Five a.m. call times are ridiculous. Especially when I had to drive an hour and a half to get to the set, only to sit around until ten o’clock before we even had the preliminary meeting about the effect.

Which would have gone a lot quicker if they’d used a better fuse wire.

But, of course, no one wants to listen to the girl. Especially the girl who fucks clients.

I now officially hate my job.

Drive-thru burgers was all I could manage for dinner, and the fries were soggy. I miss tour food. Which is barely a step above prison food, I’ve been told by reliable sources.

I miss Grady more. There was another text from him today, but like all the others, I haven’t returned it. The flares of anger are lesser now, but I still don’t know what we’d patch together even if I did know what to say.

We burned so beautifully, but the damage was still severe.

I’m just about to commence blanketforting for the rest of the evening when I hear footsteps on the stairs. Even knowing the knock is coming, the resounding pounds on the door make me jump.

My stomach doesn’t settle when I glance through the peephole.

Big blonde curls and cat-frame sunglasses frame her wide lips, expertly lined and filled with deep red lipstick. I cringe and wonder if it’s too late to pretend I’m not home.

“Open the door, sweetheart. You cast a shadow over the window already,” she says, not a single hint of malice in her voice.

I gut up and open the door. Just a crack. “Um, hi.”

“Hello, there.” She raises her hand, and I notice the pink cardboard box. “I have bribery pastries. But you have to let me in to get them.”

I chew my lip as I stare at the box. I really want those pastries. I really, really don’t want to own the awful things I said to her son. I glance down. Those are some serious stilettos she’s wearing.

“I’m not here to bitch at you or demand apologies. You were mad and hurt and scared and not exactly wrong.”

She’s pretty much exactly right.

My eyebrows furrow so deeply, I can feel the pull from my temples. “Then why are you here?”

“To check on you,” she says simply. Like this is an everyday thing.

Maybe in their world, it is.

“Everyone’s been checking on Grady,” she continues, hiking the strap of her bag higher on her shoulder. “I figured at least Lass and Darcy have called you, but that’s not enough. He’s surrounded by people, and here you are. So, are you okay?”

She jiggles her hand, just enough that I can smell the sugar and chocolate waft up from the box.

My gaze darts from the box to her face and back to the box, then I step back and let the door swing open. “It’s been a really shitty day.”

“Good thing I got a dozen then.”

Her heels click on my fake wood floors, so I know when she stops even though I’m walking into my kitchen. If she’s here to stab me, I don’t want to see it coming.

“This is twice the size of my first place,” she says, a note of nostalgia in her voice. “And I had to share it with another model. She sold my clothes to a thrift store to pay her half of the rent.”

I turn and lean against the counter, giving my small space another look. Darcy and Grady liked it too. It’s clean and organized and I guess the furniture is okay, but I don’t see whatever they do.

Suzy takes off her glasses and sets them and her bag on the chair by the door. “Most people are in such a rush to get to a ‘better’ place they never make a home in the one they have. This looks like a home.”

“I’m not home enough to need a ‘better’ place, I guess. Or I was.”

Her heads tilts back and forth, blonde curls brushing over her mid-back. “Simon Watts has always been an ass. Another dick failing upwards.”

“Met him, huh?”

“Unfortunately. He tried to get into club promotions years ago. Thought he could sweet talk me into doing work for him. Didn’t work. Sure gloated when he got Bourbon Suicide’s contract. Grady never knew about it, because he was still a kid at the time, and it’s not like Watts was the only ass I dealt with. The shit we have to put up with to make a living.”

Setting the pastry box on the table, she flips open the lid with a flourish then turns to me, the same mischievous sparkle as Grady in her eyes. “The band knows now though. Angry as a wasps’ nest too. Only a little bit at me for not telling them sooner.” Suzy’s smile has an odd tilt to it. Like a fuse has been lit and she’s just waiting for the boom. Or the damage.

That protective instinct hadn’t extended to me, though I guess if they’d done anything, I’d be unemployed. And they’d be out millions in a broken contract and reputation. Not a thing I can have on my conscience.

It takes two tries to clear my throat. “Can I make you some tea?”

“Nope. I’m going to make you tea and you’re going to sit down here and eat.”

I shrug and we move past each other in the cramped space. I take the far chair, blushing when I think about what Grady and I did in the other one, now that his mother was going to sit there.

But I can’t bring myself to sit there instead.

Instead, I take the coward’s way out. Which thankfully involves shoving delicious donuts into my mouth so I don’t tell Suzy I fucked her son on this table.

She’d probably just laugh and tell me about all the tables she’s fucked rock stars on.

Without having to ask, she finds my teapot, tea, and mugs. I’m not a tea cup sort of woman.

“I like this teapot,” she says. “Looks like it’s got some history to it.”

Which is a nice way to say it’s beat to shit. “I got it at a swap meet soon after I moved here. I only had a hot plate at the time and was eating a lot of mac and cheese.”

I can’t see her face, but the nod is knowing. “Only good thing about the Ramen diet was that I didn’t have to worry about getting too fat for bathing suit shoots. Which is bullshit, but I had different battles to fight then.”

“Grady wanted to buy me a new one,” I blurt.

She lifts the kettle as it whistles, pointing to it. “One of these?”

“Yeah. I had to tell him it was a family heirloom to get him to stop harping on it. I don’t know why I’m telling you that.”

Suzy fills two mugs, plops in the teabags and brings them to the table. “Elephants in the room have a way of knocking you about if you don’t deal with them.”

I shove more donut into my mouth. “Yeah.”

Silence stretches as she stirs some sugar into her tea. “That’s on me, the constantly trying to make everything okay for everyone. Don’t get me wrong, it’s in his nature, but I sure nurtured the hell out of the trait.” She sighs. “His dad and I had one of those crazy wild passionate relationships, we were either fucking or fighting and both felt like life or death. I was a bitter wreck after I ended it. Being the one to walk away doesn’t mean your heart isn’t broken. Grady deserved not to grow up in that situation. If it wasn’t for him, I might have stayed. Though if it wasn’t for him, the relationship may have run its course without the whirlwind wedding at all. But then I wouldn’t have Grady, and that would suck.”

He was a pretty wonderful addition to the human species. Even if he was a cockbag sometimes.

“My lawyer thought I was nuts when I demanded a one-time settlement instead of alimony and child support. I would have gotten a few million more.” She points her spoon at me. “Or I would have gotten nothing. He had a lot of money at the time, a hit record and a tour. But he went through money fast too. There was no guarantee he’d have any in ten years, but I’d have a growing teenage boy to feed.”

I’d seen Grady eat. That was not a small expense.

“So I got the settlement and bought a nice house in a nice neighborhood. It wasn’t a mansion, but some paint and some new carpet and it was fine. Then I turned shaking my ass in videos into a very lucrative promotions career. But that took a while. We were always okay though.”

I push a donut toward her, wondering if this was leading back to Grady and my teapot.

“But then Grady would go to his dad’s, and sometimes it was a huge mansion. And then there were expensive gifts that somehow got sold before Grady went for another visit and all that kind of bullshit. And like a moron, I let Grady hear me bitch about it and how if his dad really wanted to do something for him, he could buy him new clothes for school. You know, take care of the small things that really mattered on a day-to-day basis instead of buying sports cars that he wasn’t old enough to drive anyway.”

The tea is hot enough to blister the roof of my mouth, but it’s the citrus flavor, and I need something to cut through the sugar coating my tongue.

“So Grady takes care of everyone’s little things.” Like teapots and good night’s sleep and tickets to concerts.

Suzy nods. “It’s how he shows he cares. Drives him nuts when people won’t let him, even when it drives them nuts that he pushes so much. Don’t get me started on the beach house he bought me even though I don’t even like the beach. Had enough sand in my snatch for one lifetime, thanks.”

Tea shoots into my sinuses, making my choking cough worse.

“He gets his smartass mouth from me too.”

And his mischievous grin.

“So it’s driving him crazy right now that you won’t let him just fix this.”

I take a careful sip of tea and trace through the ring of moisture on the table. “I don’t know if it can be fixed. I’m here, and he’s out there, and…”

Her fingers make a dull thud on the table as she drums them. I would have expected her nails to be long. I look up and she tilts her head. “And what?”

“You’re mom-ing me.”

“Yep.”

“I’m not used to being mom-ed.”

“No, you’re not. And you don’t have to let me do it now or any other time.”

“Then what is this?”

“Donuts and tea and a little hard-won wisdom. Free of charge.”

“Okay. What’s that?”

“It’s okay to just fuck everything up. Some of the best things come out of the worst disasters.”

Grady’s ringtone interrupts my nineties teenage-girl drama show binge watch a few hours later. It’s past midnight on the east coast, where tonight’s show was.

I wave my finger over the screen, but don’t accept the call. He can leave another voicemail.

Except he hangs up and calls right back.

Twice.

I sigh like one of the characters, drowning in my own angst.

They did not have to deal with cell phones.

He texts. I’m sorry my mama busted in on you like that. I swear I did not put her up to that.

“No shit,” I mutter. Like Suzy Baker could be put up to anything. Though if anyone could, it would be Grady. Or for Grady.

Scrubbing my hand over my face doesn’t make the text go away. Or the next one.

Are you okay? Can I do anything?

Fire the new pyrotech? Make my boss not an asshole? Fly back here and fuck the angst out of me?

I shouldn’t. I really shouldn’t. I should just ignore this text like all the others and force both of us to get on with the getting on, but I don’t.

I’m all right. No worries about Suzy. It’s cool. She brought donuts.

Before I can send another text telling him I have to get up early so he doesn’t text me again, he calls.

Because of course he does.

Fuck it. I answer.

“Finally. I was going to try carrier pigeons next. Do you know how hard it is to find carrier pigeons?”

“You actually looked, didn’t you?”

“I’ve had some free time lately.”

Thus ends the witty avoidance part of the conversation. The silence is just to the painful part of awkward when he clears his throat. “I’m sorry, Evie. About everything. It all just went down so fast. I kind of spun out.”

“Okay. Thanks.” There’s a stray thread on the seam of my quilt. I pick at it until it starts to unravel.

“We’re going to be back in LA the end of next week.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“The new pyro guy kinda sucks.”

I bolt up and swing my legs off the bed. Had someone gotten hurt?

“He’s…adequate, I guess. Things explode when they’re supposed to, but…he’s not you. Gets all flustered if we throw in a few extra bars and shit. Think he’s in over his head out here.”

“Know that feeling,” I grouse.

“Yeah.” There’s a smile in his voice. “But you made this place your bitch a whole lot faster.”

I appreciate the sentiment, but… “I can’t do this, Grady.”

“Do what? Talk on the phone?”

“No. Yes. Yeah. I just…”

“Just what, fire woman?”

My eyes burn. I swipe my hand over them and breathe deep. My voice almost doesn’t crack when I say, “Can’t. We just…flame out.”

He sighs and there’s a world of resignation in it.

It’s a pitiful analogy. We burned so bright, so hot. What was going to be left but a chemical smell and a few ashes? Especially when we were too far apart to refill the device?

He says three little words before hanging up. “This isn’t over.”