Birds of California(25)

“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?”