I leave three messages for Emilia over the next few days, but she doesn’t return any of my calls. Even when I tell myself that she must be busy getting everything ready for Christmas without Marla, I still check my phone a few times an hour to see if she’s been in touch. I want to tell her how I think I finally understand what she meant about sifting through the shit life deals you and holding on to the good stuff with everything you have. Maybe I’ll even find the words to tell her how much more grounded I’ve been feeling since I started spending time with her, like she might be the kind of person I could grow up to be like, if I can just stay on track.

The late December sun is blazing hot, hotter than I can ever remember it, and the beach below my house is filled with tourists shaded under bright umbrellas and mismatched towels bought on Venice Beach. I collect the binoculars from the kitchen drawer, and point them toward the peach house. The house is dark, with no movement, but Emilia’s car is still parked in the driveway. I consider walking up the back to surprise her, but instead I settle into the beige lawn chair and wait.

After an hour or so, I see her blond head bobbing across the driveway, and then her car starts to move. I race to my own car. The drive down to PCH from Emilia’s takes longer than from mine, so I drive up the hill and wait at the opening until I see her Porsche turn onto the highway. I follow her car, keeping at least three car lengths between us as she drives south on PCH for about twenty minutes. She turns off just before we reach Venice, and I follow her, telling myself I just want to share the story of my audition with her, since she was the one who got it for me. I turn the radio up loud to drown out everything except the golden sun, the song and the white Porsche in front of me.

Emilia parks on one of the side roads behind Abbot Kinney but I drive on, opting for the paid parking just off the main street instead so that I have a head start on her. I can’t figure out how to use the payment machine so I just leave my car and hope that I don’t get another ticket.

Abbot Kinney is buzzing with Christmas tourists and local girls gripping iced coffees along with their car keys and sparkly phones. Christmas lights are strung over the storefronts, and trees glitter in the windows. I duck into Le Labo when I see Emilia ordering something from a juice truck parked in front of the Butcher’s Daughter across the street. I make a big thing about smelling the different perfumes in case she’s coming in here, but then I find one that is actually familiar—the one Emilia wears. Thé Noir 29. I spray it on my neck, turning my back on the pretentious man behind the huge oak counter. I clocked the exact moment he recognized me, his face softening disingenuously.

“That one is actually my favorite,” he calls to me, and I smile as if that’s just sealed it. What a salesman.

“I’ll take a bottle. I also want to buy a gift for my friend—does this come in candle form?”

“We have something you’ll love even more, let me grab it for you,” he says, running around the other side of the counter and trailing his finger across the candles until he settles on one.

“You can personalize the message on the label—what would you like it to say?”

“How about . . . Emilia, Thank you for everything, Love, Grace x,” I say, picturing the candle in the middle of the table in the dining room, or maybe on the mantelpiece behind the toilet in the master bathroom, a surprise for Able every time he takes a piss. I watch out the window while the man rings up my order. Emilia is no longer at the juice truck.

“Hey, can I film you saying that line for my friend?” the man asks, waving his phone at me. “You know—”

“I know,” I interrupt him. “But I’m kind of in a rush.”

After that, the man takes an unholy amount of time mixing my perfume and creating an individual label for both the perfume and the candle, before gift wrapping them both so slowly that I’m convinced he’s actually moving backward at one point.

I pay quickly and rush out the door. I walk down Abbot Kinney, smiling politely back at anyone who recognizes me or nearly does. One girl says hi to me, thinking I’m a friend of a friend or maybe someone from her yoga class, before realizing her mistake and looking mortified. I say hi back graciously.

I peer into every store that I imagine Emilia could be in, the eco-friendly jeans store, the Scandinavian jewelry store, even the weed dispensary, but in the end, I find her in the one place I didn’t expect—the spiritual bookstore. She is wearing a cream cashmere sweater and jeans with a pair of tortoiseshell sunglasses, and is scanning the spines of books about astrology. I touch her on the shoulder lightly, molding my face into an expression of casual surprise when she turns around.

“What are you doing in here?” Emilia asks accusingly, but then she recovers and pushes her sunglasses up on her head so that I can see her eyes. “Actually, what the fuck am I doing in here?”

She leans in to kiss me on the cheek, but none of it is quite right.

“Are you wearing my perfume?” she asks, narrowing her eyes again slightly.

I sniff at the collar of my vintage T-shirt. “Oh yeah, someone gave me a sample of it. It smells better on you,” I say, hoping she won’t ask to look in the Le Labo bag.

Emilia smiles politely. “You’re so sweet.”

“Do you want to go for a coffee? I’ve already had one, but it’s the only high I have left so . . .” I say, trying to make her smile. “Unless I’m about to sit through a two-hour interpretive nativity play, of course.”

Emilia checks her Cartier watch quickly. I stand like an idiot, waiting for her to respond, and when she eventually looks back at me, it’s like she forgot I was there.

“I did the audition—for Anatopia? I think it went well,” I say, desperately trying to keep her attention. “It felt amazing.”

She smiles again. “I’m so pleased for you, Grace. Really, that’s great.”

I wait for her to say something else, but she has turned to the display of books on moon cycles, picking one up and turning it over in her hand. When she notices me waiting for something, she shrugs apologetically.

“I’m sorry, this isn’t a great time. I’m getting some last-minute presents and then I have to go to the British store in Santa Monica to get some disgusting culinary invention called Marmite.” She rolls her eyes. “Your people invented it, and Able likes me to make the gravy using it, just like his grandma used to.”

“Able’s coming back?”

Emilia looks at me strangely. “Of course he’s coming back. Christmas is three days away.”

I nod and try to appear as if I knew that, and I’m just having a bad day too. I tuck my hair behind my ears.

“I actually have some Marmite at mine. I can drop it over if you want?” I say, trying to sound casual.

Emilia narrows her eyes. “You do?”

“I do. I haven’t even opened it yet,” I say. “I can drop it over tomorrow?”

“That would be great. Thanks, Grace,” Emilia says, turning back to the books.

“Are you . . . is everything okay?” I ask, hating how desperate I sound.

“Of course it is,” Emilia replies, but her voice is clipped and tight, and she must hear it, too, because her eyes soften a little. “I’m sorry, I’ve just got a lot going on at the moment.”

“I understand completely,” I say, my voice dipping like my mother’s does when she’s lying, and reminding me that I haven’t called my parents since I’ve been back in LA. “The Marmite is the least I can do, Emilia. I’ll drop it over tomorrow.”

I walk out of the bookstore with my Le Labo bag swinging by my side, but the smile drops from my face as soon as I’m out the door.

* * *

? ? ?

I have no place to go other than my depressing rental, so instead I walk down onto the sand with my baseball cap pulled low on my head. All the locals know that you don’t actually swim or sunbathe on Venice Beach because of the weird sewage foam that rolls in with the tide, but there are still hundreds of tourists lying on the sand beneath the cornflower-blue sky and unseasonably blistering sun.

I pull my phone out of my bag and look down at it. For some reason my encounter with Emilia is making my chest heavy and tight, and I feel lonelier than I have in a long time. What is wrong with me? I think as I scroll through my contacts and call Nathan.

“Nathan, hi!” I say enthusiastically.

“Hi, sweetie. I’ve actually been meaning to call you.”

“You have?”

“I think John Hamilton is going to offer you this role. He said your screen test blew them all away.”

“Okay,” I say slowly, surprised by the validation I still feel at his words. “So when do we sign?”

“It doesn’t exactly work like that,” Nathan says, sniffing. “He’ll be trying to get you for cheap now, so we’ll have to negotiate. He did seem to like you though. Thinks you’re smart.”

“Who was it that said women and dogs are the only two instances where too much intelligence is a bad thing?”

Nathan snorts. “Probably John Hamilton.”

“So can we meet with him next week? After Christmas?”

“Yes, I’ll get Dana to email him and arrange it.”

“Thank you. I’ve got your support with this . . . comeback, right?” I say needily, hating myself.

“As long as you don’t call it a comeback. Remember, you took one year off, to spend time with your parents.”

“That’s what I told you.”