I considered myself a reliable judge of character. I had a pretty good inkling what they would all do. Except for one of them. Unfortunately for me.
CHAPTER 50
* * *
ASHLEY
I hadn’t planned to kiss him in front of all his friends at that noisy bar. I was just so grateful for how he’d tried to protect me from that awful woman and her battery of questions, and I didn’t know how else to show it.
When I told people I was an actress （which I hated to do）， their first question was inevitably some version of “What have I seen you in?” Which was just another way of asking, “Are you a real actress? Or a wannabe?” We would never be so rude to grill people in other professions. “Oh, you’re a doctor? What surgeries have you done? You’re a lawyer? What cases have you argued? You’re a chef? What recipes do you know?” Yet we actors get it every damn day.
I was confident my fortunes were about to change, but I didn’t want to have to explain what was taking so long. So I excused myself to go to the bathroom. As I made my way across the crowded bar, I thought back to my very first booking. It was only for a student short film （about a star tennis player who quits her sport to take care of a sick friend）， but it was paid （a hundred dollars a day!） and I was the lead. I’d auditioned for it in the director’s apartment—a crummy little studio on the edge of the USC campus. He didn’t have a costumer, so I wore all my own clothes. The makeup and hair person had never done anyone’s makeup and hair but her own, so I wound up doing that, too. I learned on my next job that makeup and hair were two separate jobs （under the jurisdiction of two separate unions）， and that I shouldn’t have been responsible for finding and bringing my own props—sunglasses, backpack, tennis racket, trophies （borrowed from Jordan）—a prop master was supposed to do that. The whole thing was kind of sketchy, and I never did get those props back （sorry, Jordan!）， but I didn’t care. As I saw it, every day I got paid to act was a good day, whether the film got finished or not （it didn’t）。
My next booking came right away—a guest-star spot on a well-known sitcom. I had a makeup artist and a hairstylist, and the props were all provided and stored on a five-ton truck parked outside the stage. My dressing room （I had a dressing room!） was in a truck called a honey wagon. I think the name was supposed to be ironic, because those dressing rooms are basically just oversize porta-potties and smell nothing like honey, but it was just as sweet to me.
I found out about auditions from a guy in my acting class （back when I could still afford acting classes）， and he sometimes even gave me a ride. He taught me how to talk my way in: “I think my audition was supposed to be tomorrow, but I’m working tomorrow so my manager said to just come now?” As he explained, if you’re there and they like your look, they’ll let you read. If they don’t like your look, you’re not getting the job anyway, so what difference does it make?
I snuck into a lot of auditions like that. I told myself I wasn’t lying, I was acting! （And isn’t that my job?） My friend and I also “acted” as each other’s managers. He gave my name and number as his, and I gave his name and number as mine. We so rarely got calls for each other, it didn’t matter. And when they came in, it was another chance to flex our acting chops!
I went on lots of auditions but hardly ever booked. I didn’t care. Not at first. I loved the game, the chase, the feeling of possibility. But then disappointment set in, and it became a grind—sitting in traffic, waiting my turn, hearing “no” over and over and over again. Eventually my actor friend quit the business to become a veterinarian, and I had to find my own auditions. That’s pretty much when they ground to a halt.
I dried my hands and steeled myself to rejoin the conversation. I was no Meryl Streep, but I was a good enough actress to pretend the buffalo wings were delicious and that I’d forgotten all about the inquisition I’d just endured. But I didn’t have to go back to the table. Because when I stepped out of the bathroom, Nathan was standing at the door waiting for me.
“Hey,” I said. And then right there in front of the ladies’ room and two drunk women staggering to get past us, he slipped a hand around my waist and pulled me into him, and we kissed like we didn’t care that the whole waitstaff was watching.
“You wanna get out of here?”
The rest of the evening was a blur. I remember Nathan’s hand on the small of my back as he guided me out of the restaurant, eager but not aggressive. I remember holding hands as he walked me to my car. I remember watching him punch my address into his phone, feeling nervous because I hadn’t done this for a long time and also excited because . . . well, I hadn’t done this for a looonnnng time.