Birds of California(69)
“Just that they’re going in a different direction,” Russ says, shaking his head in a way that makes Sam suspect that is not, in fact, all they said. “Look, don’t pack your bags just yet, all right? Something always comes along.”
“No, I’m not,” Sam says, frowning a little uncertainly. “Wait, who said I was packing my bags?”
“It’s an expression, Sammy.” Russ looks at him a little strangely. “Take it easy, will you?”
“I’m easy,” Sam mutters, which is of course a lie. What he is is an out of work never-was with $27,000 in credit card debt and a ridiculous electric car he’s pretty sure is about to be repossessed. What he is is a guy who doesn’t know how he’s going to pay next month’s rent. Just for a second, he thinks about asking Russ to float him until he books something, but that would make him desperate—that would make him poison—so instead he pastes a smile on his face and signals the waitress across the patio for another vodka tonic.
“I’m easy,” he says again.
He goes off his diet. He smokes a lot of weed. He reads Weetzie Bat, which is a weird fucking book—an eighties fairy tale about a version of LA he’s pretty sure never actually existed, with a lot of white girls wearing headdresses in a way that feels distinctly not okay. Still, he thinks he gets why Fiona would have liked it when she was a kid. It’s about finding people who love you no matter what inadvisable shit you go out and do, drinking too much or running away from home or accidentally impregnating a witch who casts spells using Barbie dolls. It’s about making a family where there wasn’t one before.
Sam lets out a quiet groan, tossing the book onto the coffee table and telling himself he doesn’t miss her. It keeps hitting him at weird moments: finding one of her hair elastics in his bathroom, scrolling past some creepy fucking murder documentary Netflix now thinks he might enjoy. He clicks her name in his contacts list a thousand times—thumbs the screen to dial, even—then immediately hits the button to end the call before it can connect. For fuck’s sake, what does he think he’s possibly going to say to her? He’s never felt like such a piece of shit in his entire life.
He fucked it up, that’s all. Of course he did; he always does. It was only a matter of time. He remembers the last time he saw her before that day at the print shop, the cast party his last season of Birds. It was at some trendy restaurant in West Hollywood—long since closed now—with exposed brick and industrial lighting, the tall warehouse windows flung open to the cool night air. He’d bummed a cigarette from one of the sound guys, and when he headed out into the alley to smoke it he found Fiona sitting on an overturned bucket beside the dumpster, wearing a dress stitched with a million purple sparkles and reading a skinny paperback book. Her eyes widened at the sight of him. “What are you doing out here?”
Sam blinked, then recovered. “Looking for you, obviously.” He held up the cigarette, leaning back against the wall of the restaurant beside her. His thigh brushed the side of her arm.
“Obviously.” Fiona used her index finger to mark her page: King Lear, he saw when he glanced at the cover, which he’d never read but which looked like a total downer. “Since when do you smoke?” she asked, eyes narrowing as she watched him light up.
“Since when have you been paying attention?” He shrugged. “Awhile.”
Awhile like since right now, truth be told—in fact he’d only wanted one for the sake of something to do with his hands. He’d been weirdly edgy all night, awkward in conversations, fighting a strange feeling of embarrassment at being at this party in the first place now that everyone knew he wasn’t coming back next season. It felt risky to be leaving a job without having anything else lined up, even though Russ, his new agent, kept saying he was going to start booking films no problem.
Now Fiona was quiet as Sam took a drag, then held her hand up wordlessly for the cigarette. Sam looked down at her, surprised, but handed it over, the tips of his fingers grazing hers. She inhaled, then passed it back, the silver smoke heavy around her face in the half dark.
“So,” he said—doing what he always did when he felt like he was out of his depth, which was turn on the charm—“you gonna miss me?”
Fiona laughed out loud. “No,” she said decisively. “In fact, I’m looking forward to being the prettiest person on set for a change.” She leaned her head back against the brick and looked up at him, all eyelashes and collarbone. “You glad to be leaving?”
Sam shook his head. “Glad is the wrong word,” he said, although until two minutes ago he would have said exactly that. Still, standing next to her in this alley, all at once he was starting to have second thoughts. “Excited to do some other stuff, is all.”
Fiona nodded, her expression filled with—there was no other word to describe this—longing. “I would love to do other stuff,” she confessed.
That surprised him; even on her weirdest, drunkest tabloid days he’d never seen her anything but prepared and professional when the cameras were rolling. He’d always thought that must mean she liked it, disappearing into Riley Bird every day of her life, but suddenly he wasn’t so sure. “Why don’t you?” he asked.
“Can’t,” she said with a shrug, a dead kind of acceptance in her voice. “Contract.”