It was beyond weird living in Griffin’s house without Griffin. Alice kept listening for the sound of him coming home and then remembering he wouldn’t be coming home. Not for months.

The first week passed with agonizing slowness.

She’d never actually lived alone before. There had always been a roommate, and before that her father’s family, and before that her mother. She had thought she’d enjoy the solitude, but mostly it set her on edge.

She was restless during the days and had a hard time sleeping at night. With her job on Las Vegas General over, Alice found herself at loose ends. It was jarring to go from working long hours to having her days completely empty. There was literally nothing to keep her from staying in her pajamas all day, except her own sense that it would probably be an unhealthy habit to get into. A nagging voice in the back of her mind kept telling her she was just one missed shower away from sinking into a spiral of sloth and depression.

To combat the yawning abyss of inertia, she tried to keep busy working on her dissertation, but the models took hours and hours to run, which left her with a lot of time to fill in between. She started taking Taco for walks twice a day, exploring all the nearby parks and walking paths. She watched all of The Crown and fell into a Wikipedia k-hole reading about the Windsors. She even tried teaching herself to cook, with extremely mixed success.

Her house-sitting duties were light, but she took them seriously. Every few days she’d text Griffin a picture of Taco so he’d know his dog was alive and well. Usually he responded with a thumbs-up or maybe a brief comment, but that was pretty much the extent of their communication.

She’d gotten exactly one non-dog-related text from him since he’d left: a photo taken from the balcony of his midtown condo in Atlanta on the night he arrived. Alice had complimented him on the view, he’d texted back a thumbs-up emoji, and that was that. She assumed he was busy acclimating to his new surroundings and job. She wanted to ask him how it was going, but she was too afraid of bothering him when she knew he was probably busy, so she left him alone.

Saturday, at least, was drinks with the other extras, which got Alice out of the house and around other human beings. They teased her about “bagging” Griffin and her brush with TMZ fame until she explained the situation: that she’d simply traded one menial, celebrity-adjacent job for another. Diane made a Kato Kaelin crack that Mark explained to the rest of them courtesy of his obsession with The People vs. O.J. Simpson, but after that the conversation switched to other topics.

Pete had already gotten another background gig on a new Netflix show. Mark was in the running to be the writer’s assistant on a network sitcom. Diane had taken an unpaid role in a student film, Bex had booked a commercial, and Tina had a callback next week for a speaking part in a Hallmark movie. Rachel was picking up shifts at Starbucks for the time being, but Pete was trying to get her onto his show.

Only a week since Las Vegas General had closed up shop, and they’d all moved on already.

Alice was glad to see everyone again, especially since she hadn’t spoken to anyone but the dog and the cleaning woman since Griffin had left, but it was bittersweet. It was almost more depressing to be reminded of what she’d lost. She missed that stupid, boring job that had actually been pretty cool. She hadn’t appreciated it enough at the time. She wished she’d made an effort to befriend the other extras sooner. Part of her even wished she could go back to the days when all she had to do was sit around a soundstage waiting for her turn to walk down a fake hallway, instead of spending hour after agonizing hour waiting on models that never seemed to converge.

On Monday, Alice had another meeting on campus with Dr. Frazier. Even though they’d picked a day when Dr. Gilchrist didn’t have any classes, Alice cast a nervous glance around the campus coffee shop as she slipped in the door. You never knew when or where he might turn up unexpectedly.

There was no sign of him inside Jo’s Coffee, fortunately. Alice got in line behind a guy with a canvas backpack and genuinely tragic blond tips, and waited her turn to order.

“Alice?”

A hand touched Alice’s arm, and she spun around to find Anh Vo staring at her. They’d both started in the sociology graduate program together five years ago. A lot of their cohort had already graduated and moved on, but apparently Anh was still around, just like Alice.

Anh’s mouth dropped open, her eyes widening in surprise. “Oh my god, you’re alive!”

“Anh! Hi!”

Anh’s look of surprise transformed into a smile. “Where the heck have you been? We all thought you quit.”

“Oh, um…” Alice cast her eyes at the front of the line, which hadn’t moved an inch, thanks to an undergrad at the front having trouble with his Campus Cash card. “I did, sort of—for a while anyway. My fellowship ran out and I had to take a job off campus, and then I just sort of stagnated.”

She avoided mentioning the real reason, because she wasn’t prepared to go into the gory details right then—not taken unawares in the middle of Jo’s before she’d had her morning coffee, for sure. Alice wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to talk about it without getting upset all over again.

Anh nodded, her mouth compressing into a sour line. “I know that feeling. I’m starting to think I’m never going to get out of this place.”

“Why? What happened?”

“The IRB just rejected my application—for the third time.”

“Oh, man.” The university’s Institutional Review Board had to approve any research conducted on living creatures to ensure it followed strict ethical standards. Approvals were an annoying and arduous process, but the scrutiny was even stricter when the subjects were considered part of a protected or vulnerable class—and Anh’s research on minors in institutional care definitely fit that bill.

She sighed as she twirled a strand of silky black hair around her finger. “I’m pretty sure I’m going to die of old age before I get the approval for my research.”

“I’m sorry, that sucks.”

“Eh.” Her shoulders lifted in a shrug. “I knew when I chose this topic that it would be tough. I’ll just have to resubmit again. It would help if they weren’t so vague about the changes they wanted me to make to the study, but I’ll get it eventually. Fourth time’s the charm, right?”

“I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you,” Alice said, impressed by Anh’s positive attitude. But that was who Anh had always been: a tiny, optimistic ray of sunshine.

The line moved forward finally, and they both shuffled closer to the counter. As Anh’s eyes settled on Alice again they narrowed in concern.

“So you’re okay, right? Matt was convinced you were pregnant, but I told him he was an idiot.”

Alice laughed at the unlikelihood of that, given her nonexistent love life the past year. “I am definitely not pregnant—nor was I, at any point, ever.”

“Do you have time to grab a table and catch up? I can fill you in on all the departmental gossip you’ve missed.”

“I would love that, but I’m actually on my way to meet with Dr. Frazier. Rain check?”

“Totally.” Anh smiled. “I’m glad you’re back.”

“Me too.” Alice was surprised how much she meant it.

They continued to chat until they reached the front of the line, and Alice paid for Anh’s coffee as a consolation gift for her IRB problems. Now that her first house-sitting paycheck from Griffin had hit her Venmo account, she could afford a little largesse—more than Anh could, probably.

When their coffees were ready, Alice bid Anh goodbye and took her extra-large cold brew to Dr. Frazier’s office, where she found her committee chair bent under her desk, cursing up a storm under her breath. Alice called out a “Hello?” from the open doorway, and Dr. Frazier popped up like one of Mr. Rogers’ puppets.

“Come in, come in! I’m just looking for my favorite pen.”

Alice dropped into one of the wooden chairs, pulling her messenger bag into her lap and resting her iced coffee on top of it.

“So!” Dr. Frazier smiled brightly. “How does it feel to be back on campus?”

“Pretty good, actually.” Once more, Alice found herself surprised by her own answer. Most of her nervousness had dissipated during the wait in the coffee shop. “I ran into Anh Vo just now at Jo’s.”

Dr. Frazier shook her head sadly. “It’s awful how many hoops the IRB are making her jump through. She’s a fighter though. She’ll bounce back.”

Unlike me, Alice couldn’t help thinking. Hadn’t she basically given up at the first bump in the road? At least she was back now finally, and trying to fix it. That had to count for something.

“Let’s talk about you,” Dr. Frazier said. “How are the new multilevel models going?”

“Pretty well, I think? Although I have some questions…” Alice set her coffee on the floor and slipped her laptop out. “The base models are running fine and I’ve been able to get a Level Two model with just the organization ID to run—”

“How long did that model take to run?”

Alice grimaced. “Twenty-two hours. But it converged okay.”

Dr. Frazier matched Alice’s grimace with one of her own. “It’s just a big data set—it is what it is.”

“The coefficients for that model all make sense, but I can’t get a model that includes percent female on the organization’s board to converge at all.”

“How long are you letting that model run?”

“It’s still going after forty-eight hours.”

“Yeah, that thing’s not going to converge at all,” Dr. Frazier said. “Do you have the descriptives on percent female?”

Alice opened her laptop and passed it across the desk, coming around to stand at Dr. Frazier’s side so they could look at it together.

Her advisor’s fingers tapped a thoughtful rhythm on the desk as she frowned at the screen. “You know what I bet it is? There’s no variance in percentage female board members across the parent companies.”

Alice’s eyes widened as the light dawned. “There’s no variation across companies because—”

“The companies only have one token woman on their boards,” they finished in unison, sharing a look of sororal disgust.

“Here’s what you do,” Dr. Frazier said. “Go and verify that we’re right—pick through each of the boards and see how many women there actually are. That will be tedious, but it won’t be hard.”

Alice nodded as she took her laptop back and sat down again.

“If we’re right, there’s no way to include that variable. But you can still talk about it—it’s a weakness you can make a strength. The weakness is that you can’t measure percent female. But the strength is that you can show why—it adds another layer to your story that the companies that own these media outlets don’t have female input. Are you having trouble with other Level Two models?”

“I haven’t tried a different one—I was trying to get percent female to converge.” Alice bent down to retrieve her iced coffee from the floor.

“Go ahead and move on to a different model. It’s going to take twenty-four hours to converge even if things go well, so you can be investigating this other possibility at the same time.”

“Got it.”

“Good.” Dr. Frazier leaned back in her chair, pressing her lips together. “And now for the unpleasant stuff.”

Alice sucked a mouthful of coffee through her straw, stiffening in dread.

“I’m not trying to push you one way or the other, but I wondered if you’d given any more thought to filing an official report. Now that you’ve had some more time to sit with your decision, I just wanted to check in and see if anything’s changed.”

Alice fidgeted in her seat. “I know I probably should…but I just don’t think I can stand to go through all that.”

In her downtime she’d done some research into Title IX investigations. What she found wasn’t encouraging. More often than not, the results were inconclusive. Even when they ruled in the complainant’s favor, the repercussions for the offender tended to be underwhelming. Like that baseball player in Texas who’d been found guilty of rape in a campus Title IX investigation and was right back on campus a semester later. A whole semester’s suspension—for rape. After everything the woman he’d assaulted had put herself through to come forward and see justice done, she’d still had to change schools to avoid running into her rapist on campus. And he was just an undergrad athlete. He wasn’t a tenured professor like Gilchrist.

What was the point of speaking up if no one was going to do anything substantive? Why should Alice put herself through hell so the school could give Gilchrist the equivalent of a stern talking to and let him go right back to harassing students?

“There’s no ‘should’ in this situation,” Dr. Frazier said firmly. “It’s entirely up to you to decide what you’re comfortable with.”

Alice nodded unhappily, still feeling as though she’d disappointed her. “I guess—now that I’ve finally gotten myself back on track again, I really, really don’t want to go back to thinking about him all the time, and that’s what filing a report would feel like. At this point I just want to get on with my life.”

“I completely understand.”

“I do feel a little guilty about it though.” Alice stared down at her cup, twisting the straw between her fingers. “Like I’m being selfish and thinking only of myself. I mean…” She looked up at Dr. Frazier miserably. “What if he does the exact same thing to someone else because I didn’t make a formal report? My whole dissertation is about women being treated unfairly, and here I am perpetuating a system that allows men to harass and abuse women with impunity.”

A crease formed across Dr. Frazier’s brow, and she leaned forward, steepling her fingers as she rested her weight on her forearms. “Okay, first of all, it’s not your responsibility to make sure the guilty are punished. As a sociologist, you’re well aware of how imperfect systems are, but it is not your job to oil the gears of those systems with your blood. Your only job in this particular situation is to thrive, whatever that means for you. Finish your dissertation, get a job, be a wild success, and get yourself into a position to hire and promote more women. That’s your revenge, and how you change the world.”

Dr. Frazier’s eyebrows lifted as she awaited acknowledgement, and Alice gave a reluctant nod of assent.

“Second of all,” Dr. Frazier went on, tapping the desk in front of her for emphasis, “I believe very strongly that the best way to resist is to engage in self-care first. If you push yourself to do something that doesn’t feel right, you may damage your ability to help in other ways. For instance, if it interferes with finishing your dissertation, thus inhibiting your professional advancement and taking you out of more powerful jobs where you might have a chance to actually improve a broken system.”

Alice had to assume Dr. Frazier was speaking from personal experience. As the only black woman in the sociology department and one of only three in the entire school of social sciences, she must have dealt with a lot of microaggressions and discrimination over the course of her career.

“My number one priority right now is making sure you feel safe,” Dr. Frazier said in a gentler voice. “And if a formal investigation isn’t going to do that, I don’t want you to feel pressured to go through with it. This isn’t your problem to fix.”

Alice’s eyes went to the drawing of the five-legged horse with the big dark cloud over it. “But if everyone says that, the problem never gets fixed. Isn’t it a little bit my fault if Gilchrist hurts someone else?”

“Absolutely not. It’s his fault and his alone. No one is responsible for his actions but him. Least of all you.”

Objectively, Alice knew that was true. But it didn’t absolve her guilt. She still felt responsible.

Dr. Frazier reached for the coffee mug on her desk and knocked back the dregs with a grimace. “If it makes you feel any better, I’ve spoken to the director of graduate studies in the department, and she will not be signing off on any future committees for female students that include Dr. Gilchrist. I’ve also reported the situation to the department chair and he was appalled. I don’t know what, if anything, he’ll do about it, but Gilchrist is on everyone’s radar now. The whisper network will be watching him very closely, and rest assured that if I witness any inappropriate behavior, I will not hesitate to file a formal report.”

“But in the meantime, he probably gets away with it.”

“There are unlikely to be official repercussions,” Dr. Frazier admitted, pushing her empty coffee mug away. “But his actions will not be without consequence. More importantly, the internal workings of this department are not your problem or your business. Your business is finishing your dissertation, and it sounds like you’re making some solid progress toward that.”

Alice answered with a reluctant nod. It did feel like some sunlight had finally started peeking through the clouds. However much guilt she might feel, she wasn’t willing to put her momentum at risk.

Dr. Frazier gave her an encouraging smile. “Let’s keep it up, then, and not do anything to upset the apple cart, okay? I want to get you out of here with a doctorate in your hand as fast as we can.”

That was exactly what Alice wanted too. More than anything.

Griffin flinched when he felt an overly familiar hand land on his shoulder.

“Easy, big guy!” Drew, the studio flunky who’d been assigned to the set, put up his hands in an exaggerated display of surrender.

Griffin forced a smile. “Sorry. You startled me.” He tried to maintain a professional, friendly demeanor with everyone on set, but Drew had rubbed him the wrong way from their first encounter, when he’d made a passive aggressive crack about Griffin’s muscles.

Guys like Drew were all too common in this business: puffed-up rulers of petty fiefdoms whose obsequious praise usually contained a thinly veiled put-down to remind you of the power they wielded. In this case, Drew happened to be Andrew Fulton III, son of Andrew Fulton II, the head of the studio financing the film. Which meant everyone had to suck up to him—except Jerry Duncan, who didn’t suck up to anyone. Jerry and Drew were constantly butting heads over the budget, and had spent the morning shouting at each other over an expensive shot that Duncan wanted and the studio refused to pay for. The altercation had put them two hours behind schedule and left Jerry in an even more vile mood than usual, so Drew was especially high on Griffin’s shit list today.

“In your own head space. I get it.” Drew nodded sagely, as if he had a lot of acting experience under his belt—which Griffin felt sure he did not, unless pretending to have a valuable role to play in his daddy’s business counted as acting. Drew’s mouth curled into a smirk as he cocked his head toward the craft services table Griffin had been staring at. “You’re not going for that candy, I hope.”

Griffin frowned. “What? No.”

Okay, maybe he’d been fantasizing about sneaking a Snickers bar, but it wasn’t like he actually would have done it. Probably. Also, it was none of Drew’s fucking business.

“Good man. Don’t want you turning back into a fatty on us.” Drew reached out and gave Griffin’s stomach a pinch, like he was gauging the body fat on a hog at the county fair.

Since breaking the son of the studio head’s nose would definitely get him fired and end his career on the spot, Griffin gritted his teeth and resisted the urge to punch the guy in his smirky fucking face. “You need something, Drew?”

“Just checking in with the talent. Making sure you’re happy. You’re happy, right, Griff?”

“Sure,” Griffin said, smiling thinly. “I’m delirious with joy.”

“How’s that new trainer working out?”

“Great.” The studio had set Griffin up with a local trainer here in Atlanta to keep him in shape during production. He was kicking Griffin’s ass five times a week, but that was what he was being paid to do, and he was doing a decent job of it.

“Stunt team’s looking after you?”

“Yep.”

“Good. Good.” Drew leaned in close and lowered his voice. “We want you to feel safe. You ever have a problem with a stunt, I want you to come straight to me. I’ll always take your call.”

“Great. Thanks.” Griffin’s voice was so flat you could have melted it between two slices of Wonder bread and called it a grilled cheese sandwich.

The stunt coordinator, Ed, was a twenty-year industry veteran who took his job more seriously than anyone else on set. Griffin would—and did—trust Ed with his life. Drew? Not so much.

“And your trailer?” Drew asked. “You like your trailer? That’s the top-of-the-line model we got you.”

“Yeah, it’s fantastic.” Griffin hooked a thumb over his shoulder as he edged away. “As a matter of fact, I’m headed there now—unless there was anything else?”

“Nope. You go on. Do your thing.” Drew waved him off magnanimously. “Good talk.”

“Dick cheese,” Griffin muttered under his breath as he trudged off to his trailer.

It was a nice trailer, he had to give Drew that much. Good thing, because Griffin spent a lot of time in it. He flopped down on the couch and stared around discontentedly. He’d sooner eat nails than confide anything to Drew, but the truth was, Griffin was miserable.

Starring in a solo action vehicle was turning out to be kind of lonely. He was used to working on ensemble projects, where he shared a lot of screen time with his costars. But a lot of his scenes so far had been with day players who came and went faster than he could get to know them, or with the guys on the stunt crew, who were cool, but also a little cliquey. It was obvious they thought of Griffin as someone who had to be managed so he didn’t hurt himself, which wasn’t entirely inaccurate, but made him feel even more isolated.

The actress playing his daughter was fourteen and acted every bit of it. She spent all her time between scenes with earbuds in, so absorbed in her phone she probably wouldn’t notice if the fire alarms went off. And then there was Richard Scardino, who was playing the drug lord villain of the movie. Sure, he had an Oscar nomination under his belt, but he was one of those method actors who stalked around the set in character, refusing to drop his fake Mexican accent and terrorizing the PAs like he thought he was actually the head of a cartel.

Kimberleigh Cress, who’d be playing Griffin’s love interest, wasn’t even due on set for another couple weeks, but he didn’t have high hopes for their working relationship. She’d barely even acknowledged his existence at the table read, as if it was beneath her to socialize with a lowly television actor. Griffin imagined their upcoming scenes together would be about as much fun as a dental cleaning.

Atlanta was humid, the midtown condo they’d put him in had walls so thin his neighbors kept him up half the night, he was unhappy about a bunch of the last-minute script changes, and oh yeah, he fucking hated Jerry Duncan.

The man was a perfectionist micromanager who went out of his way to make Griffin feel like an incompetent, no-talent waste of space. Every day was a constant struggle to figure out what Jerry wanted from him, and Griffin’s self-confidence was at an all-time low. He hadn’t felt this uncertain of his abilities as an actor since the early days when he’d been fired from that beer commercial.

On top of all that, he missed his dog and he missed Alice. If he was being honest, he missed Alice even more than his dog.

He hadn’t let himself call her, even though he wanted to. He figured she was probably glad to be rid of him, and she deserved to be left alone to focus on her dissertation without intrusions. But he hadn’t talked to her in two weeks, and it was killing him a little. He was like a junkie, itching for a hit after going cold turkey.

Idiot, he berated himself. How had he let himself get infatuated with a girl who barely tolerated him? Who saw him as a person she had to be nice to because he’d given her a job and a place to live. If she knew how he really felt about her, she’d probably run for the goddamn hills. And she’d be right to, after all she’d been through.

He couldn’t let her know. That was the real reason he hadn’t let himself call her. He was feeling so low, he was afraid he might give himself away, and he had to hide his feelings at all costs. She needed this job and she needed this summer to be drama-free so she could concentrate on her dissertation and finish her degree. He wouldn’t do anything to ruin it for her.

Maybe when he went back to LA, after he finished this damn movie. Maybe when she wasn’t working for him anymore, he could tell her how he felt. Find out if she’d even be willing to give him a chance.

Or maybe not. Hadn’t he learned his lesson in the past? He wasn’t cut out to be a boyfriend. He’d only end up hurting her. If he really cared about her, he ought to just leave her alone. The last thing she needed was to deal with all his shit.

For lack of anything better to do, and because he was a masochist, Griffin opened the Twitter app on his phone. He’d noticed a few weeks ago that Alice had followed his Twitter account, which he almost never used. Now, he went into his followers and searched for her name to bring up her profile. It was mostly retweets of funny posts or political news. Only occasionally did she post original content. He’d hoped for some sort of window into her life in LA, maybe even a photo of Taco or a glimpse of his house, but there was nothing like that. She was probably protecting his privacy, which he appreciated, but right now he could really use the sight of something familiar.

She’d gone to see the new Avengers movie the other day and tweeted about it. She’d gone for bành mí and posted a picture of a delicious-looking open-faced sandwich. There was a photo of a graffitied wall he recognized from the park a mile from his house. Finally, he found a photo she’d posted of herself. It was a selfie taken at a bar with some of the extras from Las Vegas General. They were all smiling at the camera and holding up pint glasses of beer.

A pang of homesickness settled in Griffin’s chest. He missed that stupid show, he missed feeling like he was part of a close-knit group like that, and he missed every face in that photo—but most of all he missed Alice.

He swiped to his text messages. She’d been texting him photos of Taco every few days accompanied by cheerful notes. Smiling to himself, he reread the most recent one.

A lump formed in his throat. Was it possible the heart-eyes emoji she’d tacked onto the end was meant to be from her? He wanted desperately to believe she wasn’t just speaking for the dog—that maybe Alice missed him a little too, and would be happy to see him again when he finally came home.

He tapped on her contact info. He was supposed to be leaving her alone, but he’d had an exceptionally crappy day today. Jerry had browbeaten him for two hours this morning trying to get the exact emotional response he wanted, and it had been humiliating.

He just wanted to hear Alice’s voice. Or better yet, see her face.

Maybe he could FaceTime and ask her to put Taco on. That wasn’t asking too much, was it? He hadn’t bothered her for days. He was entitled to check in and see his dog’s dumb face every once in a while.

Before he could talk himself out of it, he pressed the icon for FaceTime.