Page 77 of Sizzle Reel

“Yeah,” I say, heat rising to my neck. Don’t touch it. Can’t touch it. “We’re friends.”

Noam covers his mouth with his coffee mug and takes a sip. “Really good friends.”

Bitterness rises in my throat. Did he say “really good friends”? I touch—

Fuck, I touch my neck again. Right on the hickey.

“Look, honey,” Dad says. “I love that you’re following your dreams, but I’m not helping pay for you to live out of the house if you don’t need to. If all you have on your plate are independent projects, you’re not going to have enough to pay rent. You’re welcome to come move back in with your mom and me, but if you like living with Romy, you need a job.”

Sweat slicks my palms. I wipe them on my napkin, splotching it with makeup. Makeup that’s supposed to be covering my hickey. “It’ll be fine, Dad. Brendan will come through. And from now on it’ll be none of that barely-paying P.A. work. I’ll be—”

“This is what you said about working with that psycho manager,” Mom says. “You said it was a shortcut past all the bullshit. Lune, have you ever considered that maybe you’d enjoy doing menial camera work for a few years and rising naturally? You can apply to work in television instead of movies. Yearlong gigs at a time, and then you’d have time to submit to festivals and galivant around stroking some actress’s ego outside of work.”

I cringe at the word stroking. Then I cringe again at the whole insinuation.

I’m not hinging my career on creative projects with Valeria, but Valeria isn’t just some actress. The anger burns in my gut. Anger at them, anger at myself. I want to say it. I want to tell them what Valeria is to me, what she means. What status she should have at this table. That yes, this…this thing with her is a wild gamble, but it’s worth it.

“It’s not like that,” I say. “She believes in me. And, either way, I have Brendan working on getting me a job.”

“Try to be ambitious and practical,” my dad insists.

“Honestly, love,” Mom says. “Treat this cinematography thing the way you treat dating. You’re so damn practical with that. Wyatt was a gem—”

“I’m not dating Wyatt,” I mutter.

Mom tightens her jaw. “I know that. But someone like Wyatt.” She puts a hand over mine. “I’m just looking out for my baby’s happiness. You know that, don’t you? You want that, don’t you? A steady career, a husband, children?”

“A couple of cousins for the illegitimate children Noam will have too early with some sorority girl?” Dad jokes.

Noam groans as our food arrives. I’m suddenly not hungry, but I pour the syrup and butter my waffle anyway.

Yes, of course I want a family. I want to raise children, and I never want to imply that they have to marry someone of the opposite sex and have kids of their own to be happy. I want to let my boys wear dresses and my girls build Hot Wheels tracks. Maybe I want to raise them with no gender at all. I want them to grow up in a home where being queer is as normal as being straight and cis.

More than anything, I want my kids to have a home. To have stable parents like mine. But if I can’t even find basic sexual satisfaction in a relationship with a man, is my only chance at giving my future family a stable life to marry a non-man? My heart tugs at the thought. The image of a woman—my wife—cooing over our children has my heart fluttering.

But my parents would have to accept that dream. I take a bite of waffle without acknowledging what my mother has said.

Mom sighs. “Just think about what your father said about rent.”

Noam rubs his chin, eyeing me. “What’s on your neck?”

Noam just couldn’t hold it together, could he?

Mom and Dad snap their attention to me.

“How do you get a bruise on your neck karaoke-ing?” Dad asks.

Mom leans forward, running her finger along it. It makes my skin crawl.

“Luna.” Mom looks right at me. “Is this a hickey?”

No. No, no, no, no.

“It was just one date. He”—God, that word makes my whole body ache—“and I didn’t click at all. We’re not seeing each other again.”

Mom and Dad drop the subject. But I hear the sighs of parents who want grandchildren, who have had their hopes raised and dashed in one fell swoop.

But Noam holds his gaze on me a little longer, like he just might suspect.

---