“No maybe.” He wants to tell her that he thinks she could do anything she wanted to, star in an Emmy-winning TV show or found a company or run for president. He wants to tell her she makes him feel like he could do anything, too. Instead he closes the distance between them and curls his hand around her waist under the water, pulling her close. “I just want to kiss you,” he promises softly, which is a lie; every time he looks at her he wants too many things to name. “I’m not going to do anything else.”
Fiona smiles. “Well, that’s too bad,” she says, then pushes him up against the side of the pool and shoves his boxer briefs down over his hips.
Sam breathes in, all the blood in his body immediately rushing to his dick. “What are you doing?” he asks.
“Not putting a move on you,” she deadpans, wrapping her fingers around him and stroking. Sam bucks up into her hand. He lets out a quiet groan as she touches him, his eyes slipping closed at the rush of pleasure.
“Nice try,” Fiona says immediately, letting go and stepping back. “Look at me.”
Sam’s eyes fly open again, his gaze locking on hers.
“Good,” she says softly, and goes back to what she was doing.
She takes her time about it, experimenting—learning what he likes, Sam realizes belatedly, like maybe this is a thing she intends to do again in the future. The thought of it has him fisting his hands in her hair. “Please,” he mutters. “Fiona. Please.”
Fiona smiles, teasing. “Please what?”
“Please don’t stop.”
Fiona doesn’t stop. It’s technically not even sex and still it’s one of the most intimate moments of Sam’s entire life: her touch warm and steady, her eyes flecked with hazel and gold. He feels like she can see the tissue underneath his skin. “Fee,” he murmurs finally, wanting to warn her. “I’m gonna—”
Fiona smirks. “That’s the plan,” she says, and keeps going.
Sam keeps his eyes on hers for as long as he can manage before his forehead falls forward onto her shoulders, his breathing dense and ragged against her ear. Fiona rubs the back of his neck until he’s finished, the hot wind rustling the leaves of the palm trees high above them.
Chapter Fifteen
Fiona
They get back to Fiona’s just at the shadows are starting to get longer—the sunlight taking on that golden, late-afternoon toastiness and the outlines of the palm trees going a deep, moody blue. “So, um,” he says as the car idles in the driveway, looking suddenly bashful. “I guess I’ll text you? I mean, if you want—？”
Fiona presses her lips together to keep from laughing. Her hair is wet from the pool, the weight of it damp against her shoulder. Her mouth is still swollen and stinging, a low sweet ache throbbing between her legs. “Sure,” she says, casual as she can manage. “That’d be fine.” Then she fists her hand in his T-shirt and yanks him close for a kiss.
Inside the house she finds Claudia eating an after-school snack of potato chips dunked in peanut butter and watching Nosferatu on her phone. “Hi,” Fiona says, opening the fridge to see if there’s anything in there that could conceivably become dinner. “How was your day?”
Claudia raises her eyebrows, popping a chip into her mouth. “Long drive,” is all she says.
Fiona shrugs. “Hit some traffic,” she shoots back, then completely fails to keep her cool about it, smiling goofily across the kitchen.
Claudia grins back.
By the time she throws together some pasta and heads into her room to change for rehearsal, though, Fiona’s mood has plummeted to somewhere below sea level. Spending the day blowing off her responsibilities and running all over town with Sam may have been distracting, but the idea of marching back into the Angel City Playhouse after the little one-woman show she put on makes her want to stroll directly off the end of the Santa Monica Pier. She hasn’t talked to anyone from the cast since she sped off in her car the other night. It felt easier to try and forget it had happened altogether, to leave them to their shock and gossip. She thinks again about disappearing, letting herself become a ghost story for them to tell at cast parties: Remember when Riley Bird joined the company for a while and then it turned out she was just as batshit as everyone said?
It would be easier that way, Fiona thinks. Cleaner. Less humiliating.
But as she stares at herself in the mirror above the dresser, she’s surprised to realize she doesn’t actually want to do it.
Sure, there’s a part of her that feels obligated to finish what she started. And yeah, she doesn’t want her sister to think she’s a coward. But the plainer truth is she loves that stupid theater—the sweat-and-greasepaint smell of it, the lights going down on opening night—more than she ever loved working on Birds of California. More than she’s loved working on almost anything. She doesn’t want to let anyone to take that from her, especially Darcy Sinclair.
So. She goes to rehearsal.
When she opens the door to the theater, the whole cast is already assembled onstage, gathered close together like a cluster of flamingos riding out a hurricane. They fall silent as she walks down the center aisle, their expressions wary. She feels like she’s going to puke. “Hi,” she says finally, holding up one sheepish hand. The set looks better, she notes distractedly, though it still needs a little bit of work. “I owe you guys an apology.”
None of them says anything for a minute, a silent game of hot potato playing out on the stage. “For what?” DeShaun finally asks.
“I mean.” Fiona runs a hand through her hair. “I think that’s pretty obvious, don’t you?”
Another too-long moment of silence; shit, this might be the longest any of them have been able to keep their mouths shut since Fiona joined the company. Then Hector clears his throat. “First of all, that douchebag deserved it,” he says, surprisingly emphatic. “Second of all . . . it’s not like this was some giant shock.”
Fiona feels her eyes narrow. “Meaning what, exactly?”
“Frances,” Georgie says gently. She’s wearing flowy pants and a culturally appropriative kimono, her hair up in a little blond-gray knot on top of her head. “Fiona. We knew.”
Fiona blinks. “What do you mean, you knew?” She shakes her head, looking around the circle with a mix of horror and dark hilarity. “Like, this whole time?”
“Of course we knew,” Pamela tells her. “We’re theater actors, not mole people.”
“No, I know that,” Fiona says, though mole people is basically exactly how she described them to Sam just the other day. “I just—”
“Give us a little credit,” Larry says from his cool-dad perch on the arm of the Helmers’ couch. They’re going to need throw pillows, Fiona notes distractedly. “You were on the cover of every gossip magazine in America every week for like three years.”
“My son has the picture of you with the alligator on his wall,” Georgie tells her.
“I saw a rumor on Twitter that you were dead,” DeShaun chimes in.
“Okay,” Fiona says, holding a hand up. “Maybe I don’t need all the details.” She shakes her head. “You guys all just . . . collectively decided to let me get away with it this whole time?”