“And your shirt?”
“Goodbye, Claudia!”
It takes exactly two seconds for Fiona to realize she’s made a terrible mistake.
The club is an enormously obnoxious velvet rope situation in West Hollywood, the bass from the sound system palpable through the sidewalk and a long line snaking down the block. Fiona hesitates, raking her fingers through her hair and trying to decide on a strategy. She’s not about to wait in that line, that’s for sure, but she’s also not about to announce herself to a bouncer, both because people who do that are douchebags and because she’s not at all confident it would work. Shit, this is why she doesn’t go out.
Well, this is one of a thousand reasons, at least.
She’s about to bail—it probably wasn’t a real invitation anyway; it’s not like he’s in there watching the entrance waiting for her to show up—when the guy at the front door catches sight of her. He’s a lot smaller and less assuming than she thinks of bouncers as being, like maybe he sells high-speed internet during the day and this is his side hustle. “Oh,” he says, unclipping the rope and waving her through, “shit, sorry. Go ahead.”
Fiona glances over her shoulder to make sure he isn’t talking to someone else. “Um,” she says, “thanks.”
Inside the club is dark and hot and noisy, the music vibrating belligerently up her spine. Fiona works her way through the crowd, past the bar and the DJ booth and a cluster of low leather couches until finally she spots Sam talking to a guy she thinks she recognizes from a time travel thing on cable. She watches them for a moment, Sam’s eyes and mouth expressive as he listens to whatever the guy is saying. Fiona remembers this from when they used to work together, how much he seemed to like people and how easy it was for him to talk to them, from celebrity guest stars doing cameos to impress their nieces and nephews down to the lowest of PAs.
He catches sight of her over the guy’s shoulder just then, his eyes widening in naked surprise. “Hey,” he calls, sounding frankly shocked—though not, if Fiona had to guess, in a bad way. He’s wearing white jeans and a short-sleeved shirt with an extremely loud paisley print; on any other human it would look ridiculous, and it looks ridiculous on Sam too, but the rest of him is so maddeningly, infuriatingly attractive that it almost doesn’t matter. He hugs her hello, which is how she knows he’s already drunk. “You came!”
“I came,” she agrees grimly, trying to ignore the dorky way her stomach swoops at the contact, like something out of Riley Bird’s teenage diary.
“I’m glad,” he says. “You thirsty?”
Fiona nods.
He leads her over to the bar and introduces her to a dozen different people whose names she forgets the moment she hears them—actors and models and influencers, a singer in a girl group that Claudia likes. Just for a second, Fiona wishes she’d changed her shirt after all. Back when she was doing the show she used to love getting dressed up—hip local designers sending her a brand-new wardrobe every season, her closet overflowing with leather and denim and silk. She got rid of all of it once Birds got canceled, at first because she had it in her head that if she looked like shit all the time the paparazzi would stop taking pictures of her—which wasn’t true, as it turned out—and later because she decided that if they were going to take pictures of her anyhow she wasn’t going to let them know she cared what she looked like either way. And it worked. She did stop caring how she looked, for the most part.
Except that tonight, surrounded by beautiful girls in beautiful dresses—standing here next to Sam Fox—she cares a little bit.
Fiona drinks her wine, shifting her weight uncomfortably. She hasn’t been in a crowd this size in five years. Her nerve endings feel raw and open, everything too loud and too bright and too much. She’s trying to think of an inconspicuous way to bail when all at once Sam’s palm lands on the small of her back. “Hey,” he says, ducking his head so she can hear him. His hand is burning hot through her tank top. “You wanna dance?”
Fiona blinks, every sensation in her entire body concentrated in the place where he’s touching her. “Are you serious?”
“I mean, I was, cupcake.” Sam makes a face, looking just this side of bashful. “Why, is that stupid?”
Fiona shakes her head. She loves to dance, actually. It was one of the reasons she kept going to clubs even though she knew she’d wind up splashed all over Darcy’s website, knew they’d say she was drunk or high even if all she ordered was water. Sometimes all the bullshit felt worth it for the chance to close her eyes and lose herself in some forgettable pop song, surrounded by a million people and alone in her own head.
Eventually it got to be too much, and she quit going out altogether. But shaking her hair in her bedroom with her sister just isn’t the same.
“One song,” she says now.
Sam grins, taking her hand and leading her out into the crush on the dance floor. Fiona can feel the calluses on his palms. They’re from lifting free weights at his expensive gym, she reminds herself, not repairing ambulances or playing the cello or anything even a little bit respectable.
Still, she’d be lying if she said they were a thing she didn’t like.
It’s a fast one and she’s worried he’s going to look like a total boner but in fact he’s a decent dancer, easy in his body and loose in his limbs. At least, Fiona thinks so; the dance floor is so crowded it’s not like there’s room to do a lot more than just hop up and down. Sam takes a flying elbow to the rib cage. Someone spills a drink on Fiona’s boots. When they almost get separated by a group of drunk girls in matching crop tops Sam grabs her hand to keep her from drifting and then just doesn’t let go, spinning her around so that her back is flush against him. Fiona breathes in. It doesn’t mean anything, she tells herself, even as he’s curling his hands around her waist and squeezing lightly, even as she presses herself back against his chest. More than that, she doesn’t want it to. But she turns her head to look at him anyway, Sam Fox with his dimples and impeccable bone structure, his carefully tousled boy band hair. She finds him looking back at her, his gaze catching hers in the dark.
“Hey,” he murmurs, his voice so quiet she can barely hear it over the sound of the music. Mostly she just sees his mouth move.
“Hey,” she says, swallowing a little thickly. Her skin feels prickly and tight. Sam’s face is so close that she could kiss him if she wanted, and for one reckless moment she’s afraid she’s just going to give in to the impulse and do it, can already feel the gentle bump of his nose against hers. With the music playing and his body behind her she thinks she wouldn’t even care if it was here in front of all these people. She thinks she might not even care what anyone said.
That’s when the song ends.
Right away Fiona takes a giant step away from him, her hands awkward and unfamiliar as a pair of Christmas hams. She’s terrified he’s going to take one look at her face and be able to tell exactly what she was thinking about, so she clears her throat and tucks her hair behind her ears, looking everywhere in the club but at him.