Page 75 of Bad Reputation

When Phil pulled away from the curb, with forced casualness Cole said, “So we’re almost done.”

“We’re almost done,” she echoed.

“Have you thought about next steps?”

It felt like that was all she did lately.

Maggie played with one of the buttons on her coat. “Another one of Bernard’s protégés had to drop out of a project, a little indie coming-of-age story about a group of college students falling in and out of love with each other, calledThe Mid List. I think I’m going to take that. Filming starts in a month, so I have time to find a short-term apartment. It’s a very different kind of production than this. It’s shooting in LA, and it would make sense to spend some time there, to meet some people—oh God, I sound like such an industry cliché, don’t I?”

“The next thing you know, you’ll be complaining about temperatures below seventy degrees and traffic on the 405 and getting juice at Earthbar every day.” Cole grinned, and then he turned his attention out the window. “But yeah, that sounds like a good move for you. I think you’d like LA.”

He didn’t look at her when he said that last part, for which she was grateful. This conversation was, like, 80 percent subtext, and shedidn’t think she understood everything that was happening under the surface here.

“After that ... well, they offered me season four ofWaverley.” She still hadn’t accepted, but it felt odd that she hadn’t told Cole.

The truth was, she saw him almost every day. She’d catch him at the craft-services table in the morning, and he’d tease her about how much brown sugar she put in her oatmeal. They’d talk about the shoot or whatever she was reading. They’d compare Wordle solutions or what they’d watched on TV the night before. Sometimes, he’d chide her into going to H/MU with him, because those folks had the best music and the smartest jokes. Those hours with him were the best part of her day. The best part of ... everything.

But they’d never talked about the future at all. It had been an endless stretch of present.

“They’re already in preproduction?” Cole asked.

“Yup. It’s such a big commitment, they want to nail people down.”

He considered this. Then very, very carefully, he asked, “What did you say?”

“When I took this job, I was ... desperate is a strong word, but let’s say desperate. And running away from home for four months seemed awesome. I would’ve taken a mission to Mars if it had been on offer. But Bernard doesn’t think I’m going to have trouble getting work after this, and there isn’t much attention on me anymore. I mean, I’ve enjoyed Scotland, but I don’t know if I want to be here for such a long time again.”

In the front seat, Phil cleared his throat.

“Sorry, Phil!” she called out, her cheeks flaming because she’d forgotten that she and Cole had an audience for this conversation. A discreet audience, but even still. “Your country is gorgeous, but it’s notmycountry. Being here doesn’t feel like real life.”

“That,” Cole said, “is kind of the problem with making movies. Nothing ever feels real.”

“Nothing?”

But before Cole could answer that, Phil parked. Where the heck were they?

Across a large dark lawn stood one of those Victorian greenhouses, all lacy white lead and shimmering glass, looking more like a Jell-O mold than a place where they kept plants.

“Wait, it’s the botanical gardens,” she said.

“Yup. Technically, it’s closed tonight, but I may have pulled a few strings. It turns out the director is a bigWaverleyfan, and a signed poster is a sufficient bribe. Merrit arranged it for me.”

Maggie was fairly certain Merrit could have successfully negotiated peace on the Korean peninsula.

“GlasGLOW,” she read off the sign.

“It’s all lit up. The exhibit’s opening tomorrow, but we have some long days coming up. I wanted to make sure you didn’t miss it.”

Because Cole had remembered some offhand remark she’d made months ago—literally months ago—about how she wanted to come here.

Feeling as if she couldn’t quite catch her breath, Maggie followed him out of the car. “This is ... thank you.”

“It’s no big deal. Let’s go see some plants.”

Whatever Cole might say, it felt like a deal. It felt like a very big deal. It felt like an enormous, glowing deal that the astronauts were probably observing on the ISS.

A woman met them at the door, taking the signed poster gratefully from Cole. “You can go anywhere you’d like.”

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