“Hey.” Julie folded her arms. “You can’t insult my girlfriend.”
“I will criticize your girlfriend more than I will criticize your wife. Take that as your incentive.”
“Oh, god, Linyue,” I groaned, a hand to my forehead. “I don’t need three parents pressuring me to get married!”
Linyue stood up taller, a half step back. “Which reminds me, your parents wish to see the two of you sometime this weekend. Your mother wants to have the four of you on a ski trip this winter and are looking to plan it. Hopefully your girlfriend won’t embarrass herself this time.”
Julie snorted, waving her off. “I got it this time. Don’t worry about it! Pizza, French fry. I’m on it.”
She gestured the ski shapes as she said it, only problem being that she got them backwards. Linyue stared at her a second longer before looking back at me. “Maybe she should stay in the chalet.”
“I’m good!” Julie said. I laughed, kissing the side of her head.
“It’s rough on everyone’s first time. We’ll just make sure you have some time with the instructor.”
“Did I get it wrong? French fry, pizza.” She tried again, saying them and gesturing them both in the opposite order, which put her right back at getting them wrong.
“I’ll talk to Mom and figure out a good time this weekend, then,” I said. “God knows Dad won’t know a time.”
Linyue nodded, stepping back all perfect efficiency. “Then I suppose I will see you there. Congratulations again. Onto the next one.”
“Well, don’t I feel celebrated,” I said dryly. Julie squeezed my arm lightly.
“Ah, you will tonight, that’s for sure.”
I grinned at her. “I know. Starting with… you’ve made me crave pizza.”
We got out of the afterparty before too much longer, and then finally I wasn’t an actor anymore, just a woman out with her partner, and sure enough, the driver was amenable. It got some weird looks pulling up to a sketchy pizza parlor in a limousine dressed like Julie and I were, but the whole movie premiere, press event, afterparty, everything—all of it was nothing compared to the reception we got at Tasty Slice.
“Yo,” Tubman called to the back after looking like he’d just gotten the best news of his life. “Mrs. and Mrs. Julie are here!”
We got cheered and celebrated all the way up to the counter, where they tried to treat us to free pizza, but Julie argued with them, insisting on paying, and then she and I argued because I also insisted on paying, but she won out in the end. She was comfortable herself these days, anyway—not only had she gotten on with Jewel right before they roughly doubled their market, but she was still working with some key figures in the music industry and agenting for a few stars, not least of which the one she’d promised me at a different rooftop party ages ago, Stephen Shale, who had sold mountains of records by now and yet still looked a little like a boy at a middle school recital when he came out on stage.
And Julie’s hopes turned out to be true, too, because Kingmaker was, indeed, in his forward base here. But he spared nothing except a knowing nod across the room to us from his usual spot in the corner, sitting across from a girl who looked at him like he was speaking nonsense. Julie laughed at it, shaking her head incredulously once we’d finished beating away our admirers behind the counter.
“Would you look at that,” she said. “Business is booming.”
“New client?”
“Looks like it. He’s been on a roll lately. I’m going to go interrupt.”
Well, of course she was. I looked back behind the counter, where Phil the tall guy who smelled like oregano so much I wouldn’t have been surprised if he just rubbed it in his clothes each morning, waved me off.
“You go with your girl, I’ll bring your pizza wherever you sit down.”
I caught up with Julie over at Kingmaker’s base, where he was just clapping Julie on the shoulder saying something about her outfit. He turned to me. “And how’s this, huh? Talk about the queen’s grace.”
The girl sitting across from him looked at us skeptically. “Um… you two are friends with this… Kingmaker man?”
“Julie, and this is my partner Helena.”
Kingmaker piped up. “Her hot supermodel girlfriend, as promised. Yo, Julie. You were off to a movie premiere, right? You went counting stacks in the back of a limo sipping champagne with your hot supermodel girlfriend?”
“Who goes aroundcounting stacks?” Julie said. “I’m not making deals in cash, dude.”
He gestured to her. “Oh, the legal luxury life, you get her.”
The girl looked like she believed in Kingmaker approximately as much as Julie did. She turned back to him. “You hire actors to come in dressed up and pretend you got them into a movie premiere?”
