“Hey!” he calls, pleased. It’s a good day. “What is this, a reunion?”
“Uh-oh.” Jamie grins, lopsided and familiar. “Can’t be using that word yet.” He looks exactly the same as he did when he played their dad on Birds of California, that extremely well-preserved look that all the network guys out here have. “Hey, Fee, he said it, not me.”
Fiona smiles. “I will be sure to keep that in mind.”
“You do that,” Jamie says, slinging an arm around Sam’s shoulders and squeezing. He smells like a redwood forest. “Man, this is a surprise. How you doing, kid?”
“I’m good,” Sam says, ducking his head a little shyly. Back when he was still on Birds Jamie used to take him out for burgers at the end of every season and ask him what kinds of projects he wanted to work on, what his favorite movies were. Even back then Sam knew it was corny how much he looked forward to it, but he always looked forward to it anyway. When he heard about Jamie’s development deal at HBO he wondered if maybe there was a chance he’d get a call.
“I love this,” Jamie says now, letting him go and clapping him on the back. “The whole gang back together.”
“Except for Max,” Sam says, for Fiona’s benefit. “Can’t forget about Max.”
Jamie frowns. “Which one was Max?” he asks.
“Oh, come on!” Sam chides. “Little redheaded kid who played the cousin, you remember.”
“Of course I remember,” Jamie says. “I called and talked him into coming aboard the other day.” He turns to Fiona. “Did Thandie tell you she signed on?”
“I—” Fiona breaks off, the disbelief written all over her face. “Thandie?” she asks. “Really?”
“I know,” Jamie says with a self-deprecating laugh. “I was surprised, too. I thought she’d be too busy with Soderbergh and Fincher to be hanging around with schmucks like us. But she said it was such an important part of her life that she’d come in and do a couple of episodes for old times’ sake.”
“That’s big of her,” Fiona mutters under her breath—or Sam thinks that’s what she says, at least. Jamie doesn’t seem to hear.
“Anyway, I’ve gotta get going,” he says. “Got a meeting inside. But it was good to see you guys.” He winks. “Nice that you still hang out.”
He hugs both of them goodbye and lopes off across the parking lot in his leather jacket like Ben Affleck about to drill a nuclear missile into an asteroid. “I love that guy,” Sam says once he’s gone. Fiona is already back in the car, buckled neatly into the passenger seat with her hands folded in her lap. “Don’t you love that guy?”
Fiona doesn’t answer. “Did you plan that?” she asks. She isn’t looking at him, instead staring straight out the windshield at Jamie’s receding back.
Sam stares at her blankly. “Plan what?”
“Running into him.”
“What? No.” He shakes his head. Her tone is completely different than it was a minute ago, and when he looks at her a little more carefully he notices her body language is, too. She was acting, he realizes suddenly, and he’s immediately and bizarrely impressed with her chops all over again. She’s better than he is, that’s for sure. He wants to march her back inside the studio and tell them, This is the girl you should hire. “I had no idea he was here.”
“Okay,” Fiona says, and it’s obvious she thinks he’s full of shit. “Because I’m just saying, he sure didn’t seem that surprised to see us together.”
That irritates him, even as he feels a little bit guilty; he thinks of the way Jamie winked at him, like they were in on something together. Still: “Really?” Sam can’t resist saying. “He literally said, ‘This is a surprise.’”
Fiona’s eyes narrow. “Are you making fun of me right now?”
“No,” Sam says as they pull out of the parking lot. “Of course not.”
“Can you blame me for being a little bit paranoid? You’re crawling all over me trying to get me to do this revival, and then suddenly—”
“Oh, is that what you’d call what happened in my apartment this morning?” he interrupts. And he knows, he knows he’s going to regret it, but it’s out before he can stop himself: “Me crawling all over you?”
Fiona’s mouth gets very thin. “Okay,” she says quietly. Sam can practically see her nailing the No Trespassing sign back up over her door. “You know what, that’s fine, we don’t have to talk about this anymore.”
Sam sighs. “Fiona—”
“I said it’s fine, Sam.”
“Fine.” They’re quiet for a couple of minutes, both of them stewing, until all at once Sam realizes he doesn’t actually know where he’s going. “Do you still want breakfast?” he asks her. He can hear in his own voice that it sounds like he wants her to say no.
Fiona hears it, too, or maybe she really just doesn’t want to be around him any longer than she has to. “I should get back,” she says. “I can get an Uber, if you want to just drop me somewhere.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Sam says crabbily. “I’ll take you home.”
They don’t talk the entire ride back to her dad’s house, Fiona staring out the passenger side window through a pair of sunglasses she dug out of her enormous handbag. Sam keeps glancing over, but her face is inscrutable, a mask.
“Look,” she says, when he finally pulls into her driveway. She unbuckled her seat belt halfway up the block in preparation; frankly, he’s surprised she’s saying anything to him at all. “It was good to catch up. Hope they call you back for your thing.”
“Okay. Thanks.” Sam frowns. He thinks he should leave it alone, but he doesn’t want to. “Fiona,” he says quietly. “Can you tell me what happened just now?”
“What?” Fiona shakes her head, feigning ignorance. “Nothing. This was fun.”
It definitely doesn’t feel like nothing, but honestly, Sam is too irritated to press her about it. If she wants to act crazy and irrational, let her act crazy and irrational—that’s her business. It’s not like nobody warned him about her. “Okay,” he says. “See you around.”
“Yup.”
Sam watches her cross the lawn and let herself into the front door of her house, her shoulders hunched and fingers twitching. He thinks she might look back, but she doesn’t. He sits there for a moment longer once she’s inside, feeling like a total boner. Then he steps on the gas and drives away.
Adam calls that night while Sam’s eating plain quinoa out of the pot to atone for the burger, watching Wheel of Fortune on Hulu. “I’m going to tell you something,” Adam says, “but I don’t want you to freak out.”
That’s a terrible fucking way to get someone not to freak out, Sam thinks, fear already blooming in his chest. “What?”
“Mom’s okay,” Adam tells him, “but she had a little bit of a fall.”