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“That,” Jinx said, when I came back to the living room, “was masterful.”

I laughed, giddy. As soon as Mark left, we called Rose and KC to come celebrate, and ordered in Mediterranean food that gave

us all instant crippling diarrhea. Jinx’s guts were feeling it the worst, and he spent most of the night in the toilet. KC

made a gross joke about how the diarrhea had “cleaned her out” and now she was “ready for some action,” so she and Rose went

to meet up with Snoop Dork, and by eight p.m. it was only me and Suzie. Bodhi was asleep in his crib, the baby monitor resting

beside me on the couch.

“So you were really going to quit?” Suzie asked.

“I mean, I thought I had no choice,” I said.

“When were you going to tell me I was fired?” she asked, then gave an unconvincing laugh. In the yellow lamplight of the living

room, her dark blond hair shone like beaten gold, and the simplicity of her features made her look old-fashioned somehow,

like a profile on a cameo.

“I was actually hoping to hire you full-time as my nanny.”

Suzie raised her eyebrows, then looked down. She was picking at the rip in her jeans, worrying the frayed white ends. Suzie

was, I realized, still such a mystery to me.

“Do you ever think about starting your own account?” I asked. Because it was puzzling. Why would she ask to work for me when

she could make a killing working for herself?

“Oh, I’m not pretty enough,” she said.

“Horseshit,” I said.

She laughed, finally looking up. “I don’t think I could do it,” she said. “If I’m being honest. All the attention and having

to fake it with guys like that. I mean, editing a zillion nude images of myself every week sounds like some kind of existential

hell.”

“Oh, you stop thinking about it as you,” I said.

“Still, I just... with my family... I couldn’t. I just couldn’t do it.”

I got that. “Would you want to be in the TikToks?”

She shook her head and went back to picking at her jeans.

“What do you want then?” I asked. Because it felt like she did want something and was too afraid to say.

She rolled her eyes, then smiled at me. “You know what I want!”

“I don’t!” I cried.

“I want to be part of the team,” she said, her voice breaking on the last word.

“Oh, Suzie,” I said, “you are part of the team. From now on, you are explicitly part of the team.” I reached over and hugged

her, and her skin was surprisingly warm.

“And you’ll tell me,” she said. “I’ll be one of the people you tell when you’re thinking about quitting!”

“I will,” I said. “I’ll tell you every business-related thought I ever have.”

She sucked some snot back in her nose, laughed, and said, “I think that may be the most romantic thing anyone’s ever said

to me.”

It was almost the end of February when I got a call from JB.

“I’m in L.A.,” he said.

“What?”

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and I really think we need to talk. So I came.”

I didn’t know if I was happy or sad about this. Mainly it made me uneasy. And yet, on a physical level, I was thrilled to

hear his voice. “Okay,” I said.

“Okay?” He sounded a bit surprised.

“Yeah. Where do you want to meet?”

“Anywhere you want,” he said.

“Oh, you’ll regret that,” I said, as I gave him the cross streets of my second-favorite Arby’s. (My second favorite was closer

to his hotel. I wasn’t some monster who’d make him drive all the way out to Brea. I was only asking him to drive from downtown

L.A. to Buena Park, which someone should be willing to do for love.)

I brought Bodhi even though he’d make it harder for us to talk because I worried JB had some big romantic idea in his head, that we were destined to be together. It seemed like he had to be in that mode to fly across the country to have a conversation. The Buena Park Arby’s had recently been redone in fake wood paneling and dangling pendant lights, bright red metal chairs. It was a lot cheesier looking than the Arby’s in Brea, which featured grimy gray and black tiles and weird ’80s confetti wallpaper. But it would do.

When Bodhi and I arrived, JB was already there. He half stood from the table and sort of crouched as we approached.

“Have you ordered?” I asked, overwhelmed by his physical presence. Even the fact that his glasses were greasy and slightly

askew was making my pulse race.

“No, I was waiting for you,” he said. “I didn’t know what to order. I’ve never been to an Arby’s before.”

“You haven’t?! Oh, well, this is an occasion! You want me to order?”

“Sure,” he said, and nodded.

“Okay, you find a highchair,” I said, and took Bodhi with me to go wait in line. I was hungry, so I really went for it: a

Classic Beef ’n Cheddar, the Smokehouse Brisket sandwich, a French Dip it was such a bad name.

“I think we should just call it Ghost Ink,” he said. “You know, like a ghost writer?”

I couldn’t even say anything, I was so pleased with this idea. I just nodded.

“I don’t know, maybe you’ll come up with something better,” he said. “We’ve got time to think about it.”

“How long are you in town?” I asked.

“My flight isn’t for a couple days.”

“Want to come to my house?” I asked, suddenly excited.

“Yeah, when?”

“Like tomorrow?”

“Okay, awesome!” JB said.

“I’m so excited!” We had arrived at my purple Civic, and I went to give JB a side hug since the gigantic sleeping Bodhi was

still strapped to my front.

“Hey, wait,” JB said, stepping away from me. “I have something for you in my car.”

He popped the trunk on his rental. Then he presented me with a gallon Ziploc bag filled to bursting with Runts.

“How?” I asked. “Where did you get these?”

“At the mall,” JB said, smiling sheepishly. “I brought, like, twenty dollars in quarters.”

“You harvested these Runts for me yourself?!” I crowed with happiness.

“From the dark fertile soil of American capitalism,” JB affirmed.

“JB, thank you.”

“Oh, it was a silly gesture,” JB said. “I mean, it’s pathetic that I have that much free time. It’s weird not having a job. I haven’t really known how to fill the time.”

“No, I mean for coming out here. For demanding that we talk and having this idea.”

“Oh, you don’t have to thank me. This is going to sound weird, but I just... I kept thinking we weren’t done. That was

all I could think: I know this isn’t done. Me and Margo, we know each other for a long time. We wind up in each other’s lives.

It just took me a while to figure out how it could work.”

I looked up into his beautiful face. He was right. I wanted whatever allowed us to keep each other, whatever path forward

that would allow us to be in each other’s life. Besides, there would be plenty of time to seduce him later. I held out my

hand. “Partners?”

JB looked almost like he was about to cry, but he was grinning. “Partners,” he said.

And we shook on it there under the glowing red hat of the Arby’s, with Ric Flair and the Virgin Mary smiling down on us, willing

the story to go on, to never end, to start over again, one adventure leading to the next, and we would never die, and we’d

be young forever, and we would scream to the crowd, “Look at me! Look at the beautiful, insane things I can do with my body!

Look at me! Love me!”

Because that’s all art is, in the end.

One person trying to get another person they have never met to fall in love with them.