“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.
“You realize it’s okay for you to go have fun,” Claudia says, flopping backward onto the pillows. She herself is wearing vintage JNCOs and a Backstreet Boys tank top, so Fiona doesn’t actually know if she’s in any position to be doling out fashion advice. “Nothing bad is going to happen.”
“That sounds like the beginning of the zombie apocalypse to me.”
Claudia doesn’t laugh. “I’m serious,” she says, tucking one tan arm behind her head and looking at Fiona speculatively. “I know you think this whole operation falls apart every time you leave the house, but it’s okay for you to have a life if you want to. Dad is . . . you know. Dad. But Estelle is here. And I’m going to be leaving for college in a few months anyway.”
Fiona gazes at her sister for a long moment. She was ten when Claudia was born; she used to like to load her into the stroller and pop wheelies all up and down the crooked sidewalk outside the print shop. “Okay,” she says finally, wiping her stupidly sweaty hands on the seat of her jeans, “I’m going.”
“And your shirt?”
“Goodbye, Claudia!”
It takes exactly two seconds for Fiona to realize she’s made a terrible mistake.
The club is an enormously obnoxious velvet rope situation in West Hollywood, the bass from the sound system palpable through the sidewalk and a long line snaking down the block. Fiona hesitates, raking her fingers through her hair and trying to decide on a strategy. She’s not about to wait in that line, that’s for sure, but she’s also not about to announce herself to a bouncer, both because people who do that are douchebags and because she’s not at all confident it would work. Shit, this is why she doesn’t go out.
Well, this is one of a thousand reasons, at least.
She’s about to bail—it probably wasn’t a real invitation anyway; it’s not like he’s in there watching the entrance waiting for her to show up—when the guy at the front door catches sight of her. He’s a lot smaller and less assuming than she thinks of bouncers as being, like maybe he sells high-speed internet during the day and this is his side hustle. “Oh,” he says, unclipping the rope and waving her through, “shit, sorry. Go ahead.”
Fiona glances over her shoulder to make sure he isn’t talking to someone else. “Um,” she says, “thanks.”
Inside the club is dark and hot and noisy, the music vibrating belligerently up her spine. Fiona works her way through the crowd, past the bar and the DJ booth and a cluster of low leather couches until finally she spots Sam talking to a guy she thinks she recognizes from a time travel thing on cable. She watches them for a moment, Sam’s eyes and mouth expressive as he listens to whatever the guy is saying. Fiona remembers this from when they used to work together, how much he seemed to like people and how easy it was for him to talk to them, from celebrity guest stars doing cameos to impress their nieces and nephews down to the lowest of PAs.
He catches sight of her over the guy’s shoulder just then, his eyes widening in naked surprise. “Hey,” he calls, sounding frankly shocked—though not, if Fiona had to guess, in a bad way. He’s wearing white jeans and a short-sleeved shirt with an extremely loud paisley print; on any other human it would look ridiculous, and it looks ridiculous on Sam too, but the rest of him is so maddeningly, infuriatingly attractive that it almost doesn’t matter. He hugs her hello, which is how she knows he’s already drunk. “You came!”
“I came,” she agrees grimly, trying to ignore the dorky way her stomach swoops at the contact, like something out of Riley Bird’s teenage diary.
“I’m glad,” he says. “You thirsty?”
Fiona nods.
He leads her over to the bar and introduces her to a dozen different people whose names she forgets the moment she hears them—actors and models and influencers, a singer in a girl group that Claudia likes. Just for a second, Fiona wishes she’d changed her shirt after all. Back when she was doing the show she used to love getting dressed up—hip local designers sending her a brand-new wardrobe every season, her closet overflowing with leather and denim and silk. She got rid of all of it once Birds got canceled, at first because she had it in her head that if she looked like shit all the time the paparazzi would stop taking pictures of her—which wasn’t true, as it turned out—and later because she decided that if they were going to take pictures of her anyhow she wasn’t going to let them know she cared what she looked like either way. And it worked. She did stop caring how she looked, for the most part.
Except that tonight, surrounded by beautiful girls in beautiful dresses—standing here next to Sam Fox—she cares a little bit.
Fiona drinks her wine, shifting her weight uncomfortably. She hasn’t been in a crowd this size in five years. Her nerve endings feel raw and open, everything too loud and too bright and too much. She’s trying to think of an inconspicuous way to bail when all at once Sam’s palm lands on the small of her back. “Hey,” he says, ducking his head so she can hear him. His hand is burning hot through her tank top. “You wanna dance?”
Fiona blinks, every sensation in her entire body concentrated in the place where he’s touching her. “Are you serious?”
“I mean, I was, cupcake.” Sam makes a face, looking just this side of bashful. “Why, is that stupid?”
Fiona shakes her head. She loves to dance, actually. It was one of the reasons she kept going to clubs even though she knew she’d wind up splashed all over Darcy’s website, knew they’d say she was drunk or high even if all she ordered was water. Sometimes all the bullshit felt worth it for the chance to close her eyes and lose herself in some forgettable pop song, surrounded by a million people and alone in her own head.
Eventually it got to be too much, and she quit going out altogether. But shaking her hair in her bedroom with her sister just isn’t the same.
“One song,” she says now.
Sam grins, taking her hand and leading her out into the crush on the dance floor. Fiona can feel the calluses on his palms. They’re from lifting free weights at his expensive gym, she reminds herself, not repairing ambulances or playing the cello or anything even a little bit respectable.
Still, she’d be lying if she said they were a thing she didn’t like.
It’s a fast one and she’s worried he’s going to look like a total boner but in fact he’s a decent dancer, easy in his body and loose in his limbs. At least, Fiona thinks so; the dance floor is so crowded it’s not like there’s room to do a lot more than just hop up and down. Sam takes a flying elbow to the rib cage. Someone spills a drink on Fiona’s boots. When they almost get separated by a group of drunk girls in matching crop tops Sam grabs her hand to keep her from drifting and then just doesn’t let go, spinning her around so that her back is flush against him. Fiona breathes in. It doesn’t mean anything, she tells herself, even as he’s curling his hands around her waist and squeezing lightly, even as she presses herself back against his chest. More than that, she doesn’t want it to. But she turns her head to look at him anyway, Sam Fox with his dimples and impeccable bone structure, his carefully tousled boy band hair. She finds him looking back at her, his gaze catching hers in the dark.
“Hey,” he murmurs, his voice so quiet she can barely hear it over the sound of the music. Mostly she just sees his mouth move.
“Hey,” she says, swallowing a little thickly. Her skin feels prickly and tight. Sam’s face is so close that she could kiss him if she wanted, and for one reckless moment she’s afraid she’s just going to give in to the impulse and do it, can already feel the gentle bump of his nose against hers. With the music playing and his body behind her she thinks she wouldn’t even care if it was here in front of all these people. She thinks she might not even care what anyone said.
That’s when the song ends.
Right away Fiona takes a giant step away from him, her hands awkward and unfamiliar as a pair of Christmas hams. She’s terrified he’s going to take one look at her face and be able to tell exactly what she was thinking about, so she clears her throat and tucks her hair behind her ears, looking everywhere in the club but at him.
Sam, on the other hand, seems completely unbothered, and why shouldn’t he be? He probably danced like that with half a dozen girls tonight alone. For all she knows he had sex with a Jenner sister in the bathroom right before she got here. “Want to get a drink?” he asks, and Fiona nods.
“Sure,” she says, telling herself there’s no reason to be disappointed about that. After all, she’s the one who said only one dance.
She’s following him through the teeming crowd toward the bar when a girl with long dark hair and full pink lips reaches out and puts a hand on Sam’s arm. “There you are,” she says, and Fiona thinks, Of course. “I was wondering what happened to you.”
“Here I am,” Sam agrees cheerfully. “Fiona, Kimmeree. Kimmeree, Fiona.” He smiles. “Fiona and I used to work together.”
“I remember,” Kimmeree says, though it’s unclear to Fiona if she remembers because she’s been in Sam’s life that long or because she once owned a Birds of California pencil case. “Nice to meet you.”
“You too,” Fiona says, smiling back. She can’t tell if she’s imagining that Sam looks a tiny bit surprised that she knows how to behave herself in social situations, like possibly he was expecting her to hiss and scratch like the feral cats that prowl the alleys around the theater. Whatever, so he has a very beautiful girlfriend. Fiona emphatically does not care.
“I’ll get those drinks,” is all he says.
Once he’s gone Kimmeree turns to look at her, an expression on her face that suggests she too read on Twitter that Fiona was dead. “So,” she says, “what are you . . . doing with yourself these days?”
Right away Fiona feels her spine straighten; it takes some effort, but she forces her shoulders to relax. It’s a perfectly harmless question, she reminds herself. There’s no reason to get defensive. “Laying low, mostly,” she admits. “My dad has a business, so I’m working there for a while.”
“Aw, that’s so sweet!” Kimmeree chirps. She’s wearing one of those dresses that’s made entirely of spandex, so tight that it seems like you ought to be able to see the cartoon outline of everything she eats—assuming, of course, that she ever eats anything. Fiona feels like an American-made car.
Kimmeree puts a brightly manicured hand on her arm, leans in close. “Honestly,” she says, “I have to tell you, I really admire you being out and about and everything. I think I’d die if all that, you know”—she waves a hand in a way that is ostensibly meant to indicate Fiona’s entire life—“happened to me.”
Fiona bites her tongue hard enough to taste iron. “And yet here I am,” she says. “Stubbornly alive.”
Sam comes back with a drink for Fiona then, though not one for Kimmeree, and Fiona is trying to decide what to make of that exactly when Kimmeree leans in close. “Wait,” she says, ducking her head conspiratorially. “Fiona. Are you allowed to drink?”
Fiona tilts her head to the side, not understanding. “I . . . think so?” she says, though there’s one insane moment where she thinks it’s possible the law changed while she was being a hermit in her house and nobody told her. “I’m twenty-eight.”
“No,” Kimmeree says, wide-eyed. “I mean, weren’t you in rehab?”
Fiona feels Sam react more than she sees it, the way his whole body gets very still like an animal smelling danger. She wills herself not to flinch. “Oh my god,” she deadpans, putting a hand over her mouth. “You’re right. Shit, I totally forgot.”
Kimmeree’s eyes narrow, uncertain. “Wait,” she says again. “I don’t—”
“No, I appreciate it,” Fiona assures her seriously. “Thanks for looking out for me.” She isn’t even mad. Well, no, that’s not true, she’s totally mad, but more than that she just feels utterly, backbreakingly stupid. God, what did she think she was doing? Trying to be normal, trying to be a grown-up, trying to be the kind of person who could get a casual drink with—okay, fine, whatever—a hot guy she used to work with. She has no business being out like this. Everything Darcy Sinclair ever wrote about her was true.
Still, one good thing about the slow-motion natural disaster of the last decade of her life is that it’s taught her just how easy it is to get up and walk away.
So that’s what she does.
“Excuse me,” Fiona says pleasantly, then sets her wineglass on the bar and turns on her heels and weaves her way through the thickly packed crowd toward the exit. She’s made it all the way out onto the street before Sam calls her name.
Fiona ignores him, fishing her phone out of her purse. She Ubered here—she always Ubers if she thinks there’s any chance she’s going to have even one drink; the literal last thing she needs is to get herself arrested for a DUI on top of everything else—but the closest driver is finishing a ride six minutes away.
“Fiona!” Sam says again, catching up with her on the sidewalk. The hair around his face is a little sweaty, his eyes glassy and bright. “Where are you going?”
“I’m leaving.”
“Why?”
Fiona hesitates. Her first instinct is to lie—left my oven on or family emergency or Crohn’s Disease flaring up again—but in the end, what does she care? After all, she reminds herself firmly, it’s just Sam. “Because I’m not having fun.”
“Oh.” He looks confused. “Really?”
She laughs. “Really,” she tells him. “Why, is this literally the first time a girl has ever said that to you in your entire life?”
Sam considers that for a moment. “Yes, actually.”
“Oh my god.” Fiona looks down at her phone: four minutes to go. She can’t wait to get home and change into her pajamas and tell Claudia being lonely is underrated—that, in fact, having tested out the alternative, she now feels even more secure in her plan to continue apace for the foreseeable future. Maybe she’ll get a cat to make it official.
“Are you one of those girls who doesn’t like other girls?” Sam asks. He looks pleased with himself for a moment, like he thinks he’s figured something out about her. “Is that it?”
Fiona’s temper spikes. “Fuck you,” she says immediately. Three minutes, then two, then three again. “I’m one of those girls who doesn’t like anyone.”
“I mean, that’s a fact.”
That stings a little, even though all he’s doing is agreeing with her. Fiona sets her jaw. “Okay,” she says, waving shortly before turning to walk away. “Good night, Sam.”
But Sam is persistent. “Come on, Fee,” he urges, trotting after her like an animated sidekick in a Disney cartoon. “What are you even doing out here, waiting for the bus?”
Fiona cackles. “Is that your concept of how the world works? Sorry I’m not cruising up to the valet every night in a ridiculous fucking weinermobile like some people I could name.” She looks down at her phone again. “My Uber is going to be here in a minute.”
“Cancel it,” Sam says immediately.
“Why?”
“Because—because—” He breaks off, gazing at her in the light coming off the neon sign of the club. His eyelashes are long as a girl’s. “Are you hungry?” he asks. “You want to go get food?”
Fiona shakes her head. She doesn’t understand what his game is here—why he invited her out in the first place, why he cares either way if she stays or she goes. She fully expected him to give her the full-court press about the Birds thing tonight, as if by coming here she’d accepted a free vacation from a time-share company and would thus be required to sit through a lengthy and aggressive sales presentation, but in fact he hasn’t said anything about it. She wonders if he’s so drunk he forgot. It seems ill-advised to give him the chance to sober up enough to remember.
On the other hand: she’s starving. She was too nervous to eat dinner, embarrassingly, and that bar wasn’t exactly the kind of place to get loaded tots. And then there’s the other thing, the way all her organs momentarily rearranged themselves when she looked up and saw him watching her from the back of the theater yesterday afternoon. The way she felt on the dance floor with his hands on her waist.
“Maybe,” she allows.
Sam perks up visibly, like there’s a dimmer switch attached to his belly button and somebody just twisted it up to full bright. Fiona has to resist the urge to roll her eyes. “Great!” he says. “Sushi? Or tapas? Or there’s this really authentic Thai place I know—”
“Enough,” Fiona says, canceling her ride before holding a hand out for his car keys. “I’m driving.”