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“Traffic is brutal. We should go,” she says, tapping her foot as she fidgets with the strap of her backpack. “Do you mind if we just grab a bar or a piece of fruit?”

  “Breakfast of champions,” I say, then dress quickly and get the hell out of there.

  She taps her knee constantly on the ride down.

  Even if I’m oblivious to some clues from women, that’s one I can read without my 20-400 prescription. “It’s going to be great. They love the episodes so far.”

  “Yeah,” she says, absently picking at her cuticles as she stares out the window. “I haven’t been to the network offices in a year. Not since they picked up the show.” She turns to look at me. “I feel like I’m walking into a shark tank.”

  I give her a sympathetic smile. “Then you’re going to need a bigger boat,” I say as I exit the highway, and she chuckles lightly.

  That’s all I can do for her now as we head toward the network’s offices, battling stop-and-go traffic in Burbank the whole way. I drop her off, wish her luck, and duck into a coffee shop across the street, where I touch base with my client in Singapore via email while I drain half a cup of coffee. Before I can finish the drink, she texts me.

  Finley: Done early.

  I leave the rest of the coffee and dart across the street, figuring since she’s probably in a good mood, now might be the right time to tell her how I feel. As I wait outside the revolving glass door, my brother Nash texts me about a celebrity who showed up at his restaurant, and I respond to him quickly, then glance up and see her.

  She looks shell-shocked, and that must mean they shocked and awed her with a terrific offer.

  I give her my best smile and dive right into the deep end. “‘All my life, I’ve been waiting for someone. And when I find her, she’s . . . she’s a fish.’”

  She stares at me like I’m a merman.

  So, yeah, maybe the old toolbox was the wrong one to use.

  24

  Finley

  LGO doesn’t skimp on air conditioning.

  The white offices are chilled to a crisp. A squirrel-like intern with a Bluetooth riding sidesaddle on his ear escorts me to the second floor toward Tad Hansen’s office.

  “Tad and Chad will be with you shortly,” he says, in the kind of deep baritone that tells me he wanted to be an actor, too, and is cursed with having a good voice, a good face, a good body, but nothing great.

  “Do you need anything? Water? Vitamin water? Nutrient water? Sparkling water?”

  I didn’t know there were so many varieties of water. I shake my head, say “no, thank you,” and sit on the leather couch in the reception area outside of Tad’s office.

  “Is Bruce here yet?” I ask, my voice stretched thin with worry.

  The intern smiles robotically. “I’m sure he’s on his way.”

  “Okay.” But I’m not sure Bruce’s absence is okay. The man is punctual, even in the land of everyone’s-late-because-of-traffic.

  The squirrel-man-boy spins on his wingtips and heads in the other direction. I smooth my hand down my slacks and turn my phone to Do Not Disturb. I don’t want to be distracted, and I don’t want Tad and Chad to see me fiddling on the screen.

  I wait.

  I wait a little longer.

  I check the time.

  My stomach rides a dozen roller coasters while I wait for them. Finally, twenty-five minutes later, a plastic blonde Barbie emerges from somewhere, nods at me, and says, “Tad will see you now.”

  She escorts me into a corner office with a view of the hills, thick with smog.

  Dark-haired Tad stares out the window, chatting on the phone, the sleeves of his crisp green-and-white checked shirt rolled up. “Definitely. We love it. It needs a little minor tweaking.”

  He pauses, still gazing out the window.

  “I’m spitballing here, but think about this. How about a new love interest, for instance?”

  He pauses.

  “That. Yes, do that. Or you could give the lead a new career.”

  He turns around and waves at me, flashing the biggest grin I’ve ever seen, then gives me the sign that he’ll be ready in a minute. His eagerness settles my nerves somewhat.

  “Or what you could do is maybe move the setting from New York to Los Angeles. Think about that. Does it have to be a cramped-in-the-city show? It could be a stuck-in-traffic show.”

  He takes a beat.

  “It’s not that big a deal. It’s the same but a little different.”

  Another pause.

  “Right. Yes. You got it. Do a little bit of that, but not exactly. But then, do that.”

  Whoever he’s talking to must be experiencing whiplash with his vague directions. But that’s how it goes in Hollywood when executives direct writers.

  The second he hangs up, the blond Chad strides in, as if the two of them can send each other telepathic messages, like Time to start the meeting now. Chad wears a shirt that likely costs more than all of my belongings. He extends a hand and shakes confidently. “So good to see you, Finley.”

  “It’s good to see you too.”

  Chad flashes me a gleaming grin that matches Tad’s. Perhaps they had teeth whitening at the same spa.

  Tad gestures to a chair. “Sit, sit.”

  I take a seat and the Almost Twins sit too, each parking an ankle on a knee, like synchronized executives. “What brings you to L.A.?” Chad asks.

  Okay, so now were doing the personal chitchat portion of the meeting. “Road trip,” I say, keeping it light. “I road-tripped down here with a friend.”

  Tad laughs. “Road trips. We love road trips. We love, love, love road trips.”

  Chad points at me, then turns to Tad. “She should do a road trip show. Right?”

  Tad thrust his arms in the air. “Brilliant!”

  I want to remind them that I do have an episode on a road trip. But that must be why road trips are on their minds. Or mind, singular. Maybe they share one. I glance at the door wondering when Bruce is going to show up. Is that why they’re making small talk? Are they killing time till Bruce arrives?

  “What else did you do on the road trip?” Chad inquires.

  “We visited some amusement parks and rode some roller coasters.”

  Chad cracks up. “Roller coasters! You need to include a lot of roller coasters in your road trip show.”

  They seem excited, so I take that as a good sign.

  Chad clears his throat and rubs his hands together. “We are so glad you’re here. So, so glad. We pride ourselves on all of our ‘human’ skills here at LGO,” he says, stopping to draw air quotes. “We love the personal touch of being able to do these types of meetings in person.”

  Tad chimes in since they’re tag-team executives. “It’s like FaceTime. But the real face time.”

  They smack palms as they laugh at their own cleverness.

  Tad turns back to me. “And we especially like this kind of repartee when we have news to share.”

  My chest plummets, and I grimace. They didn’t say good news. They only said “news.”

  Chad scratches his jaw. “You see, we admire you so much and we love you so much and we have been so thrilled to work with you, and that’s why we wanted you to know in person . . . that we’re canceling the show.” He shoots me the biggest smile of the day.

  “What?” I ask in a tiny voice because his tone and his expression don’t match the words. His face says happy and his mouth says, We are screwing you over with a power drill up the wazoo.

  “We love it and we love you. But we have to cancel Mars and Venus.”

  The floor buckles beneath me.

  Tad brings both hands to his chest like he’s speaking from his heart. “Please know it has nothing to do with you and it’s all about us.”

  Did he really use the “It’s not you, it’s me” line?

  “You don’t like the new direction?” I ask, confused and trying desperately to understand.

  Tad chimes in. “We love it. We love it so much. But we
still have to cancel it. At the end of the day, it just doesn’t fit in the lineup anymore.”

  “But I thought you were waiting for six episodes?”

  It’s Chad’s turn. “We were, and we just love it so much. But you know how it goes. The show is all that,” he says, snapping his fingers, “but we need a little more of this.”

  “Can I get you more of this?” I ask, and I hate the way my voice borders on begging. But I would do anything to save this show and to save myself.

  “Interesting idea. More of this,” Tad says, nodding, like he’s considering it. But then he shakes his head. “Let’s think about that.”

  “That?” I ask, wondering what the hell we’re talking about now.

  “We love you, and we want to work with you. We want the first look at your new road trip show. Write that and give us some of that. That would be so, so, so fantastic.”

  My entire body runs cold like they’ve thrust me into a freezer.

  I blink and fight back tears, remembering A League of Their Own. There’s no crying in baseball.

  “Where’s Bruce?” I ask, gingerly, so I don’t spill tears as I speak.

  Tad laughs.

  Chad chortles. “We love Bruce. So much. But we did have to let him go yesterday.”

  Tad rises and extends a hand. “So glad we could do this in person. Do you want a vitamin water on your way out?”

  I shake my head. I’ve been whiplashed into cancellation. I have to get as far away from this place as possible. I text Tom and hustle my way out of the spaceship, holding in all the waterworks till the revolving door kicks me out into the hazy sunshine of the Los Angeles street.

  25

  Finley

  Tom is speaking in tongues.

  Or maybe it’s movie quotes. It sounds vaguely like Splash, but it feels like Russian, and I can barely comprehend a word.

  All I can hear is the echo of that conversation with the Twins. All I can feel is the hollow space in my chest, like someone has excavated my hopes and dreams with a bulldozer.

  It’s over.

  My show is over.

  My baby, my dream, my passion.

  My job.

  I’ve been chopped off at the knees, and I have no clue how this happened or why they led me on like this.

  “Are you okay?”

  I swallow, but I can’t get words past the river rapids in my throat. I’ve cried countless times, but the tears welling inside me are geyser-strength. Part of me wants to let them rain down and cry all over Tom, but another part says no effing way.

  And I don’t know why.

  I don’t understand why I can’t let go in front of him. We can drive and laugh and screw and kiss and talk and dare and dream.

  But I can’t, or I won’t, cry in front of him.

  These almost-tears are a hard knot in my throat that wants to untangle.

  “Finley, talk to me. What happened?”

  “They canceled my show,” I blurt out, and he wraps his arms around me and pulls me in for a hug. As he holds me, says things to try to soothe me, I realize why I’m strangling back tears.

  I don’t know what we are.

  Yes, he’s a friend.

  Yes, I’ve been his bedmate.

  But am I his girlfriend or his rebound or his one-week lover?

  I don’t know who we are or what we’re doing or where we’re going. I desperately want him to love me the way I love him, but he hasn’t said it and I haven’t said it, and I can’t take another pummeling right now.

  I want him to be my rock, but I don’t know if we are each other’s rock. I want to blurt out, “Hold me and tell me it’ll be okay because we have each other,” but we aren’t there yet. He’s still on the road to amend his past, and I’ve been kicked back to the starting line.

  “Why would they cancel it?” he asks quietly.

  “I don’t know. Bruce wasn’t even there. I have to call him and see what’s going on. They said he doesn’t work there anymore.”

  He sighs sadly, running his hands down my back. “I’m sorry, Finley. I don’t even know what to say.”

  “Me either,” I whisper, my voice cracking.

  “I feel responsible too. Since I was trying to help you.”

  I shake my head, giving him a sharp stare. “No. Don’t you do that. Don’t you dare think that. It wasn’t your fault.”

  “We were on such a roll, it seemed.”

  “You were amazing. You were incredible. You were inspiring. It’s not your fault they have the emotional intelligence of a gnat. Yes, one gnat between them.”

  He smiles faintly.

  I swallow harshly, wiping a hand across my face. I take a deep breath and try to collect myself. “Did you say something about a fish a few minutes ago?”

  He waves a hand. “It was nothing.”

  I blink. “Nothing? I thought it was Splash,” I say, and I try to remember a line about fish, but honestly, there were probably a lot of lines about fish in a mermaid movie, so . . .

  I meet his eyes, searching for something.

  Anything.

  But I feel nothing except misery, so it’s hard for me to see beyond the blur of self-loathing. I want to fall into his arms. I want to tell him I’m crazy about him, but more than that, I want to curl up into a ball.

  I need a rock.

  I need a 100 percent certified, no-questions-asked rock.

  Briefly, I think of Christine, and I know she’d be there for me. But there’s someone else I need right now. Someone I haven’t been honest with about my career. Someone I should be starkly truthful with.

  My father.

  The instant I think of him, the tears start to fall. I swipe at my cheeks, futilely trying to wipe the evidence away. “I think I need to go. See my dad. Be alone. Wallow in Chunky Monkey.”

  Tom is quiet at first, like he’s digesting this news. “Sure. Right. Of course.”

  I glance around, like I can find a porthole and teleport back to Hope Falls.

  Then I see it. A sign at the end of the street. A green street sign indicating we aren’t far from the Burbank airport.

  “You need to go see Cassie. Doesn’t she have a yoga class this afternoon?” I ask since we called the studio earlier in the week to check her teaching schedule. “I know I said I would help you, but I don’t think I can handle it right now. Is that okay?” I ask, seeking absolution.

  “Of course,” he says, waving a hand like it’s no big deal. “Honestly, I should do it on my own.”

  A slight twinge of jealousy pinches my chest since he’ll be alone with her in a few hours. But I do my best to sidestep the envy, since I need to go. “Good. Yeah. You’ve totally got it under control,” I say, punching his arm, like he’s an old buddy, old pal.

  He pretends to wince, rubbing the spot where I hit him. “It’s under control.”

  “I’m going to see if I can get on a Southwest flight. They’re practically like buses back to San Francisco.”

  He points a finger at me, like he’s approving my plan. “Great idea. I should try to catch a flight back from San Diego tonight. I can drop the rental at that airport.”

  “That’s a great idea too,” I say, and I can’t even deal with how much I hate the way I’m acting like this is all such a fantastic plan.

  As he drives me to the airport a mile away, I call Bruce’s number. But it goes to voicemail. He must be so embarrassed by me. I bet the failure of my show played a part in him losing his job. I hang up without leaving a message.

  “I’m sorry the trip ended early.”

  He shakes his head. “It had to end eventually.”

  He’s talking about the road trip, but he might as well be talking about us. We aren’t slated to be a long-term thing. We were always a road trip affair. I inhale sharply, fighting off a new round of waterworks.

  When we reach the airport, he pulls up to the departures sign, the engine idling. For a fleeting moment, I consider blurting out the truth of my heart. I love yo
u, this hurts so much, come see me tonight and make it better.

  But I can’t bear any other answer but yes, so I don’t take the risk of a no.

  “So I’ll see you in San Francisco some time?” I ask.

  He holds my gaze for a beat, like he’s studying me. “Yeah, sure. Sounds fun.”

  Sounds fun?

  That’s all I get? Sounds fun?

  The security guy on the sidewalk brings a megaphone to his mouth and shouts at us, “Move along!”

  I reach for him, dot a kiss on his cheek, and leave. I trudge inside, defeated, and buy a ticket for the next flight home.

  After I go through security, I call my dad.

  “When do you leave for your trip?” I choke out.

  “Later tonight.”

  “I’m sad. I need to see you.”

  “Of course, sweet pea. I’m driving toward San Francisco now. I was going to run a few errands in the city before my flight tonight. Meet me for a bite to eat?”

  We make plans, and I turn off my phone and board my plane, wishing I knew where I was heading.

  26

  Tom

  The traffic gods shine on me.

  That’s about the only good thing I can say for the next few hours as I head south to my final stop.

  Mostly the drive sucks, since I messed up.

  I said the wrong thing. Or I didn’t say the right thing. Or maybe I didn’t say enough.

  I have seriously failed at romance once again.

  I replay the revolving door bit when Finley left the network and I somehow thought that was the perfect moment to line-drop Splash on her. What the hell was I thinking? Honestly, it’s not even a romantic quote unless you know the film cold. It’s like I reverted to another version of me, the one who says her hair is fine, who tells her he doesn’t want to sleep with her, who croons to the wrong woman.

  The guy who says the wrong thing at the wrong time.

  Because I’m pretty sure you don’t say “I love you like you’re a fish” when she just learns she HAS NO JOB.