“It means you’re super gay for your boss, just like everyone has been saying.”
“I hate you.”
It didnotmean that. It meant Emma was drunk and dumb and had bad depth perception. It meant she was embarrassed as all hell and would probably have to deal with some awkward lecture from Jo on Monday about appropriate behavior in the workplace.
“We’re not done talking about this,” Avery said as she put Emma in a Lyft.
Emma didn’t bother saying bye. Her driver was silent, thankfully. She sat in the back seat in a stew of embarrassment and disbelief. What was she supposed to do now? What did one do after accidentally kissing their boss? She could apologize. Should, probably. But it seemed like the much less mortifying solution was just to ignore it.
Yes, an apology would be nice. She didn’t want to do thingsthat were inappropriate or made Jo uncomfortable. But maybe apologizing would make Jo uncomfortable—bringing it back up and having to address it. The best apology was changed behavior, and it was already never going to happen again. Emma didn’t want to kiss Jo. Jo knew that, even if the rest of the world—including Emma’s own sister—thought otherwise. Emma would just be professional. That would be her apology.
She drank two full glasses of water before climbing into bed. She didn’t think about Jo’s lips once.
—
The sun was toobright. Emma pulled her pillow over her face. Her head pounded, not horribly, but enough that she regretted drinking so much. Then she remembered saying goodbye to Jo, and her stomach rolled. Her hangover wasn’t bad enough to make her nauseated but her embarrassment sure was.
She’d kissed Jo.
She’d kissed. Jo.
She threw the covers off and got up. It was fine. It had to be fine. There was not another option. She was meeting Jo for lunch Monday to talk about her career path. The rest of the cast and crew were off until late summer when they started filming the next season. Since Emma worked for Jo, she had a job year-round, but she had a week off after the wrap party. Except for lunch on Monday. She was supposed to tell Jo what she wanted to do with her life.
Unless the wrap party changed things.
Maybe instead of asking Emma what career she wanted, Jo would ask her why she thought she could kiss her. Maybe Emma would be fired. But Emma remembered Jo’s voice saying bye to Avery. She sounded normal. Not fake normal like when she was actuallyupset—Emma had worked with her long enough to know when she was pretending like that. And she wasn’t. She was fine. So this whole thing had to be fine. It was an accident. Accidents happened. People made mistakes. Jo knew that. She gave people second chances. She wasn’t going to fire her. Emma was almost certain.
Running tended to help Emma clear her head. She could work out problems as her feet hit the ground. She liked to coordinate the difficulty of her runs with the difficulty of her problems.
On Saturday, she ran at Griffith Park.
She ranup. West Observatory Trail. From the start to the observatory was only about a mile, but the elevation change had her breathing hard early. Her feet sent up clouds of dust with every stride.
She wasn’t worried about the accidental kiss. No. That was going to be fine. She’d decided. And if she believed enough, it had to be true.
The problem she was working out instead was what she wanted to do.
Which—
She knew what she wanted to do.
Or did she? How could she be sure? What if she started on the path she thought she wanted, only to be wrong? She liked her job now. It was good. Interesting. She was good at it. She didn’t quite see why she couldn’t stay on as Jo’s assistant when Jo moved to Agent Silver. Maybe notforever, or anything, but at least for another year or two. She was still getting her footing. By her third year as props PA, she had everything figured out forward, backward, and sideways. Why couldn’t she do the same thing as Jo’s assistant?
Because she knew what she wanted to do.
She should have gotten out here earlier, before the tourists andthe sun. Only April, but it was hot enough for sweat to drip down her forehead and pool at the base of her back.
Even if she was right about where she wanted to end up, she didn’t know how to get there. The path she expected to take didn’t work; she’d dropped out of film school. Maybe that had been a bad time in her life or maybe she just wasn’t good enough. Regardless, there wasn’t any sort of map plotted out for her now. Not any particular next step. Emma latched onto the metaphor as she ran. She could make a misstep, lose her footing, roll her ankle. She could get a cramp halfway through and have to pull up. Or worse, she could not have it in her. She worried about that most as she pushed herself up the incline. She already failed once. What if she got another chance and still couldn’t do it? What if she never made it to the top? She could get lost somewhere in the middle. Veer off the poorly marked path.
She was almost to the observatory on top of the hill. The water in her CamelBak was cool and refreshing. She wished she could pour it over her face. Hopefully she wasn’t sweating her sunscreen off. She kept going.
Tourists crowded the observatory parking lot. Cars packed in side by side while others circled like they were going to somehow get lucky and find an empty spot. Emma walked, hands on her hips, letting herself catch her breath. She tried to avoid interrupting anyone’s photos—of the city, the Hollywood Sign, each other.
She found a spot without people in it and stopped to stretch a little.
The Hollywood Sign sat on the hillside in front of her.
“I want to be a director.”