Birds of California(26)

Sam considers that for a moment. “Yes, actually.”

“Oh my god.” Fiona looks down at her phone: four minutes to go. She can’t wait to get home and change into her pajamas and tell Claudia being lonely is underrated—that, in fact, having tested out the alternative, she now feels even more secure in her plan to continue apace for the foreseeable future. Maybe she’ll get a cat to make it official.

“Are you one of those girls who doesn’t like other girls?” Sam asks. He looks pleased with himself for a moment, like he thinks he’s figured something out about her. “Is that it?”

Fiona’s temper spikes. “Fuck you,” she says immediately. Three minutes, then two, then three again. “I’m one of those girls who doesn’t like anyone.”

“I mean, that’s a fact.”

That stings a little, even though all he’s doing is agreeing with her. Fiona sets her jaw. “Okay,” she says, waving shortly before turning to walk away. “Good night, Sam.”

But Sam is persistent. “Come on, Fee,” he urges, trotting after her like an animated sidekick in a Disney cartoon. “What are you even doing out here, waiting for the bus?”

Fiona cackles. “Is that your concept of how the world works? Sorry I’m not cruising up to the valet every night in a ridiculous fucking weinermobile like some people I could name.” She looks down at her phone again. “My Uber is going to be here in a minute.”

“Cancel it,” Sam says immediately.

“Why?”

“Because—because—” He breaks off, gazing at her in the light coming off the neon sign of the club. His eyelashes are long as a girl’s. “Are you hungry?” he asks. “You want to go get food?”

Fiona shakes her head. She doesn’t understand what his game is here—why he invited her out in the first place, why he cares either way if she stays or she goes. She fully expected him to give her the full-court press about the Birds thing tonight, as if by coming here she’d accepted a free vacation from a time-share company and would thus be required to sit through a lengthy and aggressive sales presentation, but in fact he hasn’t said anything about it. She wonders if he’s so drunk he forgot. It seems ill-advised to give him the chance to sober up enough to remember.

On the other hand: she’s starving. She was too nervous to eat dinner, embarrassingly, and that bar wasn’t exactly the kind of place to get loaded tots. And then there’s the other thing, the way all her organs momentarily rearranged themselves when she looked up and saw him watching her from the back of the theater yesterday afternoon. The way she felt on the dance floor with his hands on her waist.

“Maybe,” she allows.

Sam perks up visibly, like there’s a dimmer switch attached to his belly button and somebody just twisted it up to full bright. Fiona has to resist the urge to roll her eyes. “Great!” he says. “Sushi? Or tapas? Or there’s this really authentic Thai place I know—”

“Enough,” Fiona says, canceling her ride before holding a hand out for his car keys. “I’m driving.”





Chapter Eight


Sam


She takes him to In-N-Out, the two of them sitting outside on rubber-coated benches in the yellow light of the neon sign. The waffle weave digs into his ass. It’s a warm night, the smell of car exhaust and fryer oil hanging densely in the air.

“Can I ask you something?” Fiona says, dragging a fry through a puddle of secret sauce. She ordered without looking at the menu, coming back to the table with a cardboard box full of cheeseburgers and fries; she also paid, which he appreciates, though he doesn’t say that out loud. “How do you even know all those people?”

Sam takes a sip of his milkshake. “All those people, like, my friends?”

“Sure.” Fiona looks dubious.

“They’re industry people, mostly.” He shrugs. “Kimmeree does something with social media.”

“Of course she does.”

Sam frowns. The truth is they’re not actually his good friends, those guys back in the bar. Erin in particular hates that whole crowd; she heard who all was coming out tonight and bailed so hard and so fast Sam was surprised she didn’t pull a muscle. They’re a lot, he gets it. But he’s also not about to sit here and let Fiona shit on a bunch of perfectly nice people she didn’t even bother to talk to. “Look,” he tells her, “whatever she said to you back there. She didn’t mean anything by it.”

“Didn’t she?” Fiona huffs a laugh.

“No,” Sam replies, “she didn’t. She was trying to be friendly.”

Fiona eyes him over her cheeseburger like he’s too stupid to breathe air. “That is . . . emphatically not what was happening there.”

“Fine,” he admits, “maybe not. But—but—”

“But what, exactly?” Fiona raises her eyebrows, gestures with her chin toward the car. “Go back to the bar and hang out with her, if she’s such a sweetheart. Honestly, I don’t even know what you’re doing out here eating french fries with me when your girlfriend is—”

“She’s not my girlfriend.”

“Okay,” Fiona says, setting the rest of her burger down on its waxed paper envelope. “The person you have casual recreational sex with. Whatever.”