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“Bully for you. You’re still a kid. You’re still
my
kid. Do you remember when I called to say I’d rep you?”

I thought about it. “Yeah—Vinnie and I were still in that first apartment. I’d finished filming that commercial—the one for lip balm—you remember—”

“I remember that you and Vinnie were in bed.”

I gasped, shocked. “How in the hell did you know that?” She was right. Vinnie was still
inside me
, jerking in climax, but
I’d
tried to keep my voice steady. My cell phone had been on the bed next to me, and I’d been waiting back then—waiting for call backs, waiting for an agent, waiting for my sources to tell me about another audition. Vinnie’s cell phone had been next to mine—we’d laughed about it.

But we’d still answered every call at two rings, whether we were fucking each other’s brains out or not.

“I know that because I know that, idiot,” Jillian confirmed. “You were out of breath, Vinnie was panting like he’d run a mile—”

“We could have been running,” I said, wounded.

“No. No, you couldn’t have. Because when I said I’d rep you, you asked if I’d rep Vinnie too, and I heard his voice practically in the mouthpiece. I found his file on my desk, and he kept pounding away.”

I’d pulled my arm off her shoulder, and put my cold hands to my heated face. “
Jilly
!”

“Yes, I knew that too. But the thing was, you asked for him. Which was classy—unlike, say, answering the phone when you’re getting ass-fucked at three in the afternoon.”

“How do you know I—”

Jilly just gave me a look—the kind of look that says,
Shut up, bottom boy, that’s the least of your secrets.

Whatever.

“And I would have taken you on as a client if you’d answered from a meth lab,” she continued, after the look was done. “But you didn’t—you were having celebration sex from the commercial, and your first thought wasn’t, ‘Yay! Let me dump this guy!’ it was ‘Yay! Let me take him with me!’ and you did. I mean, I wasn’t happy when you gave up
Warlock Tea
—”

“I thought you said it was an opportunity!”

“Yeah, that’s what I said to you and the press
.
What I said to my plant was that you were a dumb-shit kid who wouldn’t know an opportunity if it bit you on the peter. But you
turned
it into an opportunity, and I was proud.”

I swallowed, not sure if I was up to any more introspection today. I mean, I’d flown up the coast and had lunch with someone I didn’t know. Didn’t that mean I got a cookie?

The beach was nice—round rocks lapped by clear water. The air had cooled to the low sixties, and I raised my face, feeling the beginnings of mist.

“Do you want to keep walking?” I asked. We’d only been gone ten minutes.

“I want a fucking cigarette,” Jilly snapped, looking around. Someone had built a fire pit a little ways down, and Jilly made for that, me tagging reluctantly along. A few logs lay, framing the pit, obviously impromptu seats, and she eased gingerly onto one of them, even though most any part that would splinter had been sanded off many bottoms ago. She cast a sour glance at me and patted the seat next to her.

I sat, suddenly tired. Too much talking. Too much talking that felt important. I longed for a party and small talk—but only a very, very short party.

“See,” Jilly said, just plowing ahead, “the thing is, I don’t always do that.”

“Do what?” I looked out over at that island and wondered how long I could live there. Like at the beach house, I could have a little cabin, and I could pay someone to ferry in supplies—not so much wine, this time—and I could just eat and vegetate and stare into space and feel nothing. Forever. If snows crept down in the winter, I’d just close my eyes and sleep and sleep and sleep.

“I don’t always say the thing that will make you feel better.”

“Who says?”

“McKenna,” she told me, voice somber. “I came into her room while she was going through DTs—”

I cringed. Vinnie had said some heinously bitchy things to me when he was going through rehab. I tried to forget them—our good times had been so
very
good.

“You can’t believe anyone during that part of the process,” I said gently. “Jilly, they’re shaking apart—they need so fucking bad, and they’re—”

“Yeah, no—I get it. I visited Vinnie too, remember? I also got his flowers the week after he called me an interfering old twat. And I remember visiting him again, and watching him tear up because he hadn’t meant it. So I get it—I
get
when someone says something they don’t mean. But this . . . I said, ‘Jesus, kid—I didn’t know you had it in you to fuck up this bad.’ And she usually laughs when I say shit like that, but . . .” Jilly’s voice got thick. “She just rolled over to her side and started to cry. She said, ‘Mom, couldn’t you just once blow sunshine up my ass? I don’t need to know I fucked up, I need to know you think I don’t have to!’”

I was stunned by the simplicity of that. “She’s really smart,” I said, because that was true. That was what you needed in a mother, right? A cheering section? My mom used to do that for grades, for cooking, for soccer—for the times I’d let down my old man. You expected straight talk from your agent—but a mom, that was a different thing.

“Yeah.” Jilly pulled a tissue out of her pocket and blew her nose. “She really is. And I came home and remembered the look on your face after the funeral, and how I hadn’t heard from you in a few, and thought, ‘He needs to hear me say he can get back on the horse!’ so I called you.”

“She takes after her mother,” I said gruffly.

“She’s way the fuck smarter than I am, Sparky,” Jillian muttered. “But here’s the thing.”

I waited, not sure what to expect. Her eyes were red-rimmed, and she looked blotchy, but there wasn’t a photographer in sight.

“You think I don’t remember, don’t you?”

I thought of her revelation about the first time she’d called me. “I think we’ve covered the fact that you pretty much remember everything.”

She laughed and patted my cheek. Then she stroked it, like a mom would.

“You asked me if you should come out. I said no. You said all sorts of other people had come out. I said—”

“It was true,” I muttered, not necessarily wanting to hear her say it again.

“No. I needed to have faith in you. I
should
have had faith in you. Both of you. Not coming out—it’s what drove Vinnie to rehab. And . . . God, Connor, I probably should have dropped your ass in there before we caught the plane.”

I shook my head. I didn’t crave alcohol—no trembling hands. No need. I’d seen Vinnie, face contorted with rage the morning we’d had the fight about the pills. There was none of that for me and my glass of wine. I just . . .
appreciated
what it could do for me when the world was all edges.

I’d been cutting myself bloody for a year.

“I don’t need alcohol,” I said, not defensively, even. “I just need—”

“To live your life,” Jilly said, matter-of-factly. “So, that’s what I’m saying to do here. I don’t mean come out right now—but if you got that excited about
anything
, I’d be all for it—”

“I got excited about the
house
,” I defended.

“Shut up, Connor,” she snapped. “I’m trying to be nice here. All I’m saying is that, all those years ago, when I told you that you weren’t good enough to come out, that it would fuck up your career—that was bullshit. I should have had faith in you. You’ve done every goddamned thing I’ve asked of you, and you’ve done it well. If you get a chance to be happy—here, or on the next job, or in a fucking opium den in the Orient, I need you to jump on that soapbox, grab life by the balls, and tell the world exactly who you are.”

A part of me . . . Wow. A part of me, the kid who’d hit my new agent up to back my boyfriend while he was still inside of me,
that
kid wanted to take her up on it. Like,
now
. Like to just drop that bomb in the middle of the press conference tomorrow and fucking crack that bitch wide open.

But most of me was still . . . tired. Tired and sad and afraid that this thing she’d asked of me, this whole “moving on and living” thing, was going to be hard enough as it was.

I stood and stretched, turning my face to the glowing dime of a sun that kept trying to shine through the high clouds. “I think the lasagna’s getting close to done. It would be a shame to burn down the house. I really like it.”

“Connor . . .”

I looked at her and smiled weakly. “Later,” I said simply. “Today I got on a plane and I talked to a stranger and I got excited about something I didn’t expect. Let’s—”

“
Connor
!”

She was starting to cry again, and for the first time in a while I felt that pressure—that love pressure—the insistence that you put someone else’s feelings in front of your own.

I offered my hand. “It was a real good speech,” I told her gently. “It was brave. And generous. And all the things a good mom is supposed to be. I think you and your kids have a real chance.”

“But—”

“You don’t need a second chance with me, Jilly. Whether it was good advice or shitty advice, it came from a really good place. I’m just . . . I need to wake up tomorrow and see if I feel as good as I did today. And maybe the next day I’ll feel better than that. But I’m not there yet. I can’t balls-out do the big brave thing. That was Vinnie’s shtick anyway—”

“The hell it was,” she snapped, taking my hand and hauling her chunky butt up. “You saw him through rehab twice. You rearranged your world for him. You’re the good guy, Connor. It’s why you don’t play assholes.”

I shrugged. “You know us actors. We just want people to like us.”

“I like you.” Her hug surprised me, but I returned it.

“I like you too. Your kids will too. When are you going back to them?”

“Five days,” she said, her voice thick. She pulled away then, and we started walking toward the house at a decidedly faster clip. “I’ll be desperate for a little fucking civilization by then. Jesus, do you think people have to mail order their clothes out here?”

“Seattle’s two hours away, Jilly—I’m pretty sure there’s some posh places to shop there.”

She sniffed. “You can’t find Manolo Blahniks at the fish market, Sparky.”

“I don’t know—aren’t they sort of passé? I mean, maybe a fish ate them.”

She laughed then, even though I’d probably insulted her god or something, and we made our way back to the house in time to get the lasagna out.

I tossed a salad too, and we ate dinner with a glass of wine apiece before watching TV and going to bed.

As I fell asleep, I pictured Noah Dakers’s gut-punch of a grin.
If I did something to make him happy, would that thing just glow and glow and glow until we
all
passed through toward the light?

I dreamed of holding Noah’s hand and walking through bright sunshine, waving across the sound to the deserted island.

For some reason I thought Vinnie was there.

I thought I was prepared for the press conference.

Not so much, no.

It was held in front of what was apparently the office for the soundstage, a little portable cabin, painted a cheery red, and high enough off the ground to need its own stairs. They’d taken advantage of that and had a platform built, so press conferences had a natural venue.

The conference itself looked almost friendly as far as those things went—the reporters were standing around in jeans and boots, sturdy sweaters and flannel shirts. None of the women were wearing heels—I wondered if the press for a show like this was made up of true believers. That was helpful if it was so—it meant you didn’t get those annoying “sci-fi is for babies” questions, because that shit pissed me off.

Noah walked us up to the platform, which surprised me—I hadn’t expected him to get out of the car. I took Jilly’s elbow, like she’d schooled me years ago to do in the presence of a lady, and he took our backs, with his hat on, looking official and actually a little bit imposing.

It was because he didn’t smile.

But he
was
reassuring behind Jilly and me as Simon Conklin, one of the show’s producers and occasional directors, addressed the press in jeans and a fleece jacket, with a familiar smile on his face. He talked about the direction the show was going to take, citing some new characters, and adding that if the fans reacted as well to the new characters this season as they’d reacted to the addition of Levi Pritchard last season, then they might consider a spin-off. He was in his early forties, with thick black hair and only a few grays—very attractive, in a happy professor way—and the press ate out of his hand. When he introduced me, it was like he’d led plump fuzzy bunnies to come nibble at my palm, which was sort of a superpower considering the Hollywood press was more like a sleek, muscular shark.

We took questions for a moment, and the first ones were the ones I’d practiced in my head—why this show, would I miss big-screen acting, how did I like the area—and that was great.

And then, right when I was expecting questions about Vinnie—and had my answers and my smooth mask of grief all ready—they hit me.