He’s gone before Fiona can decide if was good to see him too.
Chapter Four
Sam
So, okay, Sam thinks as he peels away from the curb outside the print shop. That’s definitely not going to happen, then. Which is fine. He didn’t even want it to. Who wants to play second banana in a reboot of a show they did half a lifetime ago, anyway? He’s trying to move forward here, not back.
He spends the rest of the afternoon getting ready for his audition and trying not to think about Fiona. It was a total mindfuck, seeing her again after all this time. Which isn’t to say she didn’t look good; she looked sort of incredible, actually, dark eyes and sharp cheekbones and those long, tan limbs. She’s put on some weight in a way that makes him think of girls from back home in Wisconsin—the dramatic curves of her body, the roundness of her ass in her jeans.
None of which actually matters, he reminds himself, turning back to his script. The audition is for a half-hour comedy pilot about a pair of newlyweds who have to move back in with the guy’s parents after his startup collapses. It’s cheesy as all hell and has at least two jokes Sam is definitely uncomfortable with, but it’s alead, so he preps for it with the same attention he’s given to any of the other hundreds of auditions he’s been on since he moved to LA fifteen years ago. He remembers his first day on set forBirds of California, the way his heart stuttered when he saw their names on the doors of their trailers:Sam Fox. Jamie Hartley. Fiona St. James.
Fuck, he should try to stop thinking about Fiona.
He runs through his lines, irons his button-down. Messes with his hair for a while. There’s a tiny part of him that worries it’s thinning, even though he’s only thirty-one. “Hi,” he says once he’s finally satisfied, smiling his most charismatic smile into the mirror and hoping the casting director is more taken with him than some other people he could name. “I’m Sam Fox.”
The audition goes decently, he thinks, though even after all this time he can still never really tell what they’re thinking back there behind the folding table. He’s hopeful, at least. He texts Erin from the car when he’s finished to see if she wants to meet at their usual place and get drinks.
Can’t,she texts back.Dinner with hipster glasses girl.
Sam sends her a series of crass emojis meant to communicateHope you get laid, trying to ignore his own weird, sudden pang of loneliness. After all, if he really wanted company, there are at least a dozen other people he could text. But the thing about a lot of his friends here is that Sam knows they’re going to want to talk about work—who booked what or what he’s going to do now that the show is canceled—and he doesn’t want to do that tonight.
He thinks about Fiona again, but that feels like a dangerousroad to wander down, so instead he drinks two beers and watches some porn and passes out on the couch in his living room. When he wakes up, his phone is buzzing on the cushion beside his face, a picture of his brother Adam wearing a cheese hat displayed on the screen. The home page of the porn site is still up on his computer, a pop-up ad for some disconcerting animated game playing over and over.
“Did I wake you up?” Adam asks, when he answers. “It sounds like I woke you up.”
“What?” Sam blinks, watching the cartoon boobs bounce for a moment without entirely meaning to. He shuts the screen of his laptop, then slides the whole operation under the couch. “No.”
Adam doesn’t buy it. “Isn’t it like, seven p.m. there?”
“I wasn’t asleep.”
“Okay,” Adam says. “Sorry again about your show, man.”
“It’s no big deal,” Sam says automatically. Part of being the one who got out of their hometown means it’s his job not to complain about his life here, to pretend that it’s all industry parties and movie premieres and sticking his hands in the prints outside the Chinese Theatre. He doesn’t tell his mom and brother about the directors who never follow up, or the Thanksgiving he spent eating Indian takeout by himself because Erin flew home to Corpus Christi and he was too proud to go to Russ’s house. He definitely doesn’t tell them about his credit card bills.
“You okay for money?” Adam asks now.
“I—what?” It takes Sam a second to realize he’s asking because of the show getting canceled and not because he somehowread Sam’s mind or saw his bank statement. “Yeah, of course.” He clears his throat, rubbing a hand over his nap-dazed face. “How did it go today?”
“Fine,” Adam reports. “Although Benson just left to go work in computer crimes because things were getting too complicated between her and Stabler.”
“Well, shit,” Sam says. His mom and brother are working their way through all seventy-nine seasons ofLaw & Order: Special Victims Unitwhile nurses drip poison into her veins with the intention of shrinking her tumor enough for her to have surgery. It makes Sam feel like he can’t breathe when he thinks about it, so he tries not to, although more often than he’d like to admit he wakes up sweating through his sheets in the middle of the night, promising himself he’s going to be a better son in the morning. “You think she’ll come back?”
“You know,” Adam says, “somehow I do.”
Sam hauls himself up off the couch, filling a glass of water at the tap to wash the beer and sleep taste out of his mouth. “Speaking of comebacks,” he says, “did I tell you they’re going to rebootBirds?”
“Yeah, I got your text,” Adam says. “It’s a sure thing?”
“Well, no, not exactly,” Sam admits. “I guess they’re still waiting for Fiona to sign on the dotted line, or whatever.”
“Oh, man,” Adam says, and Sam can hear the grin in his voice. “Fiona St. James. I haven’t thought about her since she did that photo shoot with the crocodile.”
Sam drains his water in one long gulp. “I think it was a Gila monster.”
“You’d know better than me, dude.” Adam laughs.
Sam frowns. “What does that mean?”
