “You glad to be leaving?”
Sam shook his head. “Glad is the wrong word,” he said, although until two minutes ago he would have said exactly that. Still, standing next to her in this alley, all at once he was starting to have second thoughts. “Excited to do some other stuff, is all.”
Fiona nodded, her expression filled with—there was no other word to describe this—longing. “I would love to do other stuff,” she confessed.
That surprised him; even on her weirdest, drunkest tabloid days he’d never seen her anything but prepared and professional when the cameras were rolling. He’d always thought that must mean she liked it, disappearing into Riley Bird every day of her life, but suddenly he wasn’t so sure. “Why don’t you?” he asked.
“Can’t,” she said with a shrug, a dead kind of acceptance in her voice. “Contract.”
“So?” Sam asked. “Contracts expire.”
Fiona smiled at that, just faintly. “Not soon enough.” She held her hand up again, expectant; he helped her climb to her feet, then just . . . didn’t let go, their fingers knitting quietly together at their sides like possibly it was something they’d done a million times before, which it emphatically wasn’t. Neither one of them looked down. “I should get back inside,” Fiona said.
Sam nodded. “Okay,” he agreed, even as he was angling his body in her direction. He’d already decided he was going to kiss her. He thought it was possible he’d decided a long time before now, somewhere in the very back of his secret brain.
Fiona knew it, too: “I’m going,” she told him, her full mouth quirking.
Sam nodded. “You should.”
“I intend to,” she promised, and that was when Sam ducked his head.
It wasn’t particularly raunchy, as far as kisses went, lips and tongue and the barest graze of her teeth at his bottom lip; still, the force of it surprised him a little, his entire body humming wildly to shocking neon life. There you are, he thought, the notion popping into his head fully formed like possibly it had always been there, waiting. He had no idea why he’d never done this before.
Fiona pulled back, her expression all amusement. “What the fuck took you so long?” she asked him, but before he could answer, the back door of the restaurant swung open with a clatter and Jamie poked his dark head outside.
“What are you two knuckleheads doing out here?” he asked, his canny gaze flicking back and forth between them. “Get your asses back inside and eat some cake.”
Just for a moment Fiona’s eyes flashed with pure, animal hatred; then Jamie raised an eyebrow, and she sighed and shuffled inside. Sam was about to follow when Jamie grabbed his arm. “You,” he said. “Wait a minute.”
“Me?” Sam asked with a laugh. “What did I do?” Fiona glanced over her shoulder as the heavy metal door shut behind her.
“Yeah,” Jamie said once they were alone, “you. What were you guys doing out here?”
Sam hesitated, a little taken aback by the intensity in Jamie’s expression. “Easy, Dad,” he joked. “We were just hanging out, that’s all. Taking a break from this excellent party so we didn’t get overstimulated.”
Jamie didn’t smile. “I’m not screwing around, Sam. You think I haven’t seen you making eyes at her?”
“I’m not ‘making eyes’ at anybody,” he said, equally offended by both the accusation and the corniness of the phrasing. “Also, isn’t my personal life kind of . . .” He trailed off, hoping the none of your business was implicit even if he wasn’t entirely sure that was true. Sometimes it seemed like everything was Jamie’s business, at least as far as the show was concerned.
“I’m not talking about your personal life, idiot.” Jamie rolled his eyes. “I’m talking about your future. Fiona is a great kid and a brilliant actress, but you know as well as I do that she’s got a lot of fucking problems.”
Sam didn’t know what to say to that. “I mean,” he hedged finally, “everybody has problems, right?”
“Not like Fiona, they don’t,” Jamie countered. “Look, I know you’re on your way out the door here to do bigger and better things, and that’s great. Fuck, I want that for you, which is why the last thing I want to see happen is you fucking it up because you can’t keep your dick in your pants around a pretty girl, do you know what I’m saying?” He shook his head. “We’ve got one, maybe two colossal Fiona screwups to go before the network shitcans us altogether. You’re smart to be getting out now. Don’t let yourself get sucked back into her drama-queen bullshit.”
Sam thought of the way Fiona had looked at him in the second before he kissed her. He thought of the way her hair had felt in his hands. He thought of what it had been like to be around her for the last few months, like watching a not-very-experienced swimmer paddle out past the breakers; and yeah, for a second tonight it had felt like she was about to tell him what her deal was, that maybe she was about to let him see some secret part of herself she kept hidden from the rest of the world, but who even knew if any of that was legit or not? After all: she was a brilliant actress.
On top of which, he trusted Jamie. The guy might not have been his real dad, but the embarrassing truth was that for the last four years he’d been the closest thing Sam had to one. And if Jamie was telling him to get as far away from Fiona as humanly possible, then in all likelihood there was a damn good reason for that.
“Yeah, no, totally,” Sam said now, waving him off. “I hear you; you’re right. I don’t exactly think we’re going to be hanging out a whole lot once I’m done here.”
Jamie relaxed. “Smart guy,” he said with a grin, slapping Sam on the shoulder. “Let’s go get a beer.”
Fiona was standing by the bar when he got back inside, something clear and icy sweating in the glass in her hand; Jamie had stopped to talk to some studio guys near the doorway, his expression bright and animated. “What did he want?” Fiona asked, jerking her chin in Jamie’s direction.
Sam shook his head. “Nothing,” he said—his voice noticeably colder than it had been outside, even to his own ears. “Just career stuff.” He ignored the pang of regret in his gut as he watched Fiona’s expression flicker warily, reminding himself of all the opportunities waiting for him outside this studio: all the big-budget films he was going to star in, all the famous women he was going to meet. Jamie was right. He didn’t need anybody’s immature Family Network baggage dragging him down.
“I should go talk to some people,” he told Fiona, squeezing her arm before turning away toward the party. “I’ll see you around.”
Erin stages an intervention the following night at a hipster Mexican place she hates but knows he likes, with spicy cilantro cocktails and carnitas made of tofu. Sam orders a tequila gimlet, trying not to think about that first night with Fiona at his apartment. The bartender smiles as she sets the glass in front of him; Sam can tell objectively that she’s beautiful, with her dark red hair and a body for days, but just . . . nothing. She might as well be a dude.
“What’s the latest with Hipster Glasses?” he tries, wanting to talk about anything else besides his own ridiculous bullshit. “You guys still hanging out?”
“Every night this week,” Erin admits a little shyly. “Turns out I knew the right amount of feminist theory after all.”
Sam grins. “That’s awesome,” he says, and means it. Erin deserves somebody great. He listens as she tells him about some arty movie they saw and the day trip they took to the botanical garden, asking questions and holding his drink up so they can toast, but the truth is that as glad as Sam is for her, his heart just isn’t in it tonight. Finally he swallows the rest of his drink in two big gulps, then reaches for his jacket. “I’m going to go,” he says.
“Wait, already?” Erin’s eyes widen. “Come on,” she says, catching his arm. “It can’t be that bad.”
Sam opens his mouth, then closes it again, realizing with no small amount of horror that there’s an actual lump rising in his throat. “Dude,” he says finally, swallowing it down with some effort, “I’m broke as shit. Like, seriously, cannot-pay-for-these-drinks broke. My career is completely stalled. Russ didn’t even say anything about another audition. I’m doing a fat lot of nothing for my family, and I just took a gigantic steaming dump all over the closest thing I’ve ever had to a real relationship with a girl I might actually be in—” He breaks off abruptly, snapping his jaws shut one more time.
Erin’s eyebrows creep, just slightly. “A girl you might actually what, exactly?” she prompts.
“Actually nothing,” Sam says, glancing around the noisy restaurant to avoid meeting her eyes.
“Liar,” Erin says primly, and nods at the bartender for the check.
Back at his apartment he puts Supermarket Sweep on streaming and makes a list of things he could do for a living besides acting. Barista, he thinks. Gym teacher at a private school where you don’t have to have a teaching certificate and they don’t care if you’ve never taught gym, or anything, ever before. He’s just typing how to become a referee in the NBA into Google when his phone rings on the coffee table. “Is this Sam Fox?” a woman’s voice asks when he answers.
Sam hesitates, a quick orange lick of anxiety flaring inside his rib cage. He just talked to his mom a couple of days ago, he reminds himself; if anything was really wrong, Adam would have called. Still, for a second he almost says no. “Yes . . . ?”
“This is Estelle Halliday,” the voice reports. “What are you doing tomorrow morning?”
Sam blinks in surprise, then looks around his filthy apartment. “I—probably nothing,” he says honestly.
“Good,” Estelle says, her diction crisp and regal. “I was wondering if you might like to try out for a play.”