Erin’s eyebrows creep, just slightly. “A girl you might actually what, exactly?” she prompts.
“Actually nothing,” Sam says, glancing around the noisy restaurant to avoid meeting her eyes.
“Liar,” Erin says primly, and nods at the bartender for the check.
Back at his apartment he puts Supermarket Sweep on streaming and makes a list of things he could do for a living besides acting. Barista, he thinks. Gym teacher at a private school where you don’t have to have a teaching certificate and they don’t care if you’ve never taught gym, or anything, ever before. He’s just typing how to become a referee in the NBA into Google when his phone rings on the coffee table. “Is this Sam Fox?” a woman’s voice asks when he answers.
Sam hesitates, a quick orange lick of anxiety flaring inside his rib cage. He just talked to his mom a couple of days ago, he reminds himself; if anything was really wrong, Adam would have called. Still, for a second he almost says no. “Yes . . . ?”
“This is Estelle Halliday,” the voice reports. “What are you doing tomorrow morning?”
Sam blinks in surprise, then looks around his filthy apartment. “I—probably nothing,” he says honestly.
“Good,” Estelle says, her diction crisp and regal. “I was wondering if you might like to try out for a play.”
Chapter Nineteen
Fiona
Fiona spends the better part of Saturday morning flat on her back on the stage at the theater, staring up at their fire hazard of a lighting rig and trying to figure out how to tell everybody that they’re going to have to cancel the show. She thought it was the noble, grown-up thing, to deliver the news in person, but now that she’s actually waiting for them to show up she feels like an asshole of the first magnitude for dragging the entire cast all the way downtown to attend the epitome of a meeting that could have been an email. She wonders if it’s too late to call them all again and tell them not to come. She’s just digging her phone out of her pocket when she hears the door open at the back of the theater and the sound of someone clearing his throat.
Fiona sits up so fast she gets dizzy, blinking out at the dark, empty house. She can’t see his face in the glare of the stage lights but right away she recognizes the broad, solid outline of his body, the TV-star line of his jaw.
“Hi,” he calls, lifting a cautious hand in greeting. “I’m Sam Fox. I’m here for an audition?”
Fiona snorts to cover the sharp, hopeful sound of her inhale, using her hand to shade her eyes. “Excuse me?”
“A gulf has opened up between us,” he tells her, voice booming as he strides up the center aisle, “I see that now. But Nora, couldn’t we bridge that gulf?” He plants his feet just before he reaches the stage—shoulders back and chest puffed, completely in character as a wounded, arrogant husband. “Can I never be more than a stranger to you?”
Fiona laughs, but the laugh turns into something else halfway out, her breath catching like broken glass inside her chest. “Why are you reciting my play to me?” she asks.
Sam drops his arms and just like that he’s himself again, his smile a little bit sheepish. “I learned it,” he confesses quietly. “I stayed up all night. I learned the whole thing. I’m ready.”
Fiona gazes at him for a moment, not understanding. “Why?”
Sam shrugs. “Because I think maybe I’m falling in love with you,” he explains, “and because I heard you needed a Torvald.” He shakes his head. “Estelle told me your guy fell off a curb or something? I don’t understand how you break your ankle falling off a curb.”
“It’s not a real thing,” Fiona agrees faintly. Then, in spite of herself, never quite as tough or cool or unbreakable as she wants to be: “Go back to the other part.”
“Sorry.” Sam smiles at that, slow and teasing. “Which part, exactly?”
“Don’t be an asshole,” she tells him. She’s still sitting on the stage, her legs out in front of her. She hasn’t washed her hair in three days. “The part about maybe . . .” She trails off, waving her hand. “You know.”
“There’s no maybe,” Sam corrects. “I shouldn’t have qualified it just now. I’m scared you’re going to tell me to go fuck myself, but still I shouldn’t have qualified it.” He wrinkles his nose. “Is that weird?”
“That you qualified it?”
“That I’m sure.”
“I mean, yes.” Fiona squeezes her eyes shut, opens them again. No guy has ever said it to her before. Nobody has ever even gotten close. “But keep going.”
“Well,” Sam says—taking one step toward her, then another. “I am. I’m sure. And I get why you wouldn’t trust me, and I’m not asking you to say it back.” He sits down on the edge of the stage, turning his body to face her. “I just think we should, you know. Plug into the love current, like Weetzie Bat says.”
“Shut up.” That makes her laugh, loud and disbelieving. “You read Weetzie Bat?”
Sam nods, shifting around and digging the battered paperback out of his pocket. “I brought it back in case you told me you never wanted to see me again,” he admits, his fingertips brushing hers as he hands it over. “You seemed serious about me returning it in a timely fashion.”
“I was,” Fiona says. She flips instinctively through the soft, worn pages, then glances at him sidelong. “And I still might.”
“Yeah.” Sam smiles a little sadly, there and gone again. “You do need a Torvald, though.”
Fiona raises her eyebrows. “You seem very confident that I’m going to give you this part.”
Sam shrugs. “I mean, I can do my monologue if you want,” he offers, then jerks a thumb toward the door. “I’ve got my headshots in the car, we can do the whole—”
“That won’t be necessary.”
“I owe you an apology.”
“That won’t be necessary, either.”
Sam’s face falls then, his broad shoulders sagging. He lifts his hand like he’s going to touch her, then seems to think better of it. “Fee,” he says, his voice cracking a little. “Yeah it is.”
Fiona leans back on her palms and tilts her chin up, staring into the lights and concentrating on keeping her bottom lip steady. She didn’t want to let him hurt her. She didn’t want to be the kind of person who could get hurt. She didn’t want to be the kind of person who felt much of anything, period, but then he strolled into the print shop like he couldn’t possibly imagine she’d be anything but delighted to see him, and now it’s all these moments later and here they are. “Yeah,” she admits finally. “It is.”
“I’m sorry,” he says immediately. “It doesn’t matter why you didn’t want to do the fucking show, obviously. You said you didn’t want to, and that should have been enough. But I felt desperate—not that that’s an excuse—but I felt desperate, so I acted sneaky, and I acted like a piece of shit. And I’m sorry. Again.”