Chapter 3
EMMA
The park is only half-lit at this hour, and there’s a cold snap in the air that doesn’t exist in August except here, where the sprinklers have recast the grass in dew.
The call time was seven, but Asher beat me by five minutes, jogging up the curb with that kinetic, golden retriever-gait that only real athletes and stoned surfers have.
He’s already in character—or rather, maybe that’s just how he is—wearing a fitted white t-shirt and ancient grey Nike shorts, his hair ignored into a controlled, expensive mess.
“Emma!” His voice carries before his body arrives. “I brought water, if you forgot.”
I didn’t forget. I am, if nothing else, aggressively prepared.
I have two mini water bottles in my fanny pack, an extra pair of socks (blister paranoia), and two travel packs of Advil in case we both hate ourselves by mile three.
I almost tell him this, but he’s smiling at me in such an open, uncynical way that I want to be someone lighter, someone who doesn’t armor up for first dates like Katniss Everdeen at the Cornucopia.
He holds out one of the bottles with a little bow. “From the sacred springs of Fiji, because I believe in starting things dramatically,” he says.
I try to take it without my hand shaking, but I watch my fingers anyway—a dead giveaway of nerves.
“Thanks,” I say. “You know you don’t have to be the most charming man in Los Angeles, right?”
He shrugs like he’s heard this before. Maybe he has, perhaps a thousand times. “If I’m not charming, I don’t eat,” he says, deadpan, then: “That’s a joke. I mostly eat out of boredom and unresolved trauma.”
There’s something about two famous people running in public, in that space after sunrise but before the dog walkers have all clocked in, that feels like trespassing in your own body.
I’d never call myself famous outright—not yet, not even borderline—but Asher is.
I get the sense that this weirds him out less than it does me.
I always thought Fame would feel like power.
Mostly, it feels like waiting for a sniper to take the shot.
We start on the big loop through the rose garden, our paces accidentally matching. The path is made of spongy, red rubber. We run in silence for the first stretch, our feet pounding the road in unison, until he throws a conversational grenade at me.
“Twenty questions,” he says. “But running edition. One question per lap.”
I grin before I can stop myself. “What do I get if I win?”
He pantomimes deep thought. “Loser buys the winner brunch, plus unlimited ego validation for the rest of the day.”
Even the threat of paparazzi up-skirting me at breakfast in post-run spandex can’t make that sound terrible. “Deal,” I say. “You start.”
He waits until we crest the first mini-hill before hitting me with: “What did you want to be before you got cast in Flicker?”
I shouldn’t be thrown—this is basic, first-date stuff—but I kind of am.
“I was going to be a nurse,” I say, and for a second I’m not even sure why I say it, or why I don’t lie and say a writer, or a zoologist, or a hand model.
“My mom was sick a lot. It made sense.” I’m immediately embarrassed at the nakedness of this, but Asher doesn’t mock me or poke for more. He just nods.
“That’s cool,” he says. “My turn?”
“Ready,” I say, but my lungs are tightening, and I feel sweat gathering at the nape of my neck. I focus on the path.
“Did you ever get in trouble in high school?”
“Once,” he says. “But it was for streaking, so it was more my friends’ idea of a joke than honest delinquency. Small town. South Jersey.”
I picture baby-Asher running naked through some mall parking lot, chased by security guards high on Dunkin Donuts and self-importance. I bite my cheek to keep from laughing.
“My question,” I say, victorious now. “Did you ever have a secret pet? Like, one your parents didn’t know about?”
He grins. “A turtle, in my gym locker for three weeks. I fed it pizza crusts from the cafeteria. When they found it, I had to write a letter of apology to the school and the turtle sanctuary.”
I can’t help it. I snort. “You owe a turtle somewhere a favor, then.”
He nods solemnly, sweat making a halo around his hairline now. “I owe a lot of favors to a lot of creatures.”
We hit the half-mile mark, and for a moment, the conversation slows.
I wonder what Asher’s really thinking, if he finds these “set-up” dates as artificial as I do.
Our publicists and the studio coordinated this, but maybe there’s some cosmic law that all fake relationships must start with a bit of real chemistry.
By lap three, our breathing is heavier, but not desperate. I feel looser, more myself. Even my shoes feel better.
“What do you hate in people?” he asks, and it’s so blunt I almost trip.
“People who don’t love cats,” I say, “and people who make fun of waiters.”
He laughs, but not at me. “Cats, huh?”
“I have convictions and cats are magical,” I say, and for a moment I think about the thousand pettily selfish things I see every day in this city. I could have rattled off a hundred more.
“Your turn,” he prompts, and I don’t even have to think about it.
“What’s your worst injury?”
He’s quiet for three steps. “Not counting the time I cracked my skull on a dock, or the time I almost lost a thumb to a mandoline slicer?”
I shake my head. “Those are boring.”
He slows slightly, enough for us to jog side by side instead of in front-back formation.
“Honestly? The first time I realized I couldn’t go home again.
That I’d changed more than the people I grew up with, and that if I went back, they’d just stare at me like a science experiment.
” He doesn’t look at me, just at the hedges as we pass.
It is more than I expected, and I like it.
We keep going. The running, the rhythm, it works better than any therapy appointment I’ve ever had.
By lap five, there’s a commotion ahead. Two men with long-lensed Nikons are pretending to photograph the flower beds, but they adjust their positions every time we get near. I glance at Asher; he doesn’t break stride, but rolls his eyes like, “Here we go.”
He leans in and whispers, “I’ll race you to the bench. Loser has to give the first fake quote.”
Now it’s on. I sprint, and we both laugh, and the sound of shutters clicking is momentarily drowned out by how happy I am to be running, to be entirely in my body, to be seen by someone who’s seen all this before.
I collapse onto the bench first, but he’s just behind me, hands on his knees, grinning despite the chaos. The paps edge closer, one even calls out, “Is it love, you two? Are you training for a rom-com?”
“Give them a show,” I say, and Asher reaches over and slings an arm around my shoulder, mugging for the cameras with a hundred-watt smile. It’s a little cheesy, but it’s also him, and for the first time, I don’t feel like I’m faking anything.
The photographers hover, unsure if we’ll say more. Asher just pulls me in tighter and says, “No comment, unless you want to sponsor my next 5k.”
I snort. The men leave, satisfied, and Asher looks at me, his face more serious now.
“You’re good at this,” he says, meaning the acting, or maybe the running, or perhaps just proximity to madness. “Better than you think.”
I shrug. I want to tell Asher that I had to be. That, for girls like me, being good at it was the only ticket out.
Instead, I say, “You too. And hey, you won the race.”
He laughs. “Technically, you did, but now you have to buy me brunch.”
The run back to the cars is lighter. I’m not sure where the morning went, but somewhere between laps, I stopped dreading the date and started wanting it to last longer.
At the parking lot, he opens the door to his car, a battered Jeep that is not what I’d expect from someone so high up the tax bracket. I realize I’m stalling when I linger at my own car, watching him stretch his hamstrings through the window.
He rolls down the glass. “Do you, uh, want to go somewhere cool?” There’s a pause. “Like, eat actual food, not just Instagram about it?”
I nod, just once. “Yes,” I say, and peel off the parking brake. “Lead the way.”
He drives like he runs, aggressive but careful, making a show of every stop sign.
I follow him twenty minutes out to the coast, to a fish taco joint that looks like it’s one permit violation away from being closed forever.
He gets out and holds the door open for me, even though it’s one of those that weighs fifty pounds and swings back on your knees if you’re not fast enough.
The inside smells like cilantro and chlorine and the ocean, and I realize I’m starving.
We sit at a booth with a view of the water, far enough away from the bar that nobody cares who we are.
“Best fish tacos in LA,” Asher says. “I swear on the turtle’s honor.”
We order and talk, and the conversation gets stickier, heavier. ASher tells me about growing up outside Philly, about how his parents split and his mom went crazy toxic overnight, and how he had to practice non-regional diction for years to drop the Jersey from his voice.
“I still slip when I’m drained, or when I go home,” he says. “But my coach said it’s the first thing people judge you on.”
I confess that when I first moved to LA, I auditioned for three straight months without booking a thing. That I sometimes call my agent “mom” by accident, which is only marginally less humiliating than admitting that I miss my actual mom.
He’s almost gentle now, in a way he wasn’t before. “I haven’t had a real girlfriend in years,” he says, as if the words are hard to fit into a script. “Too much work. Too much… needing to be on all the time.”
I nod, maybe too fast, because I recognize this: the toxic suspicion that if you let down your guard for a second, everything will be taken away.
“I’m not really in a place for…” I try to say it, but it comes out softer, “I don’t know what I want.”
“Me either,” he says. “But I like this. I like you.”
I look at him, and there’s nothing player-ish about the way he says it. It’s clear and plain, like New Jersey in winter, nothing to hide.
We eat until we’re dizzy, and when he offers a walk on the beach, I almost accept. But I have a meeting in the morning, scripts to read, a life that is separate from this new thing. I stand in the parking lot and stretch one last time, pretending that I’m not nervous.
“What should we do tomorrow?” he asks.
“Can we try something less strenuous?”
“Sure. I’ll think of something interesting.” He grins and leans in, not for a kiss, but for a quick warmth at my shoulder, a promise. Something like, “This is not just for the cameras.”
But then again, what do I know?