“You just said ‘FYI.’” She wiped ranch from the corner of her mouth.
“FYI is evergreen,” I explained to her.
“Whatever. You sneaking any hotties into that pool house while Brody’s out of town? Maybe you should let him see them on the security footage. Make him a little jealous.”
“He’s myboss,” I reminded her, even if I had secretly fantasized about how far a little jealousy would go with Brody.
“Uh, your boss who doubles as your sometimes fuck buddy and who you’ve been infatuated with since college.”
“You know I couldn’t make any commitments when Mom was alive. There was no point in letting anything get serious enough to where someone would want to take the next step and live together—plus, Brody and I have always been purposefully casual,” I said, as though I were a goddamn adult who knew what she wanted and got it too. “That’s the only way this works. For both of us.” That’s what I’d told myself for the last few years. The convenient arrangement with Brody was as much for his sake as it was for mine.
I flopped back in bed and let the phone fall to my side so that Tess’s view was of the ceiling fan. The verysleekceiling fan.
Brody’s pool house was nicer than my own home. Well, my former home.
He’d insisted I stay here after he found me crying in his walk-in closet the day of Ruby’s estate sale. Tess had offered too, but she, Max, and their five kids were down to one bathroom and two bedrooms during their renovation.
In the moment, I’d wanted to be a martyr and refuse Brody’s help, but the truth was I had nowhere to go. It would have been the perfect time for me to tell him that maybe I wouldn’t be so on edge if he paid me enough to have my own place in a twenty-five-mile radius of my job or maybe if he’d just finally give me that long-promised promotion, but a small, pitiful part of me wondered if moving into his backyard would be the start of something more for us. Finally.
What it had turned out to mean was that I never actually went home from work.
Some nights were good. We’d stay up late in his media room and watch movies we had always tried to convince each other to like. (The fact that he didn’t see the cinematic value in the 1991 classic horse-jumping movieWild Hearts Can’t Be Brokenhad and always would be Brody’s number one red flag.) And then there were nights when he was getting home late and needed someone to run lines with him and sometimes that ended with us in bed and me tiptoeing back over to the pool house in the morning before the rest of the staff arrived.
Brody had left for a research trip to Scotland for his next feature three days ago, and I was nearly certain he planned on surprising me with a ticket to join him. It was my fortieth birthday today, and he had witnessedbothof myOutlanderphases. (When I discovered the first book in college and then again when the TV series began airing a few years ago. Brody was hooked too, though, and even watched a few episodes with me. I never told him I was actually rewatching each episode with him, because Mom and I always watched together when they dropped at midnight.)
So up until the moment Ruben, his driver, pulled out of the front gates with Brody in tow for the airport, I thought I was for sure about toEat,Pray, Lovemy way through Scotland. But instead, I was here in the Hollywood Hills, signing for packages and fielding maintenance people on my fortieth birthday.
“I’m sorry we couldn’t go out for your birthday tonight,” Tess said. “Next week, though.”
I picked the phone back up so she could see me again. “We’re forty,” I said, unable to hide the creeping dread in my voice.
“Babe, I’vebeenforty. Don’t make it a thing. Don’t be one of those people who gets hung up on it. Graceful aging, et cetera, et cetera.” She turned her head from the screen. “Did you put the kids down?”
Max said something I couldn’t decipher in the background and then Tess said, “I’ll talk to Chloe.” She shoved a chip in her mouth and turned back to me. “Okay, I gotta run. But did you get the succulent I sent?”
“Yes,” I said. “I look forward to killing it.”
“Give it a name. That will make it harder to kill.”
“Or worse when it finally does die. Love you. I’ll talk to you later. Tell Chloe I support whatever form of civil disobedience she’s currently participating in.” I loved Tess’s kids, but after years of caretaking for Mom and assisting for Brody, I had no desire to be a mother. Of all the things in my life that made me second-guess myself, the decision to stay childless was not one of them.
“Then you can come and deal with her tantrum tomorrow, when she hasn’t slept in twenty-four hours,” Max called off-screen.
“Love you, Max!” I said.
“Happy birthday, V!” he responded.
“Wait, wait,” Tess said. “Did you finish your read-through ofTheWunderkindfor that agent with the Nelson Group?”
Ah, yes. Two months ago, just after Ruby’s big announcement, I’d accidentally gotten tipsy at an after-party Brody was hosting and pitched the two-decade-old script I’d been nursing since college to some rando who turned out to be Simon Shah, a budding junior agent who’d just been featured inThe Hollywood Reporter. I woke up to a text that he wanted to see my screenplay as soon as it was ready. (Spoiler: The damn thing would never be ready.)
Since then, I’d barely been able to bring myself to crack open my laptop. The thought that someone could say no to something I’d worked on for so long was suddenly very real.
“Yes!” I lied. “Totally. Just one last read for typos.”
“Perfect. Okay, good. I’m here if you need eyes.” Tess blew me a kiss and the screen went dark.
God, she and Max were fucking perfect. They were good friends to meandthey made pretty babies. Tess was a fierce entertainment lawyer while Max was her ideal match and completely happy in his role as a stay-at-home dad. Sometimes they were too much to look at because they just complemented each other so well.
