She laughed, a small hum in the back of her throat. “I guess I set myself up for that one. What about you, then?”
She was surprised to see the amusement drain from his face. “I’m not sure there’s much to stretch.” He looked off into the distance, lost in thought for a moment. “I’ll figure it out, though. I kinda have to. It’s not like I can go back to The Vine, right?”
“Don’t underestimate yourself,” she said before she couldthink too much about it. He turned his head slowly to meet her eyes, his face still mostly in shadow. Sensing the moment was on the verge of becoming too earnest, she added, “I’m sure you could still handle the lunch rush with the best of them.”
He cracked a smile. “I used to dream I was back there all the time, during the first few seasons. Like they’d realized they’d made a huge mistake and dumped me back where I belonged. Or sometimes it was like I never even moved out here in the first place, and I’m back in Oklahoma, helping my dad run his body shop. Even after all these years…I don’t know.” He shook his head, looking out over the railing for a few long seconds. “Do you feel like you deserve it?”
“What?” she asked, startled.
He half turned and gestured back toward the party. From the catch in his voice and his troubled expression, she knew what he was really asking: ifhedeserved it.
Lilah almost deflected it with a quip, but something—probably the one-two punch of that third glass of wine on an empty stomach and her accidental monster hit—compelled her to answer seriously.
“No. Yes. I mean…as much as anyone deserves anything in this industry, I guess? So much of it is out of our hands. I know so many people from school, or classes, or auditioning, who were—are—so fucking talented, but never got a break. I don’t think I’m here and they’re not because I deserve it more. But since Iamhere, all I can do is my best, you know? Show up on time, know my lines, take it seriously, try not to be an asshole to the people I work with…” He raised his eyebrows. “Well, most of them,” she amended, sheepish. “Sorry. I think I lost the thread of that question.”
“No, no, that was a good answer. But this was your dream, right? What you always wanted.”
She turned to face him fully. His expression was serious, searching.
His star-is-born origin story had been a huge part of the promotional push for the first season: landing in L.A. by chance as a roadie with a friend’s band, couch surfing and waiting tables with no ambitions beyond the next night’s party, then plucked to star in the top-rated show in the country without so much as a credit as a tree in a school play.
He’d brushed it off in his aw-shucks way at the time, and as the years went by, she’d assumed he’d bought into his own hype—that he really wasthatfucking special. But as she studied him now, she realized she’d been wrong. He’d never stopped feeling like a directionless fraud, he’d just gotten better at hiding it.
Out of nowhere, she was struck by the woozy sensation of time folding back in on itself, suddenly granting her the ability to see him—reallysee him—as he was now, free of the vestiges of the younger man she’d known a decade ago. Her gaze tracked across his face, taking him in anew: the faint lines in his forehead and beside his eyes, the furrow in his brow, the way he held himself with a gravitas she didn’t know he was capable of.
Something in her chest constricted, and she pushed it aside, trying to refocus on his question. “Yeah,” she said, drawing it out slowly, unsure. “Yeah, it was my dream. I never thought my career would look like this, though.”
“Like what?”
“Playing the same character forever. Being known for this one thing. Being part of something so huge. I mean, I’m grateful for it, but I would’ve been satisfied just being a working actor. I didn’t need to be a celebrity. Even a B-list one,” she added self-deprecatingly. “Sometimes I wonder if I would’ve been happier staying under the radar, even if I made less money.”
She saw his expression tighten, subtly, almost imperceptibly in the dim lighting. “What?” she asked.
“Nothing.” He shook his head. “It’s just nice that’s not a factor for you. The money.”
It was impossible to ignore the bitterness that had crept into his tone. Lilah bit the inside of her cheek, fighting the urge to get defensive. If she’d been even 10percent more sober, she would’ve ended the conversation there and gone back inside.
“When I was in high school,” she said, her voice calm and measured, “I found out my mom was in a ton of debt. Like, hundreds of thousands of dollars. I had no idea until I started applying for college.”
Even more than a decade later, long after she’d worked through it with a string of therapists, the same emotions shuddered through her in a rush of heat. The betrayal. The fear. Dozens of happy memories turned retroactively grim with this new context, every clue she’d brushed off and ignored falling into nauseating place. The terrifying realization that the person she’d trusted to guide her through the world was, in fact, no better equipped than she was—and possibly worse. She supposed she was lucky she’d been able to maintain the illusion for that long.
She glanced over at Shane, whose jaw had gone slack. “What? Why? I mean, how?”
She shook her head. “She’d been a stay-at-home mom our whole lives. She went back to work part-time after she and my dad got divorced, but…I think it was really important to her that she could give us everything my dad could. Even if we didn’t ask for it. Even if we didn’tneedany of it. But she cared a lot about what other people thought of her; the two of them were constantly trying to one-up each other. So, yeah, we had more than we wanted growing up, but it wasn’t real. It wasn’t even about us.”
Shane was staring at her intently, his drink down to melted ice in his hand, forgotten. “So what happened?”
Her mouth twisted. “What do you think? I paid it all off after I booked the show. I still have to bail her out every now and then, but less, ten or twenty K maybe.” She shrugged, a little helplessly. “What else am I gonna do?”
He didn’t say anything else, just kept looking at her, that same intense gaze. She felt self-conscious all of a sudden, unsure why she’d told him, wishing she could take it back.
“I had no idea,” he said at last.
“Why would you?” she asked, her tone light. “She doesn’t owe you money, does she?”
The edge of his mouth curved up. He pushed himself off the railing, and she did the same, falling into step beside him as the two of them slowly walked along the perimeter of the terrace.
“It’s not likeyouneed to worry about money anymore, either,” she said. “You never even have to act again if you don’t want to. Just get an endorsement deal for one of those midlife-crisis cars, or some macho-man liquor brand. You’ve got nine seasons of residuals, plus the convention circuit. You’re set.”
