Chapter 2
You Can’t Come Back from a Comeback
“What is this?” Victoria Simon pointed a honey habanero wing flat from Sam to Bex. “Like, what is this?”
She sat across the table from them with a smear of hot sauce on her broad cheekbone and a mountain of decimated wings on her plate.
The younger of Bex’s two sisters, Vic was a sophomore transfer student at UCLA, majoring in biology in preparation for a career in veterinary medicine—a future plan that had not wavered since Sam first met her at age seven.
Vic had been making Sam laugh for just as long with her sneak-attack wit and enthusiastic embrace of the off-screen drama of Hollywood.
But it would be a mistake to underestimate her, even if she took FaceTime calls at full volume in public and her biggest recent dilemma was whether she should get heart-shaped rainbow freckles tattooed on her face.
Bex looked up from her plate of tacos. “What is what?”
Her hair had gotten long, frizzing in red coils to her elbows.
She wore opaque pink dancer’s tights and an oversized vintage sweatshirt that celebrated the Cleveland Browns 1964 championship win.
It was very Bex travel attire, familiar in every way.
Sam had known this woman for more than ten years, seen this outfit more than once, but the tips of her ears set fire every time Bex glanced at her.
She felt thirteen years old. Her bones were humming, possibly audibly. Ridiculous to think she had fantasized about pulling Bex into her arms and kissing her hair straight the moment she saw her. Right now, Sam felt like she would faint if she so much as touched this glorious creature.
Which was maybe why she hadn’t touched her yet?
Sam had done what Bex said. After she spent too long deciding on what to wear all over again and dodging Fergus’s questions out of fear he would try to finagle an invitation, she’d arrived at the same time she got a text from Bex that she was thirty minutes away.
Thirty minutes.
Thirty minutes and six months.
Ordinarily, Sam prided herself on her ability to run in a low gear.
But her voice had cracked when she’d ordered food—so much food—and she’d snapped at Vic and had to keep checking her appearance to make sure that the way her entire body buzzed with electric anticipation wasn’t making her hair stand on end.
Of course, the moment she had made herself sit down, take deep breaths, and sip slowly from a water glass was the same moment Bex burst into the foyer.
Sam’s surprise caused her to inhale a mouthful of her soothing water, and so she was bent at the waist, red-faced and choking, when Bex first laid eyes on her.
Not the impression she’d wanted to make.
Bex and Vic pounded on her back until Sam could breathe again.
She stood up to accept Bex’s hug. But after thirty minutes and six months and a choking fit, Sam freaked out and air-hugged Bexley Simon like she was a fan in a selfie line.
“What is this vibe between you guys?” Vic clarified.
“I could have fit a Bible between you during your one moment of PDA. So far, we’ve talked about what food Sam ordered, which was boring because I helped her order it, then about Frankie and her road trip—also boring, we’re all on the group chat—and we’ve debated if Kiki’s Wings are spicier than usual or less spicy. ”
For a child with no job, who’d recently asked for an extension on a paper she’d already been given six weeks to write, Vic looked smug. Bex put her taco down.
“What?” Vic asked, with a glare around a mouthful of wings.
“If we do this your way, we’ll have to wait another ten years for anything to happen between the two of you, and I’m tired of the paparazzi asking me if you’re really, for-real together when they should be asking if I was whispering in Catriona Kennedy’s ear at the Lakers game or licking it. I do have fans.”
“Maybe, Victoria,” Bex said, “and please listen carefully, because what I’m about to say includes words and phrases you haven’t learned the meaning of, but maybe it’s none of your business.”
“It’s definitely none of my business,” Vic agreed easily. “But what kind of life am I going to have if I only mind my own business? Why would you want that for me?”
Sam folded the foil that had wrapped her burrito into a neat square. She had nothing to say in response to Vic’s fair but brutal assessment of the situation.
Was it true that Sam had come over to Bex’s wearing silk briefs as pants and extremely high heels in order to claim something a bit sweeter than a fail-hug? Yes. For Sam, fashion was expression, attention, power, and armor. She had sartorial strategies for every possible situation.
Was it also true that seeing Bex across her dining room table after all this time was like seeing her camp girlfriend in math class on the first day of school? Again, yes.
But Bex’s husky alto still gave her goose bumps, and Bex still got more smart words out of her mouth in a minute than anyone Sam had ever met. Being around her bowled Sam over in the worst, best way, just like always.
Sam took a sip of her Jarritos. “You know, Vic, you do have the option of removing yourself from the equation to give your sister and me some time to ourselves.”
Vic snorted. “Yeah, right. Like you guys wouldn’t self-combust with nerves if you didn’t have a buffer. Thank me later.”
Sam grimaced around her straw. Bex had raised this young woman, and Sam knew that a lot of this display was Vic projecting her own Bex excitement onto Sam and Bex’s relationship. “Hmm. I’m sure you’re right.”
“Anyway,” Vic said tartly. She wound a strand of pin-straight blond hair around her finger, tipping her head as she considered a private thought. “Here’s something actually interesting. I took a cold plunge with Piper Redwood today.”
Sam sat up straighter. Piper Redwood was a young costar of The Howling who was Vic’s friend. “Tell me everything,” she said.
Immediately, she recognized her mistake. It was never a good idea to betray too much avidity around Simon women. Now Bex was staring at her with her giant eyes that missed nothing, leaning forward to better suck Sam into her tractor beam.
“You can’t look at me like that,” Sam said. “Like I have to explain my interest in at least one of the random sips of tea Vic serves. Piper Redwood’s star is rising fast.”
“True.” Bex’s arched brows furrowed. “But you saw Chad Bevington and Sloan Lennox together today, and you haven’t told me what Chad came and talked to you about after you hung up on me.
I am plenty sharp enough to guess they might have been together at StudioHonor, where The Howling is taped, because they will soon appear on the show. ”
Damn. Bex had put that together in no time at all.
Sometimes she was a little too sharp. “I didn’t hang up on you.
” Sam offered this rebuttal with her chilliest California surfer girl smile.
Sometimes that worked when Bex was getting ahead of her.
“I had to hang up the phone because Chad came over to talk to me.”
“The thing is, The Howling is known for sentimental stunt casting,” Bex plowed on.
Sam shrugged but didn’t look directly at her. When she did that, Bex could reach into her mind and rummage around.
“Let’s see. Chad talked to you.” Bex was now thinking aloud.
Never good. “Maybe Sloan did, too. Or both of them together. You had to go so quickly that you literally and actually hung up on me, and you never do that. For someone who was born and raised in Oakland, you really embrace the Midwestern goodbye. But now, after running into one third of the Ice Crew in the Studio Honor parking lot, you’re super-duper interested in Piper Redwood, who stars alongside another famous Ice Crew personage on The Howling—namely, Ramona Watts.
” Bex frowned at Sam. “You’re not telling me everything.
You’re supposed to tell me everything. It’s a rule. ”
“Whose rule?”
“Obviously my rule. Not knowing things gives me hives that won’t fade until I know the thing.”
“Maybe Sam heard what Piper told me.” Vic pulled out another wing dripping chiles and chopped cilantro. “About Ramona Watts being a no-call no-show for The Howling’s taping this morning.”
Sam and Bex turned to her as one.
“Is that what you were going to tell us?” Sam asked.
“Wait.” Bex held a palm up to her sister.
“I was wanting to hear what Chad talked to Sam about. Is Vic’s gossip about Ramona what one or both of these men told you?
Because if it is, they could only know that if they had been guest-cast on the show in order to bring Chad, Sloan, and Ramona back together on screen for the first time in a generation! ”
Vic opened her mouth. Sam held up her own palm to forestall any additional commentary.
She had forgotten how quickly the conversation could get out of hand when there was more than one Simon in the same room.
“I didn’t know about Ramona. Chad came up to my car and asked if I would keep it under my hat that I saw him and Sloan together because he and Sloan recently did a spot together on The Howling.
I guess he doesn’t want to violate whatever NDA he signed to keep it a secret.
He said he trusted me not to tell, but he didn’t say it like he actually trusted me.
More as a threat.” Sam dropped her hand and watched keen interest spread over Bex’s face.