And here comes Maximo around the corner with his briefcase, walking straight into the middle of the sentence like a man into a clean glass door.
"She's not my girlfriend." Fast. Too fast. The speed of it could strip paint off a wall.
The suits scatter. I slide off the reception desk, delighted to my bones, and my traitor heart picks that exact second to swell for a man who swears up and down he feels nothing at all.
"Wow." I press a hand over my chest. "That was quick, Mr. H."
I only break outMr. Hwhen I want to watch him twitch. He's Maximo the rest of the time now, has been since the day he handed me the name to keep. But one well-aimedMr. Hstill gets me the exact twitch I'm after, and right on cue, there it is. "You rehearse that in the mirror?"
"Get in the car."
"'She isnotmy girlfriend,'" I mimic, staggering after him like the wounded party I am. "You didn't even let the man finish. He was building to fiancée. You stole his whole arc."
"Jassy."
"I'm just saying, for a guy who claims to feel absolutely nothing, you sure deny it—"
"I have a meeting."
"—fast," I finish, ducking into the elevator beside him, beaming at his reflection in the doors. "You deny it awfully fast."
He doesn't answer. But I watch his reflection while he watches the numbers, and I watch that muscle in his jaw do its guilty little dance. And I think about the smile in the kitchen. The shoulder he didn't move. The flowers laid too neat on a grave.
He denies it fast, my Maximo.
And I know something now that I didn't at the start. You only ever deny a thing fast when the slow, honest answer is the one that would cost you everything.
Chapter Twelve
THE PRODUCER HAS Acorner office, a wall of framed posters, and a way of saying the worddinnerthat comes with fine print.
"Just the two of us," he clarifies, in case I've made the amateur mistake of hearing it as a work thing. "Somewhere private. We'll talk about the role."
"The role I already auditioned for."
"The role I have a great deal of say over." He smiles. It doesn't reach any part of his face that matters. "Friday. I'll send a car."
And the worst part, the truly humiliating part, is that I hesitate. A smart girl walks straight out of that office. But this smart girl is broke, and it's a real part in a real film, and I have exactly enough money to be dangerous to my own dignity, and for one ugly second I do the math on what I'd trade for it.
Then I go home and I tell Maximo because I tell Maximo everything now, and I watch his whole face turn to winter.
"You're not going," he tells me.
"It's a career meeting."
"It's not, and you know it's not, which is why you told me." He's already reaching for his phone. "That man has a reputation two decades long. He's had complaints buried that would end most careers."
"So I just lose the part."
"You lose nothing." He doesn't look up. "Because I'm taking you Friday. And he can hold hiscareer meetingin front of me."
And there goes my borrowed heart, carrying on like the man just said something romantic instead of something furious. He's rearranged his whole Friday to stand between me and trouble, and my chest has decided that's the same thing as a love letter.
Which is how I end up at the nicest restaurant I've ever been too nervous to touch the cutlery in, sitting between a producer who can't stop sweating and a man who orders for the table, mafia-boss-cool, in a voice that ends conversations. The producer talks about the role for exactly as long as it takes to understand that no version of Friday is going the way he planned. He remembers an early morning. He leaves before the entrees.
"He's not going to give me the part now," I point out, watching him flee.
"He was never going to give you the part," Maximo says. "He was going to give you an invoice."
