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I crossed my oven mitt-clad hands under my arms. “So you’re saying I suck.”
She laughed. “Suck? No. You’re just honing your craft. I’d cast you, and I’m not just saying that. You really do steal the show when you’re on stage, and I think it’ll be the same on screen.”
“I honestly don’t know why they bother with me,” I said. “I didn’t get into that much drama. I mostly met people for lunch like the producers wanted, went to auditions, cried about missing my family, or stood around the bar.”
“Did you ever think you’d have to get a job to support your current job? It’s like they made you work at that place so the group would have a nighttime meeting spot. It’s the after-hours Peach Pit of reality TV.”
I snickered. “That’s exactly why they set me up there. That, and I swear they knew Sean and I would start dating before either of us did.”
“It’s because they needed a Bad Boy Bartender,” Val said. She’d been secretly guiding me all season, helping me understand the inner-workings of the industry so I wouldn’t step in too many piles of shit on national television. “He’s got tattoos, a motorcycle, and a bad attitude. How’s it going with him anyway?”
“Perfect,” I said, tossing the mitts on the counter. Sean and I saw each other when we wanted and the crew got footage for the show. He never prodded about my past or asked how I was feeling. He was flighty and shallow, and that was the absolute most I could handle for a love interest. If my life ended up a series of flings, I wasn’t sure I’d mind too much. “Off camera, he treats me all right,” I said. “Better than it’ll look on TV.”
“What about that other guy, the boom operator?”
“I like him, too, but ours is a romance for the shadows. He’s not supposed to date the cast.”
Val’s eyes sparkled as she sipped her champagne. “So that means the sex is hot?”
“Very.” I turned away to check on the bagel bites, worried Val would read my expression and sigh the way she always did. Sex belonged to Manning first. It was so fucking predictable but true—he’d destroyed me for anyone else. Sex could be a lot of things, including passionate, but no one would ever come close to Manning. “Do you miss New York?” I asked her.
“Kind of.” She sounded thoughtful. “Not more than I’d miss working in film, though. I wouldn’t exactly complain if Hollywood was relocated to Eighth Avenue. What about you?”
I leaned back against the counter to face her. New York had definitely had its moments. For me, it had been split in half with graduation in the middle. Before Manning, after Manning. We’d constructed a life there together in five days, and I had spent the next few years not living it. “Coming back was the right choice,” I said. “I didn’t realize I needed a change until it was in motion.”
A male voice spoke from just outside the kitchen. “If only you’d had someone there to point that out to you.”
I turned around with my most convincing look of surprise. I was an actress, after all. “Corbin?”
He sauntered in with his signature ear-to-ear grin and bouquets in both hands. If I could cash in all the flowers he’d given me over the years, I’d be living in a high-rise in downtown New York City like he was. “Evening, superstars.”
“What’re you doing here?” I asked.
“Oh, I’m not staying, I just wanted to fly in and drop these off in person,” he teased, holding out white lilies.
I rolled my eyes, taking them. “Corbin. You did not come all the way here for this.”
He winked. “Wouldn’t miss it,” he said, then turned and gave Val a different bouquet.
She just stared at it. “Aren’t those for Bree?”
“No, ma’am. One for each of my best girls.”
When Val blushed, I almost laughed. It was such a rare sight. She took the medley of mismatched flowers, an assortment of shapes, sizes, and colors, and looked into them with a furrowed brow. “What are these, grocery store leftovers?”
He laughed. “I wanted to buy something I thought you’d like but I couldn’t decide. You have a million different interests and opinions.” To me, he said out of the side of his mouth, “Not to mention personalities.”
Val raised the bouquet like she was going to smack him with it. He waved his hands in surrender. “So I just pulled over and picked a bunch of different shit. If you grew out of the ground, that’s basically what you’d look like.”
Val and I stared at him. I started to laugh, but she just looked perplexed. “O-kay, thanks for the roadside weeds, I guess?” she said, but when she turned her back to look for a vase, I caught the way she stuck her nose in the flowers.
