“Hey,” Julie said. “You don’t recognize Helena Warrick? You can literally look it up, the premiere was today.”
“Darling, please, don’t embarrass me,” I sighed. The girl looked somehow even more skeptical, but Kingmaker beat her toit, pulling me up on his phone and showing her the pictures of me and Julie at the premiere just earlier.
“This the real deal. I don’t saysuccess guaranteedfor nothing, yo,” Kingmaker said, air-DJing again. The girl suddenly looked pale, looking confusedly between us and the picture.
“Don’t trust him,” I said lightly. “Julie got somewhere because she’s a genius. He tricked her into taking on a few thousand in debt at first to motivate her into working harder and told her to come up with a whole fake identity…”
“Hey—yo?” Kingmaker whirled on me. “Man, you can’t just go airing my trade secrets like that.”
The girl looked horrified. Julie beamed. “Heispretty good at motivating you, though. Just take it with a grain of salt. And make sure to ask for the price of services upfront if he recommends them. He’s not gonna cover shit. Did he try to charge you for the pizza here?”
“Hey, not cool,” Kingmaker said. “We’re making a deal. I ain’t cheaping out on her.”
“He offered tosplitthe price,” the girl said. “Dollar fifty each.”
“Dude,” Julie sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “That’s worse than just charging her the full thing.”
“Yo, Julie!” Tubman called, and I turned back to where he had a whole box of pizza. “Know you just ordered a slice each, but we accidentally burned the whole pizza. You wanna just take it? S’already got the extra sauce.”
“Tubman, you rat,” Julie laughed, taking the box. “I can pay for my pizza, man! Hell am I gonna do with you, dude?”
Tubman chuckled, giving me a knowing look, and somehow the situation got even more complicated, because that was where we were when—once again, even here, Estelle tracked me down, pushing in through the doors and waving to me, rushing across the room and catching me in a hug.
“There you are!” she called. “Oh, you got the three of us pizza?”
“Stellie… how did you even find us?”
She laughed, pulling back from the hug with her eyes shining. “Oh, I see! You wanted to just have your big premiere and then disappear without even seeing your best friend from childhood. Well, it’s a good thing I have your driver’s number.”
“What, Emilio? You have his number? Why?”
She grinned. “You know.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Estelle. With him?”
She put her fingers in the air a good… seven, eight inches apart. I pushed them down.
“I don’t want to know. Put that away.”
She laughed. “Well, am I ever glad I caught you before you ran away again!” she said, and she turned to hug Julie, too. “Hey, Houdini. Help me convince your girlfriend to come with us to the house upstate this weekend? You can come, too, obviously. It’s girls only, but no rule saying the girls can’t kiss.”
Julie laughed. “We’ll consider it. For right now we’re busy celebrating.”
“Oh, I believe it. I’m sure you’re heading home tocelebrateright now and I won’t get in the way, butfirstyou have a lot of pizza and a lot of stories from the premiere, so let’s share.”
“Mooching off my food,” I said, and she snorted.
“Like they’re letting you pay for it.”
“She’s got us there, Freckles,” Julie sighed. “Oh—let’s crash Kingmaker’s consultation session. That poor girl probably didn’t even get any pizza when Kingmaker tried to go halfsies on it.”
I laughed. “If she’s calling Kingmaker, she’s probably desperate. Could use a free slice. Sure, you win, Stellie.”
“I always do,” she sang, and she led the way to the booth seat, where we all crowded in together and the girl, for her part, did look a little starstruck. And like she didn’t believe this washappening in a sketchy Brooklyn pizza parlor, but Estelle was a persuasive one and made friends with her anyway, and we all sat together to dig into a pizza that was remarkably unburned.
It was fun, and it was good to catch up with Estelle on the stories from the premiere, but by the end of it, all I wanted was a warm bed and my girlfriend. I tried to forget certain things I’d learned as I got back into the car and Emilio drove us back to our apartment, and Julie went up on her tiptoes and pulled me down into a kiss as soon as we’d gotten the door shut behind us.
“God, you’re so fucking hot when you’re working a press event,” she said against my lips. “You’re a fucking star. And you sure as hell deserve it.”
