Page 29 of Friends with Benefits

“Happy Wednesday!” says Evie’s boss, soon to be ex-boss, Katia Belafonte, executive producer ofAfter Ever After.“How are you?”

Evie’s eye twitches. “Great.”

“Great!”

They’re the first two in the weekly pitch meeting, a video call that Evie takes from Imogen’s couch, her laptop propped on a stack of books. During a moment of awkward silence, Katia tucks a rogue strand of her otherwise sleek onyx bob behind her ear and by the time it occurs to Evie to ask her howsheis, more faces populate her screen. Cohosts Amber B. and Tiffany P. Outreach and booking manager Claudia Cho. Graphic designer Saskia Evans. Just six people are responsible for producing the dating show recap podcast. Soon to be five, after she quits. Once this salary, combined with Theo’s salary, secures his apartment.

If she quits.

Evie has no cluehowto quit.

I quit.

Her pulse spikes just thinking those two words. How? She’s a twenty-seven-year-old adult who’s in therapy, who’s doing the work. Yet she’s still the little girl who walked into Miss Stella’s class all those years ago, so terrified by something she wants, by articulating that want.

First, to dance.

Now, to quit.

At least she has a few weeks to figure out how to quash the panic that swells her throat every time she eventhinksabout quitting because she’s not a person who leaves—not places, not people, not even a job. After participating in hellos and small talk, Evie turns her camera off. She takes her laptop to the couch, lies down, closes her eyes, and tries to stay present. She truly does. Why? It doesn’t matter. Five years of her life that included surviving three rounds of layoffs, two promotions, and an acquisition that opened an antitrust case against her employer are ending.

It’s not just quitting that scares her, but what it means.

Accepting the fellowship.

Marrying Theo.

Any attempt at active listening is over the moment her phone lights up with an email.

Subject: marriage license (holy shit)

As someone from the analytics department (Gerri? Kerry?) joins the call to go over last season’s engagement metrics, her anxiety about quitting becomes second to the memory she’s spent the last three days attempting to rebury.

The memory Theo unknowingly excavated with those three words.

Marry me, Evelyn.

She’s no longer on Imogen’s couch. She’s lying in a king-size bed in a tiny Airbnb nestled in the Santa Barbara mountains, tangled in butter-soft satin sheets, tangled in Hanna, who’s still asleep. Evie watches her chest rise and fall, absorbing every detail of this moment—the silk bonnet with little strawberries protecting her curls, the drool on her pillow, the way her gold septum piercing reflects the light. She watches in awe of their present and reminisces about their beginning. Sophomore year. UCLA. Hanna Greene, bursting through the door of A History of Cinema ten minutes late like a sexy tornado. Evie, taking in her every detail—her ombré blue box braids, the small mole under her left eye, her choice to wear socks with Tevas. Hanna, twisting in her chair after choosing the seat in front of Evie.

“Do you have a pencil?”

“Yes.”

Evie handed over her only pencil, distracted by the septum piercing.

For two years she ignored her crush, until they were on the set of a senior thesis together. Hanna, a grip. Evie, a boom operator. After a 2:00 a.m. wrap, Hanna asked her if she wanted a milkshake. “Yes,” she lied, instead of telling Hanna that dairy messes with her stomach. They went to Lulu’s, the twenty-four-hour diner on campus, where Evie opted to sip on a root beer while they whispered their biggest, scariest dreams out loud and laughed until the sun came up. Their first kiss tasted like a root beer float.

“Come back to mine?” Hanna asked against her mouth, Evie’s back pressed against Lulu’s brick façade.

She replied without hesitation. “Yes.”

“I have a job lined up in Atlanta,” Hanna confessed the following morning. “I’m not looking for anything serious.”

Lucky for Hanna, neither was Evie. So their beginning was a situationship with a defined end date. Easy, casual, perfect. After graduation, Hanna left. Evie stayed. But the following year, Hanna returned to LA, showed up at the bungalow with a lavender latte, and what started as a senior-year situationship became a three-year relationship.

Evie’s firstrealrelationship.

Hanna’s eyelids flutter as she rolls onto her side and burrows into Evie. Hanna, a script coordinator for a network procedural, planned this getaway during the brief hiatus between seasons. Both live in LA, separated by up to an hour-long commute. For now. It’s their three-year anniversary and Evie’s ready to live with Hanna, ready to really begin their life together.

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