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"You look good no matter the lighting, Hakeem."

"True, but that's not the point." He smiled, but only a little. He took another bite and chewed slowly before continuing. "I ran out of grants after two years. Financial aid wouldn't keep covering a theater degree. You know how that goes. They'll find money for engineering. They'll find money for nursing. But an Afro-Latino kid studying Shakespeare? Budget gets real tight."

Layla's face shifted. She knew exactly how that went.

"So I dropped out," he said. "And the thing is, dropping out didn't feel like failure. It felt like a decision. Like the university was the thing standing between me and the actual work. I had this whole narrative—I'm too big for school, I'm too hungry, I need the real industry, I need Los Angeles." He smiled without warmth. "That narrative got me through a ten-hour drive with everything I owned in the back seat."

"And then?"

"And then Los Angeles turned out to be full of people who were also the best in their hometown."

He said it plainly, without self-pity, which somehow made it land harder. Layla set down her fork.

"Hakeem."

"I'm not fishing. I'm telling you what it's actually like. In Las Cruces, I was somebody. Here, I'm a bartender who does character work in a haunted bar and can't get a callback for anything that pays more than gas money. The talent pool here is—" He exhaled. "It's an ocean. And I've been treading water in it for long enough to wonder if I'm swimming or just not-drowning."

Layla was quiet for a moment. Then she said, "You know that's not how other people see you, right?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, Tabbi doesn't keep you around because you pour drinks pretty. She keeps you because you're the best performer she has, and she knows it. That’s why she gives you the notes she does. The audience remembers you. I mean, you do things in those scenes that people with actual agents can't do, and the only reason you don't know that is because you've decided that if it hasn't turned into a career yet, it doesn't count."

Hakeem looked at the table.

"You're talented," Layla said. "Actually talented. Not L.A.-talented, where everybody's good, and nobody books anything. You're the kind of talent that makes people uncomfortable because they can tell you haven't peaked yet."

He should have said thank you. Instead, he said, "That casting call is still open. For After Amy."

Layla's eyes sharpened. "You looked it up again."

"I look it up every day. It's becoming a ritual."

"Hakeem."

"They extended the deadline. They want self-tapes. I could do it in my room with my phone and a ring light I don't own."

"Borrow mine and do it!"

"You sound like Antonio."

The name came out before he had planned it, and something in the air between them changed temperature. Layla tilted her head.

"Your roommate told you to audition?"

"He—" Hakeem picked up his water. "He said I should stop talking myself out of things before anything's happened. Which is annoyingly reasonable for a man I'm having a complicated situation with."

"Complicated how?"

Hakeem took a long drink of water. "Complicated."

Layla waited.

"Can I ask you something weird?" he said.

"Are you kidding me? Babe, we have so established that we are more than just-at-work friends. Bring on the weird."

Hakeem turned the plastic cup in his hands, feeling a little encouraged and a little hesitant. "If someone were a writer. A real one, not like someone who just journals here and there. I’m talking professional… and they were writing about someone they knew. Using things that person said, and details from actual conversations. Would that be⁠—"