Nope.

“Oh, I’m definitely nervous, but I’m trying not to think too much about it for now. I need to forget about the cameras and try to remember who I am and why I wanted to do this in the first place. We’ll see if I manage to do that.” She sighed. “Who knows, maybe they only like Maddie the bitch. Most people do.”

Her mom clicked her tongue.

“You’re lovable any way you want to be. Anyone would be lucky to have you, and if they don’t realize that, you don’t want them anyway.”

Maddie wiped her eyes with the bottom of her shirt.

“I’m lucky to have you, you know.”

Her mom cleared her throat.

“Likewise. Now. How are the plans for Alexa’s wedding going? Have you found bridesmaids dresses? Is she ready to kill her mom yet?”

Maddie laughed.

“We did find bridesmaids dresses; Alexa and I found them just this weekend, actually. It helps that it’s just me and Olivia wearing them and we look good in the same colors. I know we’re all relieved that part is done. And no, Alexa doesn’t want to kill her mom yet but . . . we’ll see how the next two months go.”

“That sounds great,” her mom said. “I’m excited the wedding is so soon. I can’t wait to meet Theo, and see Olivia again and Alexa in her wedding dress. However, I hope you’re not too busy with this whole job interview and bridesmaid thing to help your mother find a dress for this wedding. I have no idea what I’m going to wear!”

Maddie laughed.

“Don’t worry, Mom. I’m on it.”

Chapter Fourteen

MADDIE PULLED A TISSUE OUT OF HER BLAZER POCKET AND WIPED her eyes after releasing Dominique from a hug.

“You look fantastic,” she said.

Dominique stared at herself in the mirror.

“I love it, I really do. I thought I was going to come here and you were going to put me in a bunch of, like, pale pink cardigans, or whatever, but this just looks like the business lady version of me.”

Maddie forced herself not to cry again.

“That’s just what I wanted you to look like,” she said.

“CUT!”

Maddie and Dominique both turned around to the cameraman. Weird as it was, Maddie had forgotten they were being filmed. She’d talked to Dominique like she was back in her own studio with any client. No. Like she was with a friend.

“Thank you both.” Allen, the producer, came on set and nodded at them. “Dominique, Talia here will show you back to your dressing room. Maddie, you can follow me.”

Maddie said good-bye to Dominique and pressed her card into her hand before following Allen down the hall. She hadn’t intended to cry today, but she was glad she’d put on waterproof mascara, just in case. She was surprised at how emotional the audition had made her feel; Dominique’s story and worries and needs had affected Maddie more than she’d expected them to.

She turned to smile at the producer walking her down the hall. She couldn’t tell from his demeanor if he’d liked her audition or not, or if he liked how different she’d been from the last time. She just wanted to whisper, “Blink twice if you thought it was good!” at him, but somehow she didn’t think that was a wise idea.

He led her back to her dressing room and shook her hand.

“Maddie, it’s been a pleasure. Not sure exactly when we’ll be making decisions, but you should hear from us within a few weeks.”

She tried to make her smile as confident as she could.

“Thanks so much, Allen. I look forward to hearing from you.”

She waited until she got into her car before calling Theo. He picked up right away.

“Maddie. How’d it go?”

She loved that he knew exactly why she was calling.

“I feel a lot better about this than I did the last one, that’s for sure. No matter what happens, I’m proud of what I did in there.”

She heard the sound of his office door closing and thanked him mentally for that.

“Oh, Maddie, I’m so glad,” he said. “I can’t wait to hear the details and celebrate tonight.”

She was glad she hadn’t canceled dinner with him tonight. It would be good to relax and tell him all about it.

“Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves,” she said. “I have no idea if I got the job, but at least I know I gave it my best shot.”

“That’s definitely something to celebrate. Remember, the reservation is at seven thirty. Since you’re already in the city, are you going to meet me there?”

That would make the most sense, but no one had ever accused her of being a person who made sense.

“No, I want to go home and change first. My ‘going out to a fun new restaurant’ outfits and my ‘interview for a dream job’ outfits are in two very different categories. But I’ll meet you at your house after I change and we can go together?”

“See you then.”

Maddie turned her car on, waited for her Bluetooth to connect, and then called her mom.

“Hey, Mom! I think it went well!”

She talked to her mom, and then Alexa, the whole way back across the Bay Bridge.

Theo had planned to wear the same thing to work as he did out to dinner, but Maddie and her whole outfit categories thing had shamed him into coming home in time to change before dinner. If he was evaluating her categories correctly, she’d be most likely to wear a dress or a jumpsuit tonight. He’d seen her admire his favorite blazer in the past—the tweed one with the elbow patches—so he switched to dark jeans, took off his tie, and slipped the blazer on, just in time for her to ring his doorbell.

He padded down the hallway and opened the door.

“You know, you have a key now. You can just let yourself in.”

She shrugged as she walked in. Yep, a flowy pink dress with a jean jacket.

“I don’t want to assume that just because I have a key I can use it whenever I want.”

He leaned down and kissed her.

“You can definitely use it if we already had plans for you to come over, which we did in this instance. Or obviously in any emergency.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Okay, sure, I anticipate a lot of ‘I need to get into Theo’s apartment or else the dinosaur on the loose might capture me’ emergencies. Thanks for letting me know.”

He smacked her butt lightly and she grinned.

“I see we’ve been watching Jurassic Park again.”

She laughed as he slipped his shoes on.

“You caught me. It was on TV the other night, and I couldn’t not watch when I flipped channels.”

He grabbed his keys and they walked out to his car.

“This place had better be good; it takes a lot to get me to drive across the bridge on a weeknight.”

She put her seat belt on and turned the radio from NPR to music.

“If it’s terrible, we’ll both blame Ben.”

He nodded.

“Excellent call. Okay, so tell me everything about the audition. I’m so glad you’re happy about how this one went.”

She turned to him with a smile. When she smiled like that, she was so stunning he could hardly believe it.

“I really am. I’m not going to lie: it was scary to put myself out there like that—it was a lot easier the first time, when I managed to not think of them as real people. This time, I got so emotional. I even started crying at the end, which I felt weird about, but then, so did the woman I was working with. But when I saw the look on her face, and the way she thanked me afterward, I felt like what I said to her made a difference.” She laughed. “Is this how you and Alexa feel all the time? Now I get why you both love your jobs.”

He put his hand on hers.

“Not all the time, but those magic times when it does happen . . . it’s an incredible feeling. I know exactly what you mean.”

She squeezed his hand.

“I know you do. Thanks for helping me get there.”

He hadn’t been prepared for her to thank him. Or for how incredible that would make him feel.

“No thanks needed. This was all you.”

She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.

“Well, you helped me figure out how to be the best of me—let’s put it that way.”

Maddie did that for him, too, and had since the very beginning, when she’d told him what a pompous jerk he could be.

Granted, it had taken him a while to admit that, but still.

“I’m glad I could help,” he said.

As they walked into the restaurant, he wondered if Maddie realized this was the first time they’d been out like this. Up to this point, their entire relationship—or whatever someone might call it—had occurred in private. They’d hung out and talked and had sex and watched TV and eaten lots of food and had more sex, but all that had happened either at his place or hers. But he’d missed the feeling of walking into a restaurant, or a party, or just down the street, with the woman he was with by his side.

He looked down at the menu once they were at their table.

“Okay, I’ve been dying to go to this place, and I’m very thankful my little brother got us in here, but this is the issue I always have with restaurants like this: why do the menus all have to be so minimalist? Like ‘squid, lemon, herbs, beans’—that’s a list of ingredients, not a dish! How is it cooked? Deep fried? Roasted? Stewed together? No one knows!”