On Her Terms (Out in Hollywood #3)

Chapter 4 Awkward Feats of Magic

Chapter 4

Awkward Feats of Magic

“S mall Jesse Pinkman, it’s Saturday,” I muttered the next morning, faintly hungover from the previous evening’s cocktails, though even stone-cold sober I did not react well to toy mice being dropped upon my face before seven a.m. I tossed the mice out of my bed and waited for him to scamper away. First, though, he pounced at my hair and lightly batted my nose with his soft paws. How did anyone get mad at kittens? Even at this hour, his shenanigans were too adorable for anger.

Since I now woke up with a collection of cat toys in my bed, I grabbed a couple of bouncy yarn-wrapped balls and tossed them through my doorway. Dual purposes were served; yes, the kitten was now flying through the air en route to the yarn balls and literally therefore out of my hair, but I couldn’t even believe how cute he was when he leapt boldly. Having a kitten was like watching adorable reels on Instagram all day.

After carefully measuring out Small Jesse Pinkman’s breakfast and brewing my coffee, I headed into my home office-slash-spare bedroom-slash-arts and crafts station. The year before I’d started my job at Big Marketing Energy, I had been working at an ad agency that had taken on a giant entertainment client. My workdays went from manageable to overpacked. I wasn’t someone who hated work; I loved the creativity of putting together digital media campaigns that satisfied client goals and came in at or under budget. I also loved finishing up my day sometime between six and seven, and leaving work to watch TV or have drinks with Hailey and Fiona or eat dinner with Will. This client, though, expected us to be on call with the urgency of ER doctors, and so even my free time felt drenched with the anxiety sweat that had become my new normal.

In the future, if a job necessitated an upgrade in deodorants, I’d know right away that it was time to get out.

I hung in there, though, and since I had been so mentally drained, even when I had free nights it felt too exhausting to go out or pay attention to award-winning premium cable dramas. On a whim, I’d unearthed the sewing machine I’d inherited when my grandmother died a few years before, and sewed together a few scraps just to get my sewing mojo back. It had been late October, so I’d sewn up a little scorpion and posted it to my Instagram with the requisite Scorpio season is coming . The next day, six of my followers had commented to ask if it was a cat toy and where I’d bought it, and before long I was spending my downtime from work sewing together astrology-shaped pieces of felt to stuff with high-grade catnip and silvervine for friends, and then my own Etsy shop. There was something about an evening spent fussing over stuffed fish and crabs and twins that calmed the swirling swamp of work anxiety.

Now that I had a job where I was allowed to set actual work-life boundaries, I didn’t crave evenings locked away with my sewing machine the way I used to, but I still set aside time at least once a week to stay current on orders and maintain back stock of the most popular signs. (Scorpio-themed toys sold out constantly, no matter whose season it was.) It wasn’t the kind of small business that was going to make me rich—or even ever fully support me—but considering how much of my life was spent in front of screens, I loved the respite from them, loved the buzzing of my grandma’s machine, loved seeing my little piles of inventory restock.

By the time I’d gotten all my orders ready and the back stock replenished, it was past lunchtime. Pre-breakup, Will would have wandered into this room with food and a reminder that even freelance cat toy work needed lunch breaks. I thought of Chloe ordering queso and tacos for us last night, and then snapped out of that pretty quickly. Last night had not been a date; Chloe Lee did not think of me that way. She was not going to make sure I ate lunch or remembered to get fresh air. Chloe Lee only needed me for a disastrous-sounding situation based on lies and make-believe.

But all women wouldn’t feel that way, would they? Or was Chloe’s warning about baby gays out in the world something to take seriously? I couldn’t be doomed with all women right out of the gate; that felt statistically improbable.

Instead of sitting home with brand-new fears—the old ones had been enough already!—I jumped into the shower so I’d look a little more human running errands. Up where I’d grown up, Saturday afternoon grocery shopping and such were not occasions to worry about one’s general aesthetic, but my corner of Los Angeles could feel like such a small town. It was rare to dash into the Silver Lake Trader Joe’s without seeing someone I knew—and that was before I had an ex who had managed to find an apartment less than a mile away. When Will had offered to let me buy him out of the condo and move out, I assumed he’d be moving more than point-eight miles away, but it wasn’t as if I’d wanted to leave Silver Lake either.

And of course it wasn’t that Will hadn’t seen me look my worst; we were together over a decade, ten years in which we’d each—separately and, over one terrible weekend, together, had food poisoning and other frankly disgusting maladies. And also, I’d been the one to end it. Will was the heartbroken one. I was the one checking out women and thinking about buying new underwear.

I still didn’t want to risk him seeing me looking less than—well, I was buying groceries and considering a Target run for cleaning supplies. It wasn’t about looking great. I just didn’t want Will to see me anything less than average. Average would be fine. I wanted his broken heart to heal, but I still wanted him to picture me looking sexy and adorable, say you’ll remember me/buying Fabuloso/wearing my best leggings and all. But it wasn’t Will I accidentally rammed my cart into in front of the Trader Joe’s cheese section; it was my boss. And, no, not my boss’s cart. More like my boss’s rear end.

Also I felt strange that I recognized my boss’s ass so I pretended that I hadn’t.

“I’m so sorry,” I said in my nicest and most professional tone, aiming my cart away and preparing to make a run for it.

“Clementine?” Phoebe asked over her shoulder.

“Oh my god, Phoebe,” I said, pretending I wasn’t trying to run away from the scene of the crime. “This is embarrassing.”

“Is it?” she asked good-naturedly. She was dressed in jeans and a hoodie I was fairly sure cost more than my entire outfit combined. Phoebe did casual like a Roy sibling. “I don’t mind if you know I buy cheese on the weekends.”

“Ha,” I said in far from the jovial tone I attempted. While Phoebe was absolutely my favorite boss I’d ever reported to, and someone I respected highly and thought of as a mentor, I loved the hard-and-fast boundary between work and the rest of my life. Obviously I’d been the kind of kid who hated glimpsing one of her teachers buying cough medication at CVS; I once ran into my statistics professor carrying a Victoria’s Secret shopping bag in a mall elevator and dropped the course as soon as I got back to campus.

“How’s your weekend so far?” Phoebe asked casually.

“Oh, you know, the standard usual,” I said. “Yes, I’m aware that standard and usual mean the same thing.”

“That’s just how standard and usual things are,” Phoebe said with a grin. “I understand.”

“I’ll let you go,” I said, upping my not-at-all-jovial tone to almost-cheerful, and making a beeline to the cash registers. I hadn’t gotten any frozen flatbreads or Fancy Cheese Crunchies but I knew when to abandon a mission and escape quickly to safety. I also knew that most people wouldn’t have been thrown by chance interactions with their very nice bosses, but my boundaries seemed to have permanent settings.

I was not at all in denial that my brain didn’t always function like other people’s. I even asked my therapist once if she thought my ADHD explained why I hated surprise interactions that bled my worlds together. She’d paused for a moment and said, kindly, “Maybe, though, I don’t know, sometimes people can just be particular about things.” Annoying to think sometimes my weirdnesses defied professional explanation.

Back at home I got through my chore list, got in some quality playtime with Small Jesse Pinkman, and read a big chunk of the romance novel I’d started the night before—even if that only stood to remind me of Chloe and our exceedingly strange evening together.

It wouldn’t always be like that, I reminded myself as I got ready for a long-delayed night out with my friends. I’d meet someone, and when she got my number she would use it for more than to text me gifs of Dana Scully. And when she asked me out, it wouldn’t be as her fake girlfriend. It’d be for something real.

I had to believe that or I’d cancel plans (again) to have a breakdown (not again—well, not exactly). My friends and I had been scheduled for a night out nearly two months ago, but then Hailey’s daughter had come down with an ear infection and so we rescheduled for last month, and then I’d been the one to cancel because instead of meeting my friends for small plates I’d ended my relationship. Hailey and Fiona had—both separately and on our never-ending group chat—offered to take me out, but I’d resisted. It wasn’t that I didn’t love my best friends—what kind of asshole would I be if I didn’t?—but I didn’t know how to explain any of it to them. The kind of life I’d fled from was exactly the life my friends had. There was probably a way to describe the situation to them that wasn’t judgmental and patronizing, but every version I’d rehearsed came out terrible.

I had no idea how long they’d let me avoid them, but it turned out that the answer was three and a half weeks.

“Clem!” Fiona tackled me into a hug, which was her normal violently affectionate greeting. Fiona was tall like a model so she had something like eight inches on me, and she had a Taekwondo black belt as well as more than a passing familiarity with Krav Maga techniques. In probably every other version of the universe, we wouldn’t know each other—much less be best friends—but early on in our careers we’d met at an entertainment industry networking mixer, rolling our eyes at the same just-playing-devil’s-advocate bro, and the connection had stuck.

“You look great,” I said. “A pointless thing to say, I know, as you always do.”

Fiona did a tiny curtsy, her sharp blonde bob swinging perfectly back into place. Even though it was the weekend, she looked like a boss in her cap-sleeve top and wide-leg jeans. I’d tried on a similar pair of pants recently but on me they looked less C-Suite Casual and more Clown Couture.

“Enough about me,” she said, taking out her phone and checking the screen. Fiona was a finance bigwig at Pantheon, the entertainment company behind almost every comic book movie, and even though my film-related job mostly took weekends off, I understood that hers wasn’t the same.

“Everything OK?” I asked.

“Uh, that’s for me to ask you,” she said, dropping her phone back into her pocket. “And, yes, it wasn’t work, just Hailey running late. Let’s see if they’ll seat us without her.”

I checked my phone and found it empty of texts except one from Greg. Did you find out about beer yet??? Ugh.

“Oh, we were already texting about something,” Fiona said, heading to the host stand. “It was easier for her to just tell me.”

“Maybe we should have offered to meet her up there,” I said, instead of dwelling on my friends leaving me out of the group chat.

Fiona grimaced. “And end up at some chain restaurant? I don’t think so.”

“Look, I might have run from the suburbs, but don’t knock all chain restaurants,” I said. “A chain restaurant gave us Cheddar Bay Biscuits, after all.”

We were seated right away at a table on Greekman’s patio. The restaurant had been a cozy Jewish deli, but the owners had transformed it into a hipster Greek restaurant, complete with this luxe patio in the middle of the strip mall parking lot. There were actual wood floors, greenery climbing the walls that hid the literal parking lot, and classic blue and white décor. It was the kind of place I wanted to hate for being kind of ridiculous, but it was also delicious and beautiful, two of my favorite descriptors. In some ways, that was LA in a nutshell.

“So I know we should wait for Hay to arrive,” Fiona said, “but how are you?”

“I’m good,” I said, upping my tone at odds with the note of sympathy in her voice. Fiona wasn’t one to be overly sentimental, so my hackles were already up. “How about you?”

“Well, I’m fine, but …” Fiona tipped her head at an angle I assumed she’d practiced for moments in corporate meetings where she had to look particularly kind. “Oh, Hay’s here.”

I waved frantically to get her attention, while Fiona looked on with an eyebrow raised.

“I think she’ll recognize us.”

“Oh, fuck you,” I said, and we were both laughing as Hailey made her way through the patio to us. Once we’d hopped up to hug her, and Fiona’s head was no longer at that manufactured sympathetic level, I felt something calm wash over me. Why had I avoided my friends for this long? No, I wasn’t sure they’d understand why my breakup had felt so necessary. But they’d seen me through everything in my adult life so far—Hailey had seen me through even more! We’d met in grade school and were best friends by middle school. I was the one who’d brought the three of us together in the first place, once my new friendship with Fiona had been solidified.

“So how are you?” Hailey asked, once we were settled in at the table and browsing the menu. I glanced up from my phone and saw that Hailey was making a face in my direction, sympathetic but sad, warm but already prepared for the worst.

“Yes,” Fiona said firmly, setting her phone down on the table with a small thud . Her face pulled into, somehow, the exact same expression. It was the face that actress Laura Linney always seemed to be making. I swear, I could feel her patronizing gaze through the screen. “How are you, Clem?”

“I’m fine,” I said, maybe too quickly, because their expressions didn’t change. “Really.”

Adding a really never convinced anyone, but it was so irresistible.

“I have to say that I was shocked when I heard,” Hailey said.

“Absolutely floored,” Fiona agreed. “If I were a betting man, it would have been me and Alex before you and Will.”

“That’s terrible ,” Hailey said. “Let’s not joke around about any of us getting divorced. Or—”

“But it’s surprising,” Fiona said, an insistent note in her voice. “I assumed by the end of the year you two would be engaged. Though I guess to be fair I thought that last year. And the year before.”

“ Fiona ,” Hailey said in sort of a stage whisper, and a little surge of panic zipped through me knowing this was absolutely a discussion they’d had with each other, more than once.

“Oh, come on, we’re friends here,” Fiona said with a casual flick of her wrist. I’d always loved that Fiona said what she felt, no bullshit, but I guess I loved it less when it was about me.

“That’s not really what I …” I trailed off because even though I’d had the conversation with myself a million times, I still didn’t know how to broach it with my friends. Fiona might be the type to say exactly what she felt, but I had no idea how to say this big thing without potentially looking like a giant judgmental ass. Sharing feelings had always been something for other people, someone like Hailey, who was flowing over with them and couldn’t help sharing, or someone like Fiona, who was in firm control of everything and could let out the exact right amount.

“I can’t believe him,” Hailey said with a shake of her head. Her face still held that sad-for-you expression. When I glanced at Fiona, I saw that she was making the exact same face too. Two Laura Linneys facing me.

“It wasn’t—”

“Are you ready to get some drink orders in?” A waiter popped up seemingly out of nowhere like an awkward feat of magic.

“Yes, please,” I said, trying not to sound too desperate for both the alcohol and the distraction. “I’ll have the White Negroni, please.”

“Oh, no,” Fiona said with a curt shake of her head. “Water is fine for me.”

“Oh, that sounds good,” Hailey said. “Just water for me as well.”

The waiter headed off, and Hailey beamed at Fiona. “Are you—”

“No,” she said quickly, “but there’s about a three-month window coming up where I can get pregnant and not ruin the next fiscal year, so I’m preparing.”

“Oh, so it’s for sure?” I asked, because even though of course Fiona had a five-year plan, the baby part had always felt like a question mark scribbled beside the list, not its own bullet point. Secretly I’d hoped that meant that neither of us were having kids, and we could give Hailey’s daughter lots of our cool aunt energy (I was determined that someone would think I was a cool aunt someday) and still go out on the nights when Hailey couldn’t make it because of parental duties.

I wanted everyone I cared about to get everything they wanted, but maybe Fiona didn’t really want kids that much, it was tough to tell. And it was one thing to have one best friend with a baby, one best friend with a whole new set of responsibilities and mom friends and a suburban home with a literal picket fence. If Fiona joined the ranks, I could practically see our group chat quieting while the two of them talked to each other and their other mom friends and I was just … alone. In meme terms, I contained two wolves, and while one said that the center would hold even as friendships shifted, the other snarled as she was overtaken by a desperate clutch to keep at least this part as it had been.

“Nothing’s for sure, Clem,” Fiona said with a laugh. “Maybe my womb’s dusty and barren. No way to truly know until I take the system out for a spin with the training wheels off.”

“So in this situation, your IUD’s the training wheels?” I asked, and the three of us burst into laughter. And it felt like the three of us again, the friends who’d gone through all major life events together since we were in our early twenties and had no plans of stopping. In a flash I felt silly for holding back; these weren’t random married women who wouldn’t understand my choices. Being moms or moms-to-be didn’t disqualify our friendship. These were my people.

“I was the one who—”

“Made any decisions yet?” Our waiter had magically appeared again, this time with my cocktail and water for all of us. Fiona took control and ordered what felt like most of the small plates and sides, which was great as far as I was concerned. Finally, our order was in, and the table was just the three of us again.

“I was actually the one who ended things,” I said, and took a sip of my drink. By the time I’d set my glass back on the table, Hailey and Fiona were staring at me with wide-eyed and pained expressions.

“Every face you’ve made tonight has been terrible,” I said.

“What?” Fiona shook her head, as if to clear my nonsense out of her ears. I assumed she did this in meetings with high-ranking executives all of the time. “Why would you do that?”

Hailey still looked horrified. “Will’s so …”

“We wanted different things,” I said in my calmest and least panicky voice. “And you two are my best friends, so maybe you could try sounding less like you just found out I have a terminal illness or something.”

“Well,” Fiona said, gesturing to nothing with an outstretched hand. “It is a bit like that, isn’t it? You don’t want to die alone, right? You’ve said it a thousand times.”

“I’m not sure I said it like that …”

“How different could you want things to be?” Hailey asked with a frown. “You two were the only two people I know who actually like the French fries at In-N-Out.”

“They’re fine if you order them extra-crispy and eat them while they’re still hot!” I said, and realized I was defending the wrong thing. “You can’t possibly think that’s the basis for everlasting love, Hay.”

“No, of course not, that’s ridiculous,” Fiona said, her brow furrowed. “The French fry example is just one of many ways that the two of you always seemed to synch up. And obviously we love you and respect your choices—”

“Obviously!” Hailey piped in.

“But it’s hard for me to understand why you’d end it.”

I tried to look meaningfully at my friends. Their expressions didn’t change. It didn’t make sense to me that they could know me for so long and not inherently feel how differences had crept up on Will and me like a Venn diagram pulling off into two completely separate circles.

“He told me he was going to drive up and ask for my father’s permission for my hand in marriage.” I let out the last words so ploddingly slowly because I expected one of them would cut me off before I could even finish the sentence. Instead, they both stared at me like the good part of the story hadn’t happened yet. Fiona even gestured, like, keep going .

“Guys,” I said. “You know that sounds bonkers, right?”

I watched as they looked to each other and then back at me. It was as if there was a window or glass door between us where we could see each other just fine but were definitely in two different rooms.

“It’s a little patriarchal,” Fiona said. “I’ll give you that.”

“It’s romantic ,” Hailey said. “I still remember how nervous Michael was, so stressed out, and I had no idea what was up. And then he got back from my parents’ and knelt down with the ring and everything made sense to me.”

Her voice rang out with a warmth like it had just happened, like it was still just as special as the day it had. It probably was. And I knew there wasn’t much more I could say about my own situation, because why would I want to take that away from her? Why would I want to denigrate any part of the life that she loved?

“It just didn’t seem like he knew me very well,” I said gently. “If he thought that was something I wanted.”

I watched my friends’ faces to see if I’d successfully made my case.

“Remember that report they did?” Hailey asked. “Women are more likely to get struck by lightning than get married after forty!”

I guess that I had not, successfully or otherwise, made my case after all.

“That article was proven statistically incorrect,” I said, though even inaccurate and sexist information could be hard to shake out of your brain. “And, also, I’m only thirty-six!”

And, also, why did any of that matter if I didn’t want it anyway?

“But—”

“Even though Will and I both think In-N-Out has amazing fries, thank you, he’s someone who wants to get married and … even though, yes, I want to grow old with someone, I guess I just don’t—” I cut myself off because the life Will had wanted was the life Hailey already had, and the life that Fiona was on track to conquer. When we were younger, all of our dreams made so much sense to each other. It was like we carried them together. There was nothing I couldn’t have told them. “Anyway. Even if a lightning strike’s more probable, I guess I’m OK with that.”

“Besides getting electrified,” Fiona said with a tiny smile.

“Besides that. Do I have to do a whole ‘not that there’s anything wrong with getting married’ so I don’t look like an asshole to the two of you? I’m more than happy to, if you need it.”

Since Hailey was still frowning, I said it, and then said it again for good measure.

“I just hate to think of you as alone,” Hailey said, reaching out to take my hand. “You’re such an amazing person, Clem.”

“I’m not alone,” I said. “I have you two.”

Their sad faces had somehow returned at that. At that! The power of friendship! If that wasn’t enough to wipe those looks off their faces, what was?

“And Small Jesse Pinkman,” I reminded them, even though I knew that for some reason cats only made women seem lonelier.

“Plus a fulfilling job I really love, remember.” Why did it feel like I was making excuses? All of this was true. Why did my dearest friends still look as if they just saw a dog get hit by a car?

Hailey leaned in, her expression matching her voice in sad softness. “What if you slip and fall and there’s no one there to help you?”

“You could choke,” Fiona said. “A piece of steak takes you down, and before they can find you, that little cat starts eating your body.”

“Well, also,” I said, talking faster than, perhaps, I was thinking, and no longer interested, maybe, with the truth, “I’m already dating someone.”

The panic of my lie hit me precisely as their faces went from poor-Clem to tell-me-more . The lie, I felt, had more power than anything real I’d said tonight.

“Is that why you ended things with Will?” Fiona asked, the promise of intrigue coloring her tone.

“No,” I said. “Of course not. It’s much newer than that.”

“Ooh, new,” Hailey said with a dreamy sigh, resting her chin in her hands. “Not that Michael isn’t practically perfect, but new . I can hardly remember it.”

“Seriously,” Fiona said. “I barely remember when it was still exciting to see Alex’s dick. Now it’s just there.”

“ Fiona ,” Hailey said, somehow still shocked by our friend who had been exactly herself for as long as we’d known her.

“You know it’s true,” Fiona said, and the fast way Hailey’s visible shock wore off told me that she absolutely agreed.

“Well,” I said, “I should say.”

I ended the sentence there, not exactly on purpose, but because—I mean, what was I doing? I’d refused to do this. I assumed I’d never hear from Chloe again. In fact, for all I knew, she was already hashing out fake relationship details with some other woman.

“You should say what?” Fiona asked.

I knew that it was my last chance to get out of this. Make a joke about how I was dating my cat, my job, my brand-new vibrator. I should have done anything but dig myself in further.

“I’m dating a woman,” I said, watching their eyebrows travel sky-high. “I mean, not to be cisnormative about it, the whole new-dicks thing. Anyone can have a dick. Or big dick energy, like Fiona.”

Fiona’s shock must have worn off quickly because she seemed so pleased to be recognized for her BDE. Hailey, on the other hand, was still making an expression so surprised that her eyebrows had disappeared under her shaggy brown bangs.

“You both know I’m bisexual,” I said quickly. “I’ve mentioned it before.”

“You’ve mentioned that you think Tessa Thompson is hot,” Fiona said. “Which, big deal. Who doesn’t. I didn’t know you meant it like this.”

“ Like this ,” I repeated.

“Don’t take it some bad way,” she said. “You know what I mean. I’m an ally!”

“Love is love,” Hailey said, nodding earnestly.

Fiona held out her arms. “I went to Smith!”

“So …” Gentleness drenched Hailey’s tone. “Is this why you ended things with Will?”

I shook my head, and felt that wasn’t forceful enough so I shook it some more. Our waiter arrived with our hummus and panzanella, and the three of us made quick work of divvying up the dishes.

“Okay,” Hailey said, dipping a tomato into hummus. “How did you meet her?”

“At a bar,” I said. “Well, not really. Walking to the bar. Some creeps were street-harassing me, and she scared them off.”

“What does she do?” Fiona asked. “This rescuer of yours.”

“She’s a dog groomer,” I said, and Fiona frowned. “Don’t make that face.”

“What face?”

“The if-a-job-doesn’t-require-an-MBA-from-Wharton-it-barely-counts face,” I said.

“Oh, please, I’ve never made such a specific face,” Fiona said, and Hailey and I burst out laughing. Already it felt safe again, and again I felt like a jerk for underestimating my friends.

In fact, if I forgot about the fact that I was lying, everything felt great.

“How’s the sex?” Fiona asked, and Hailey’s eyes darted over to stare at Fiona yet again. We were, after all, not And Just Like That friends. It was already a lot thinking about Alex’s figuratively old dick.

“It’s,” I said, and then paused. There was the lie of it all, of course, but I felt the urge to still get it right. Chloe’s bright eyes flashed into my mind. Her ease moving through the world. Her maddeningly mixed signals. The way her top lip was a little fuller than her lower lip. The way I couldn’t stop thinking about her lips, especially right now.

“Oh my god, your face,” Hailey said, in a hushed whisper.

My heart pounded in my ears. “What?”

“You’re red,” she said.

“It must,” Fiona declared, “be mind-blowing. Fuck it, my womb’s empty right now. I want a drink. And more details.”

As Fiona yelled over our waiter, it hit me that I couldn’t remember the last time my friends had found me this interesting. Ending my nearly decades-long relationship had brought on sympathy, not curiosity.

Now, though, it was like I was brand-new.

I ended up leaving my car parked on a side street near the restaurant and Lyfting home. Fiona could keep up with finance bros, so whenever I drank with her, my cocktail consumption ticked upward. I, after all, had a BA in advertising from a liberal arts college, where we were more likely to get a little stoned and watch low-budget arthouse films.

By the time I let myself in and scooped up Small Jesse Pinkman, though, I was more sober than not, and a wave of what did I do crashed over me. But petting a purring kitten and thinking about an attractive woman were both stress-killing activities, and before long I was curled up on the sofa in my pajamas and a detoxifying face mask and my cat and my phone.

We would have to have parameters.

Three dots appeared almost immediately. Clementine, I’d expect nothing less.