“I’m happy for you,ma chérie,” Estelle continues. “You deserve it.”
“Don’t go picking out our wedding china just yet,” she says. “We barely know each other.”
“Seriously?” Claudia sounds surprised now, the joke drained right out of her voice. “Fiona,” she says quietly. “You’ve been half in love with him since you were like fifteen.”
“I—what?” Fiona sputters, her cheeks flaming. “I have not!”
“Easy,” Claudia says, holding both hands up. “I’m not saying it to be an asshole.”
Fiona eyes her. “Aren’t you?”
“No,” Claudia says evenly, sitting perfectly still in her lounge chair. “I’m saying it because I think it’s, like, kind of true.”
Fiona gazes at her sister for a long moment, still holding her ridiculous cotton booties. “I’m going to be late,” is all she says.
Chapter Sixteen
Sam
Sam figures Russ will call him when he gets back from Tulum, but after a week goes by and he doesn’t hear anything he calls and leaves a message with Sherri, who promises to pass it along. “Nothing urgent,” he tells her, trying not to sound desperate or sweaty. He would have thought he’d heard back about the firefighter show by now. “Just, you know. Checking in.”
He drops in on his old acting class in the Valley. He spends a lot of time at the gym. He goes on YouTube and watches oldBirds of Californiaclips for a while, which is weirdly enjoyable—turns out it was a pretty good show, with sharp dialogue and the occasional bit of slapstick and a knack for tearjerker montages set to acoustic covers of classic rock songs. He’d forgotten what a gifted comedian Fiona could be when she wanted to, all perfect timing and elastic expression, her delivery always dead-on.
Sam blows out a breath, leaning his head back against the couch and sifting his hands through his hair. He knows he needs to be honest with her, to talk to her aboutBirds, but he doesn’t trust her not to bite his head off the second he brings it up. Thelast thing he wants to do is lose her. But it feels like he’s running out of time.
Still, Sam reminds himself, they might have gotten famous for playing precocious teenagers on television, but they aren’t actually kids anymore. They can have actual conversations. He’ll take her out, he decides—somewhere nice with white tablecloths and flattering lighting, the kind of place where they call french friesfrites.
And okay, he doesn’t really know how he’s going to afford to do that at this particular moment, but whatever. He’ll figure it out.
He shuts his laptop with a confident click, then digs his phone out from between the couch cushions.Want to hang out tonight?he texts.
Can’t, she replies.It’s Claudia’s birthday.
Sam thinks about that for a moment. Asks himself, not for the first time, exactly how deep he’s prepared to get in here.I like birthdays,he types, then hits send before he can talk himself out of it.
Seriously?Her reply is immediate.You want to come to my sister’s birthday?
Well, now he feels like an asshole. But: in for a penny, et cetera.I mean, only if you want me to. I’m not going to bust in through the wall like the Kool-Aid Man.
The dots appear, then disappear, then appear again. It’s close to a full minute before her reply comes through.Yeah, okay,she says.I want you to.
He’s expecting a dozen teenyboppers but instead it’s just Fiona and her dad and Estelle when he shows up, with Sam Cooke on the stereo and the sliding door wide open to the warm evening breeze.Claudia is wearing a long pink skirt made of tulle that looks like cotton candy, a crop top, and a pair of Nikes. “Samuel,” she says, sounding exactly like Fiona. “Nice to see you again.”
“Um, you too.” He had no idea what to get her but he didn’t want to show up empty-handed so finally he went to a costume shop in West Hollywood and got her a five-dollar plastic tiara. “Happy birthday,” he says, handing it over. Claudia grins and pops it on top of her head.
“She had a party with her friends, too,” Fiona assures him, passing him a pitcher of lemonade spiked with basil and ginger and nodding in the direction of the backyard. “My family is tragic, but it’s notthattragic.”
Sam shakes his head. “This doesn’t feel tragic,” he says, and it actually doesn’t. They’ve draped a cloth over the patio table and lit candles, strung little white lights all through the trees. There are glass jars full of herbs and flowers lined up at the center of the table alongside an enormous spread of food: chicken, hummus, pita, all kinds of pickled veg. “This is amazing,” Sam says, taking a second helping even though technically he’s only supposed to be eating 1,500 calories a day right now. “Did you guys cook all this?”
“Oh god no,” Fiona says, reaching for the tabbouleh. “It’s murder chicken.”
“Murder chicken?” Sam repeats, and Claudia nods.
“The guy who owned the restaurant put on a white silk suit and went out one day and murdered his mom and sister,” she explains pleasantly, scooping some hummus onto her pita. “Then he shot himself in the head.”
Sam stops chewing. “I’m sorry,” he says, “whatnow?”
“Hey,” Fiona’s dad says with a tired-looking smile, pointing a drumstick in his direction, “you asked.”
