“Sorry, it took us a minute to get down that damn carpet. They keep trying to grab my girlfriend,” Ava said as she walked over to the group.
“Whereisyour girlfriend?” Dana asked.
“She went to the bar to get us drinks,” Ava replied. “We spend most of our time avoiding events like this, so when we go, it’s always an adjustment for me. I just want to stand behind her and hold her purse while they take pictures of her, but she doesn’t carry a purse.”
“Well, she is very pretty,” Dana teased.
Samara lifted an eyebrow.
“She is, yes.” Ava smiled.
Dana turned to see that she was smiling over at Stephania, her supermodel girlfriend, who winked back at Ava as she waited in line.
“I’m just happy to be back in New Orleans. We’ve been trying to buy a damn house here so that we can go back and forth, and I don’t want to keep renting my small apartment, but she’s so busy that getting her here for a significant period of time is difficult.”
“Are you complaining about the fact that you work remotely now, so you can live in LA, New York, Miami, New Orleans, or anywhere else in the world that you want?” Dana teased.
“No, but we agreed to live in LA part-time and here part-time. I’m just ready to have a house here that’s ours.”
“I think that makes sense,” Samara replied. “We were thinking of buying something here next year.”
“You are?” Lainey asked.
“Don’t worry; we’re still keeping Samara’s place in LA. It would just be so we don’t have to stay with you guys or get a hotel room when we visit,” Dana shared.
“So, just visiting?” Paige asked.
“Yes,” she said, laughing a little.
“And it’s your place, too, now,” Samara added. “It’s notmyhouse anymore.”
Dana had struggled initially with being so far away from her family. The worry was very real, and just trying to turn it off wouldn’t have helped, so she had gone to Samara’s therapist at first just to see if that would help. When it had, she’d found one of her own, and now, she went weekly and had exercises that she did on her own to try to sort through some of the more irrational worries she had, focusing on what shecouldcontrol. It was a process, and she still had days when she’d be driving to an audition, and she’d think that Lainey was on her way to a match, and she’d worry that something might happen again, but she had her coping mechanism now, which her sister and family tolerated. That now included Samara, too, so whenever she was worried about her girlfriend when they were apart, she’d send a quick text.
Dana Sterling: Okay?
That was all it took, and Samara would respond.
Samara Barber: Okay. I love you. You?
Dana Sterling: Okay. I love you, too.
It was their own way of telling each other that they were okay, and it always made Dana smile when she thought about how they just understood one another in this strange way.
“Hey, I’ve got my drink, but can I bring this into the theater? No, right? I need to finish it out here,” Jill said to Dana.
“You can bring it in,” Samara answered for her.
“Oh, really?” Jill asked. “Babe, we can bring them in.”
“Yeah?” Willa asked, walking up to Jill.
“I guess it’s a party kind of thing,” Jill said and added, “So, we set a date.”
“You did?” Enid asked as their group continued to get larger, taking up practically the entire lobby. “You didn’t tell me that.”
“We just set it last night, so I’m telling you all right now. Wait. Where’s Mel or Bridge?” Jill asked, looking around.
“Don’t know,” Enid said. “Spill.” She lightly punched Jill on the shoulder.
