Page 10 of Friends with Benefits

“You just saw her yesterday.”

“For the first time in a week.”

Imogen moved out three months ago, left the Pasadena bungalow and moved into a condo on the west side with Sloane. Evie reacted as if there were an ocean between them and not just the 110. It’s the same difference. She now has to drive through downtown to see her sister. Evie has ghosted many a Hinge date due to this impractical commute. Maybe she’s left her soulmate on read. If so, LA traffic is entirely to blame. If someone lives off the 405 or the 10? It’ll never work.

Evie and Imogen had lived together in Pep and Mo’s bungalow since Gen graduated from UCLA.You can be indefinite house sitters, they pitched, after telling their grandchildren that they’d spent a small fortune on an RV and were off to glamp their way across the continental United States.Someone has to keep the plants alive, Mo, tender to a prizewinning tomato garden, had said. So optimistic, Evie’s grandfather was. Imogendrowned the poor tomatoes that first summer the Bloom sisters lived alone, together.

Evie assumed she would be here for a year, max.

It’s been three years house-sitting the quaint craftsman-style bungalow built in 1919 and purchased by Pep and Mo for a steal in 1973. Once wine tipsy and wallowing over their zillennial reality, Evie and Imogen looked up the bungalow on Zillow, their eyes bulging out of their sockets at the seven-digit Zestimate. They laughed, then burst into tears at proof of what they already knew to be true—they will never be able to afford property in LA County.

Three years in the bungalow.

Three months without Imogen.

The silence has been incredibly unsettling. Evie has never been the best at being alone, so Theo has been spending more nights at the bungalow than in his own apartment, a two-bedroom off Del Mar he shares with two college acquaintances turned friends, Pranav Singh and Micah Solomon. Theo’s place is okay in small doses, but it’s too much people-ing and a guaranteed allergic reaction to Puck, Pranav and Micah’s feral cat.

The bungalow is comfortable.

Safe.

Cat-free.

Theo returns to the living room with a pint of Talenti Cold Brew Coffee gelato (dairy-free), two spoons, and a pair of thick wool socks for Evie’s always-freezing feet. She puts on the socks—pink with llamas—and asks Theo how the whole field trip proposal went. Not great. He tells her about the zoo and the backstabber.

“They say you can never trust a Juniper,” Evie says, mouth full of gelato as she opens her email to check if Amber B.’snotes on the transcription of the latest episode ofAfter Ever Afterhave landed in her inbox. As a product of hustle culture, she is never not plugged in.

“Who arethey?”

“Me. Right now—”

Her face scrunches at a nonsensical subject line in her inbox.

Subject: NEXT IN FOLEY application status

She refreshes her inbox to confirm that she’s not imagining it. Next in Foley is a ten-month fellowship for nonunion, up-and-coming Foley artists, to work and learn under the mentorship of some of the best in the business. It promises two guaranteed credits on union projects, the ticket to the benefits that Evie so desperately requires in order to work in this world full-time. Next in Foley is a prestigious, incredible opportunity.

It’s an opportunity to which Evie never applied for three valid reasons:

The hours are full-time.

The pay is shit.

There are no benefits.

“Imogen,” Evie hisses at her screen before showing it to Theo.

Her sister would’ve had access to her computer, to the folder with the reel that Evie cut together to send to prospective employers and freelance clients. Imogen is the sister whose head lives in the clouds because Evie’s the one who keeps them both tethered to reality. She says shit likeLet your passions lead you forwardandmeansit because if she stumbles along the way,Evie is always there to pick her up, to be the practical sister so Imogen doesn’t have to be.

Evie is so pissed that this email exists.

But damn it, she wants to know if she’s good enough to get in.

So of course, she opens it.

“Holy shit.”

She reads it more than once, more than twice, more than three times. Her eyes then meet Theo’s, who looks at her as though he’s waiting for an explanation that she can’t give. She can’t speak, so she throws her phone at him, wordless. His expression attempts to remain neutral as he reads, but the corners of his lips turn up (a betrayal!) as he processes words she has already memorized.

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