It makes me want to protect her, to tell her to listen to those voices inside her head, because to Lola those voices are more real to her than the majority of those in her life, and have been for much of her life since childhood. It was the same way with me. I grew up with no siblings, and absentee parents. My grandparents took custody of me when I was a kid, but I was eight and more interested in Superman and Batman than I was in what Gran had watched on tele that day or the people who came through my granddad’s shop.

Just as she’s getting to the end—to where the logistical details started to feel as though they were raining down, and it all became more blurry and jargon-filled—her phone lights up on the table and she glances down and then shoves back in the booth, eyes bolting to mine. “It’s Austin.”

That she looks to me right now—not Harlow, London, or Mia—makes my heart light up; a sparking flare thrown into the cavern of my chest.

“Answer it,” I urge, nodding to the phone.

She fumbles, nearly knocking it off the table, before answering at the last minute with a rushed “Hello?”

I don’t have the benefit of hearing the other side of the conversation so I’m not sure what makes her blush and smile before saying, “Hi, Austin. Sorry, no. I just almost didn’t get to the phone on time.”

She listens intently, and we all stare intently, getting only one side of the exchange: “I’m still a little shell-shocked,” she tells him, “but I am okay . . .” She lifts her eyes to scan the table, saying, “Yes, out with some friends . . . just a neighborhood bar . . . in San Diego!” She laughs. “That’s a crazy long drive, Austin!”

The fuck?

I look up at Harlow, who turns to me at the same time, seems to be thinking the same thing. He’s not driving down here, is he? I glance at my watch; it’s nearly ten, and would take two hours.

“I’m excited, too,” she’s saying, and reaches up to play with her earring. “Well, I’ve never written a script before so my goal here is just to be useful. . . .” She giggles at his reply.

Giggles.

My eyes snap to Harlow’s again.

Lola giggles with us. She does not giggle with people she met only hours ago. Unless that person is me, in Vegas—and I fucking prefer to think that situation is unique.

“I can’t wait to hear them . . . no I won’t, opinions are good . . . I know, sorry. It’s loud here. . . . Okay, I will.” She nods. “I will! I promise!” Another fucking giggle. “Okay . . . Okay. Bye.”

She hits end on the call and exhales, before sliding her eyes up to me. “That was Austin.”

I laugh, saying, “So I heard.” Even with an awkward, foreign object suddenly lodged in my chest I can appreciate how exciting this must be, to be so immediately comfortable with the person at the helm of the most important creative work in her life so far.

“He’s not driving down from L.A., is he?” London asks with—if I’m not mistaken—a hint of suspicion in her voice.

I have always liked London.

“No, no,” Lola says, grinning down at the table. “He just joked about it.”

For a few moments we all just sit there, staring at her.

Harlow is the first to break. “Well, why the fuck did he call?”

Lola looks up, surprised. “Oh. Um, he just wanted to know that I was okay after the meeting . . . and that he was putting together some thoughts on translating the first bit into a film.”

“ ‘The first bit’?” I repeat.

She shakes her head in a staccato, overwhelmed gesture and a strand of her long, straight hair catches against her lipstick. I can’t help it; I reach forward to pull it away. But she does, too, and her fingers get there before mine.

I quickly drop my hand and feel the way Harlow turns to me, but I can’t look away from Lola, who is staring up at me, eyes full of silent frenzy.

“Holy shit, Oliver.”

Beside us, London picks up her phone. “I’m going to google this Austin Adams character.”

I’ve always really liked her.

“ ‘The first bit’?” I repeat to Lola, more gently.

“He was saying the studio sees three films,” she practically squeaks. “And he has some ideas he wants to talk to me about.”

Harlow swears, Mia squeals, Joe grins widely at her, but Lola covers her face with a tiny shriek of panic.

“Holy shit!” London yells. “This guy is hot!” She turns her phone out for us to see.

Okay, maybe I don’t like London as much as I thought I did.

Ignoring her, I remind Lola, “This is good,” as I gently coax her arms down. Unable to help it, I add, “He wants to talk to you about it now? Do you have to go to L.A. again tomorrow?”

She shakes her head. “I think by phone at some point? I mean, I can barely imagine cowriting one script, let alone three,” she says, and then presses her fingertips to her lips.

“Collaboration is what this one is all about,” I remind her. “Isn’t that what Austin told you earlier today?” Seeing her grow more worried helps me keep my own trepidation at bay. “Maybe in the second and third films you can drive even more of the process, but this is great, right?”

She nods urgently, soaking up my confidence, but then her shoulders slump and she gives a small, self-deprecating laugh. “I don’t know how to do this.”

I feel her hand come over mine, shaking and clammy.

“This requires more alcohol!” Harlow says, triumphantly unfazed, and in my peripheral vision I see her getting up for more shots.

Joe reaches over, rubbing the back of Lola’s neck. “Lola, you’re a star in the middle of a pile of gravel. You’re going to reign.”

I nod, agreeing with him. “You’ve got this. No one knows this story better than you. You’re there to guide it. They are the experts on the film side.”

She exhales, forming her soft lips into a sweet O and holding on to my gaze like it’s keeping her from melting down. Does she know how I want to be her courage?

“Okay,” she says, repeating, “Okay.”

EVENTUALLY WE MANAGE to polish off five shots each and have moved on from the insanity of Lola’s day to a raucous debate over how the world is going to end. As usual, we have Joe to thank for it, but Lola is rosy and dissolving into her adorable snickery giggles with every impassioned suggestion—zombies, electromagnetic pulse, alien invasions—and at least seems completely, happily distracted.

“I’m telling you, it’s going to be the fucking livestock,” Joe tells us, barely missing Harlow’s wineglass when he sweeps his hand in a total-destruction gesture. “Some sort of cow or swine flu. Maybe some bird thing.”

“Rabies,” Mia says, nodding in drunken slowness.

“No, not rabies,” he says, shaking his head. “Something we don’t even know yet.”

“You’re a ray of sunshine.” London pokes him in the shoulder and he turns to look at her.

“It’s a matter of fact,” he says. “Fucking chickens are going to be our ruination.”

Lola finger-shoots herself in the head and pretends to collapse onto me, convulsing in fake death. Her hair sweeps across my arm, my skin bare beyond the short sleeve of my T-shirt, and for the first time I don’t fight the urge to touch it. I cup my hand over her scalp and slide it down, dragging my fingers through her hair.

She tilts her head and looks up at me. “Oliver must be drunk,” she announces in a slur, though it seems I’m the only one who hears her.

“Why’s that?” I ask. My smile down at her is a subconscious thing; instinct in response to her proximity.

“Because you’re touching me,” she says a little more quietly.

I lean back a little to see her face better. “I touch you plenty.”

She shakes her head and it’s slow and lolling against my arm, finally thumping back against the booth. “Like a buddy. That was like a lover.”

My blood turns to mercury. If only she knew. “Was it?”