I open the door and there’s Steph, her curls immaculate, her signature matte lipstick firmly in place. She sees me and her face crinkles into a smile—a genuine one, deeper and brighter than the ones on all the glossy headshots on her acting website, or the ones she flashes clients when they walk in through the door. Like I’ve dug in deep enough to be trusted with it.
And just like that, I’m not nervous anymore.
“Hey, honey. How’s it going?”
“It’s…”
I stare at her and give the universe one last chance for something earth-shattering to happen. No—not even earth-shattering. Just something to happen at all.
“Good,” I lie. “How was your vacation?”
“Oh.” Steph pulls a face, sticking out her tongue. “I was actually in the audition process for that project I was telling you about.”
I glance toward Georgie’s office door, but Steph doesn’t seem overly concerned about her hearing us. “How’d it go?”
She blows out a breath. “Well. They pulled the rug out from under us a little bit. A new producer got involved, and he thinks the story would be better adapted for television.”
“Oh.” I choose my words carefully, because I don’t want it to seem like I’m assuming she can’t do it. “And you don’t like camera work?”
“No, I just don’t have any experience with it. I assume that takes me right out of the running.”
“But you’re still gonna try, right?”
She smiles, and at first I see her usual sass behind it. But then something softens. “You’re a funny kid, Millie. Worrying about me when you’ve got your whole future ahead of you.”
I raise an eyebrow at her. “A wise woman told me to take all the chances you can get. That you never know where they might lead.”
“Well, she sounds like a trip,” says Steph, even as she beams, clearly pleased that she made an impression. “But yeah, I’m gonna try,” she says. “Not because I think I can get it. But because I anticipated this conversation and had a feeling you were gonna kick me in the butt if I didn’t.”
She smiles at me again, and I smile back, twin smirks pressing into our lips. It occurs to me that if I’m going to say something to her, this is the perfect moment. We’re alone. We’re on some kind of common ground. At this point I know enough about her and she knows enough about me that the conversation might be even easier than I thought, like talking to some version of my future self. The more I get to know her, the more it seems like maybe I could understand.
But I like this, whatever it is. There’s room in my life for it. Maybe it doesn’t have to be anything more than this. Maybe it can just be these conversations with this person who wants the things that I want, who knows the world I want to know. Maybe I already am understood in the way I always wanted to be—just not as mother and daughter. As something like friends.
“Hey, maybe I wouldn’t make such a bad manager after all,” I joke. And just like that, the moment’s gone before I can think of everything else that might go with it.
Steph straightens up in her chair. “Speaking of, fingers crossed for both of you.”
“Why? Is something particularly harrowing on the Check List today?”
Steph tilts her head at me. “Well, you have your one-on-ones with Georgie,” she reminds me. “Since the trial period is almost over and all. She’s deciding which one of you to keep on tomorrow.”
I try not to look surprised. It’s a few days early, but this shouldn’t have snuck up on me. Even with everything going on, the internship’s been top of mind. I’ve just been so busy in the thick of it day-to-day that I never really looked beyond it, to the part where it might not exist anymore. Where I might not have a solid excuse to see Steph or get her advice about the industry or text her funny audition memes I screenshotted from Instagram anymore.
“Right. Of course.” I lean back into the arm of one of the chairs. “If I don’t get it, can we still…”
I don’t know how to ask because I’m not sure what I’m asking for. A casual coffee run every few weeks? A mentor? A mom?
But Steph doesn’t wait for me to figure it out. “I’ve got your number and you’ve got mine. We theater gals have to stick together.”
We share another smile just as her phone rings. She rolls her eyes at me, then flips back her hair to answer.
“Hey, you.” Somehow Oliver has materialized next to me. When I turn he’s smiling this smile that I’m not sure how to classify. It’s quiet, but not in that guarded way it usually is. There’s a stupid moment when I try to file it away the way I do the others—the Stage Manager Scowl, that “in the zone” look he gets during shows, that little-kid grin that sometimes breaks through—but all I can think is that it’s mine.
The kind of smile that has distracted me from the coffee he’s holding out for me, which, given my caffeine habit, is no easy feat. He also has a cookie from the bakery in between our apartments. “Are these for moi?”
“I figured you’d be tired after all the ABBA last night,” he says. “Also, I didn’t get you a birthday present, so.”
I take them from him solemnly, splitting the cookie and offering him half. To my surprise, he actually takes it. “This is arguably the best one I’ll receive.”
“Just don’t use all the energy to shout Avenue Q lyrics out the window at passersby.”
“That was one time. And in our defense, we were not hopped up on coffee, but all those Twix bars that fell out of the vending machine in the band hallway.”
“Duly noted.”
I take a bite of the cookie, which I have discovered over the years is a true breakfast of champions—a belief I have asserted by showing up to first period with one more often than not.
“Is this why you have a cookie emoji next to my name in your phone?” I ask. “Because I like cookies?”
To my surprise, the words make Oliver go very still. He stares down at his cookie half and says, “Uh, no. That was for … well. I realized after we first met I hadn’t just recognized you from the ‘Little Jo’ video. I recognized you from the coffee shop.”
“Oh.” It makes sense. We’re neighbors, after all. We’d probably been walking past each other for years. “I didn’t realize.”
Oliver shrugs. “Sometimes when my parents needed to talk with us out of the apartment, Hunter would take us out. You probably don’t remember, but the first time we were there Elliot held up the whole line trying to pick a treat, and you butted in to tell him to get the cookie.”
I don’t remember, but only because I have such a habit of making other people’s business my business that it’d be impossible to retain it all. “That sounds like something I’d do.”
Oliver smiles to himself, half here and half in that moment all those years ago. “Yeah, well, the cookie was so good we ended up making that our spot whenever my parents needed some space to talk things out. We’d go and split one four ways. It made the whole thing a little less … well.” The smile fades a bit but is no less sincere. “It was nice to have somewhere to go with my brothers that was just ours. And I guess we kind of owed that to you.”