Birds of California(5)

Caroline pauses before she answers. Fiona can imagine her on the other end of the phone, her painted red mouth just slightly pinched. “Okay,” she says finally. “That’s fine. As your former agent, then. I don’t know what your situation is these days. Maybe you’re happy being out of the game forever. I can respect that, after everything you’ve been through. But if you have any interest in ever acting again—in ever having any kind of career on the screen—then I would think long and hard before I turned my nose up at this offer. This kind of second chance doesn’t come along that often, especially—” She breaks off.

“Especially for people like me,” Fiona finishes. “Noted. Thanks for the tip.”

Caroline sighs again. “Fiona—”

“You can tell Bob Arkin I’m not interested,” she says. “And you can tell Jamie Hartley to go fuck himself.”

Fiona hangs up before Caroline can answer. She drops her phone on the bed, then gets up and bolts through the still-quaking house, past the living room where her dad is staring blankly at Guy Fieri and the kitchen where Claudia is hand-washing her bras in the sink.

“Whoa,” Claudia says, poking her head out into the hallway. “Where are you going?”

“Out,” Fiona snaps, then immediately feels like a piece of shit, but it’s too late for her to do anything about it, because her legs are already carrying her down the front walk, her fingers already fishing around for her car keys, her lower lip already trembling in a very dangerous way. She sets her jaw and peels out of the driveway, opening all the windows to the hot, dry air.

She drives for close to an hour—palm trees silhouetted darkly against the last blue dregs of daylight, neon blurring by on either side. She doesn’t stop until she runs out of road. She leaves the car running in the parking lot at the beach and heads for the shoreline, the driver’s side door gaping open behind her; it’s not until she feels the heavy grit of the sand between her toes that she realizes she forgot to put on her shoes.

Fiona wades in up to her knees, gasping at the shock of it: the water cold and endless all around her, the wide black canvas of the sky. She stands as still as she can, for as long as she can manage. Then she gets back in her car and goes home.





Chapter Two


Sam


Sam wakes up on Erin’s couch with a hangover the following morning, head pounding and mouth like the inside of a gym bag.

Also, his dick is out.

“Why am I naked?” he asks in alarm, peering down at himself and then over at Erin, who’s perched at the breakfast bar in jeans and a smart-looking blazer, cup of coffee clutched in one tawny hand. He sits up so fast he gets the spins. “Wait, we didn’t . . . right?”

“Oh, we did,” Erin reports grimly. She’s scrolling through emails on her laptop, not bothering to look up at him. “Honestly, Sam, the pure masculine allure of you in those tight leather pants was finally too much for me after all these years.”

“You’re hilarious,” Sam grumbles, swinging his legs gingerly onto the floor. He pulls the throw blanket off the back of the sofa, wrapping it around him like a toga; the room tilts underneath him, then rights itself again. “Also, those pants aren’t leather. They’re coated denim. It’s a different thing.”

Erin shrugs. “Whatever they are, you were wearing them when I went to bed,” she tells him. “I don’t know what happened to you after that.” She shuts her laptop with a tidy click. “You owe me a new throw blanket, PS. That thing is going straight into the trash.”

“Well that’s just silly,” Sam points out reasonably. “By that logic, you’d also need to replace the couch.”

“You want to buy me one of those, too?” Erin fires back. “Frankly you’re lucky I didn’t toss your bare ass directly onto the street first thing this morning. I’ve spent my entire life purposely trying to avoid a faceful of male genitalia. I’m not about to start tolerating it in the sanctity of my own home.”

“You know I sleep hot,” Sam mumbles, scrubbing both hands through his hair. He vaguely remembers waking up around three or four, sweaty and anxious, yanking irritably at his clothes before falling back into a restless, half-drunk sleep. “Can I have some coffee?”

“Get it yourself,” Erin says cheerfully, standing up and setting her own mug in the dishwasher. “And lock the door on your way out. I’ve got an interview in Pasadena.” Erin’s a freelance writer for various culture and entertainment outlets around LA, and the fact that she can afford to live alone in an apartment with a dishwasher is a testament to how very, very good she is at it.

Sam frowns. “Can you push it back?” he asks, a weird current of panic zinging through him at the thought of her leaving him alone. “Let’s get breakfast.”

Erin stops at the door, her dark eyes narrowed. They were roommates for three years back when she was still blogging and Sam was hustling for walk-ons; she’s the closest thing to family that he has in LA. “Are you okay?” she asks.

“I’m fine,” he promises, though it comes out too quickly to sound terribly convincing. “I mean, I’m hungover as all hell, but other than that? Never better.”

“If you say so.” She turns back to the door. “In that case, I’ll see you later.”