Birds of California(39)
“Really?” Jamie raised his eyebrows.
Fiona frowned, instantly regretting her answer. Ugh, she should have said something else: art films, or Michael Bay movies. She didn’t know what would be impressive to him, and as much as she hated to admit it, she wanted to be impressive. “What’s wrong with theater?” she asked.
“No, nothing,” he promised quickly. “Theater is great, for a certain kind of performer.” He shrugged. “I just think you’re probably destined for greater things, that’s all.”
Fiona smiled a little uncertainly. It was a compliment, wasn’t it? After all, he’d literally just told her she was spectacular. Still, there was something about the way he said it that rubbed her the wrong way—like she was Riley Bird and he was her wise-but-cool father, like maybe he knew her better than she knew her own self.
Then again, he’d been in this business a hell of a lot longer than she had. Probably he did know better.
Jamie made a face just then, like possibly he could read her mind. “Scratch that,” he said, his fingertips landing briefly on her arm by way of apology. “I’m being an asshole. You’re a grown woman. You know your own mind.”
Did she? Fiona wondered, forgiving him instantly. Sometimes she felt grown-up, like the kind of person who could walk red carpets without giggling at the absurdity of it and talk eloquently in interviews with magazines and TV hosts. And sometimes she felt like the same dopey little kid she’d always been, frizzy-haired and noisy and awkward around guys. “No,” she said. “I appreciate it. I can use all the help I can get.”
“I’m always here for it,” Jamie promised, glancing over his shoulder before signaling for the exit. “You’re special, Fee. I knew that as soon as I saw you in that audition room with that neon streak in your hair. The second you walked in I thought, Holy shit, that’s my girl. None of those other guys in there knew their ass from their elbow. But right from the beginning, you were different.” He reached over and squeezed her knee, just quick, before letting go and putting both hands back on the steering wheel. “Even back then, you were a fucking adult.”
Fiona smiled. She knew it was just Jamie being Jamie—he was generous with feedback like that, everybody’s big brother and best friend; just this morning he’d told Sam he was a prince among men—but there was a part of her that felt like maybe this was different. That maybe he actually saw her, the two of them sitting here in the dark.
“This is me,” she said when they pulled up in front of her parents’ house a few minutes later. She felt suddenly embarrassed by the unremarkable smallness of it, thinking of the party he’d thrown at his place when the show first got picked up: his land and his pool and his collection of vintage arcade games on the lower level, how glamorous it had all felt. This was just a regular house where she lived with her parents. Her parent, she amended to herself. Just the one, now. “Thanks again for the ride.”
“Yeah, no problem,” Jamie said, waving her off. “I can drive you whenever.”
“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” she said. She didn’t want to be, like, a charity case, some sad orphan he felt like he had to look out for.
But Jamie didn’t seem to be thinking of her that way at all. “Let’s see how it goes,” he hedged. “We’ll work something out. And in the meantime, take care of yourself, will you? We need you.” He grinned. “I need you.”
Fiona smiled at that, gulping down the sudden lump at the back of her throat. For one crazy second she almost blurted it all out: I think my dad is having some kind of serious mental health situation. My sister is wetting the bed again even though she’s seven years old. Somebody took pictures of me in a bikini at the beach a few weeks ago and now they’re all up on Reddit, with a bunch of creepy old guys in their basements saying what they want to do to me. And I don’t actually think I like being quasi-famous that much at all.
Instead she rolled her eyes, like he was silly for worrying. She was an adult, right? He’d just said it himself. She could handle it. “I will,” she promised easily. “I always do.”
Jamie hugged her goodbye across the gearshift, sturdy and solid. Fiona closed her eyes and held on.
“Fiona, honey?”
Fiona blinks and comes back to herself, the night air cool on her flushed, sweaty face. All at once she realizes she’s outside in the yard. She doesn’t remember opening the slider or stepping out onto the patio, but she must have, because here she is with bits of broken plate and scattered sandwich all around her; here’s Estelle peering at her worriedly from the other end of the grass.
“Fiona, honey,” Estelle says again, in a voice that makes Fiona wonder exactly how long Estelle has been trying to get her attention, “are you all right?”
Fiona’s skin prickles with shame. It’s not the first time she’s had an episode like this—hell, the whole year after the show got canceled was basically one long and continuous episode like this—but enough time has passed since they were a regular occurrence that she’d started to believe maybe they were a thing of the past, faded out of her life along with the neon streak in her hair.
“I’m fine,” she promises Estelle now, smiling across the yard in the darkness in a way she hopes looks convincingly sane. Her official diagnosis from Pam was post-traumatic stress disorder, which Fiona found profoundly embarrassing—she was on a television show, for fuck’s sake; she didn’t serve two combat tours in Iraq—and to this day she thinks it’s ridiculous and implausible enough that she’s never actually said it out loud. Still, every once in a while she’ll watch a movie or read a news story about some poor ex-military guy completely coming apart at the seams in the supermarket over how many flavors of Triscuits there are and think: You know what, dude? I get it.