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I’d get back to her tomorrow. She didn’t even know I was home.

It wasn’t her text I was looking for, anyhow.

I turned my eyes back to the road, resisting the urge to scoop up my phone. Even if I was putting along at two miles an hour, the last thing I needed to do was to hit someone.

Again.

Which brought my thoughts full circle.

Why hadn’t I asked for her number the night before? How could I be sure she’d gotten the message? The night clerk hadseemed entirely unimpressed with the urgency of my departure. She’d been on Island Time, annoyed at having to check me out at midnight. For all I knew, my note had ended up in the trash can, along with her copy ofUs Weeklyand stack of emptyRed Bullcans. In which case, Dillon would think I’d ghosted her.

Or worse—what if she had gotten my message, and thought I was full of shit? I hadn’t been able to say why I’d left. It’s not like I could tell her I’d landed the role of Addison in the upcoming production ofSand Seekers.Not that she’d have found that impressive, but at least she’d probably heard of it. A person would have had to have been living under a rock to have escaped the pop culture phenomenon. It would be like not knowingHarry Potter. Even Dillon couldn’t be that far removed from modern society.

Regardless, I hadn’t been able to explain that I’d received a call from my agent two hours after she’d left me at my door. That he’d insisted I get on a midnight flight to Honolulu, where I’d begun my nightmare trek to Los Angeles in order to spend three minutes having my body analyzed by two of the most important men in Hollywood.

I gave in to my miscreant behavior and snatched up my cell phone. We hadn’t rolled more than ten feet in the last fifteen minutes, what was the worst that could happen? It’s not like there were any cyclists on the freeway.

Swiping open my iPhone browser, I punched in Dillon’s name for probably the dozenth time, hoping some new lead on her contact information would miraculously appear. An email address. A P.O. Box. An agent or manager. Anything that would help me reach her. But there was nothing. No old addresses. No phone numbers. No ancient MySpace account. Just her automatic wiki page, her race results, and a freaky number of Kelsey Evans fans obsessing over their breakup.

Her name pinged on half a dozen websites for upcoming races, and I considered emailing one of the race directors to ask if they could pass along a message. Then I realized how absolutely pathetic that would look. What did I think I was going to say? “Hi! I met a girl in Hawaii and I can’t get her off my mind, but I don’t have her contact information, so could you please pass this note along?”

Yeah.Smart, Kam. I was advancing fromStalker 101toStalker 102at an accelerated pace. If Aaron received an email like that about me, he’d probably forward it to the cops.

When I finally got to my apartment, I forced myself to toss my phone on my nightstand, dragged myself into a hot shower, and then collapsed into bed at eight PM. I’d been up for almost forty hours, and despite my brain’s desire to continue its fruitless wanderings, my exhaustion won the battle, and I dropped into a deep, pineapple lips-enriched sleep.

On Friday afternoon I drove to Venice to grab sushi with my friend Sophie. She’d been in Bangkok for the past three months, shooting a documentary on The Women’s Movement in Thai Political Reform. Despite loathing the thought of driving home through Culver City on a Friday night, I’d missed her, and couldn’t wait to hear about the work she’d been doing in Asia.

We’d met during my first—and only—year at UCLA, bonding over our misery of boredom throughoutThe Art and Technique of Filmmaking. Both of us had been new to the city, uncertain in our freshly minted eighteen-year-old independence, and had formed a lasting friendship—one that had remarkably endured, despite me dropping out of school by the time spring had rolled into summer.

Sophie had gone on to graduate summa cum laude—no surprise, given her history as a high school valedictorian—while I’d waded my way through Hollywood, trial-by-fire. Regardlessour varying methods of breaking into the industry, neither of us had ever seemed to have a leg-up over the other, and we’d cheerleaded one another through every project—flop or showpiece. Unlike Dani, nothing in my friendship with Sophie ever felt like a competition.

As we worked our way through a second tokkuri of hot sake, I began to feel exceptionally guilty sitting on my silent knowledge ofSand Seekers. We’d spent the evening chatting about her time in Thailand. The big-budget human rights documentary was sure to be a tremendous success, and was by far her most notable undertaking. However, as the salmon rolls disappeared and the sake grew colder, true to Sophie’s nature, she’d massaged the conversation in my direction, eagerly building me up about a handful of roles she’d come across in the recent publication ofBackstage. All of which she felt I’d nail if I chose to audition.

“Listen to this one!” Sophie was scrolling through her phone, her sensibly manicured French tips tapping through the casting website. “Lead. Female. Twenty-one to twenty-six. Brunette. Petite build—five-foot-three and under.” She glanced up, as if deciding whether my extra inch would exclude me from consideration. I must have passed, because her attention returned to her screen. “Smart, bougie, baddie. The type of girl who is simply unattainable.” She made a voila gesture. “You’re perfect.”

“Baddie?” I laughed. “I don’t think so.”

“Baddie as ineffortlessly stands out, not baddie as inreprobate,” Sophie chastised, ever-astonished at my lack of keeping up with the latest slang standards. Before she could launch into the next casting opportunity, a text notification buzzed through my watch. The number was strange—it had more digits than I was used to—and my face must have given me away when I realized it was an out-of-country area code.

“Everything okay?” Sophie’s pristinely shaped eyebrows lifted, the ceramic cup paused midway to her lips.

I fished my phone out of my purse, swiping open my texts as a bundle of nerves settled in my stomach.

I hope you made it home safely to handle your emergency. It was good to meet you. Best of luck in Hollywood. D.

And that was it. Formal. Polite. Conclusive.

I don’t know what I’d been hoping for, but it wasn’t that. That text was something I would have sent to a stranger who’d returned my AAA card they’d found in the convenience store on Beverly. There was no friendliness. No playfulness. No sharing-kahlua-pork-out-of-a-takeout-container-while-covered-in-volcanic-mud familiarity.

And why should there have been? She clearly thought I’d skipped out on her.

After I’d practically been swooning over her all evening.

After letting her kiss me.

She probably thought I’d been playing games. That I’d led her on and then panicked and bolted.

Shit.