Page 49 of What's in a Kiss?

My phone buzzes on the bedside table. I pick it up and see a full screen of notifications, none of which make sense. A volley of texts from someone named Ivy Riñata. A lot of alerts fromDeadline Hollywood—who turnedthatnotification on? Jake Glasswell’s wacky showbiz wife, I suppose.

I tap the icon for my email, remembering how, yesterday morning when I woke up, the red bubble said that upwards of eleven thousand were unread. Today there are only eight. Six of them bear a variation of the subject lineZombie Hospital.

An ominous sensation grips my chest. I tell myself to breathe as I open one flagged Urgent, from a sender named Ivy Riñata.

Attached are today’s sides. Remember call was pushed to 8. I reminded A you asked toleave by 6, but it may not happen. Peace and love,

Today’s sides? Don’t daily sides get sent to a show’s cast and crew? Does this mean I work onZombie Hospital? An actual job? That doesn’t sound like me. But it does explain where I got the fancy monogrammed pen.

I click the attachment, which opens a pdf labeledCall Sheet, Zombie Hospital, Season Eight, Episode 811.Season Seven is airing now—Masha and I had a watch party for the premiere—so they would be filming Season Eight. And somehow, I’m a part of it.

I mentally peruse my résumé, guessing I’m most qualified to do craft services, or maybe tutor actor kids on set. Then I remember the diploma hanging in this mansion’s library with my name on it. Juilliard. I went. I got the degree. Did I somehow parlay that into a role on a long-running show? It’s a far cry from Broadway, but it is a slanted version of what I once said I wanted.

I wade through the dense document in the email, searching for my name, but before I find it Jake’s back in the doorway, bearing a breakfast tray.

“Uh-oh,” he says, reading my expression. It makes me realize how furrowed my brow is, how tense my jaw. “Rough day?”

“Do you know...” I pause.What I do for a living?I can’t ask that, and the fact that I almost did makes me realize something alarming. I’m beginning to view Jake Glasswell as a confidant. If Masha were on speaking terms with me, she’d be amazed at the irony. She’d sing:

It’s like Jaaaaake on your wedding day.

But Masha’s not around to sing that. Jake is all I’ve got.

My stomach growls as he approaches with the tray. I would not say no to leftovers from last night, but when he gets near enough that I can see what he’s carrying, my face falls.

A mug of black coffee, a mug of hot water with lemon, and a little glass bowl with six different kinds of vitamins.

“Breakfast, love,” he says.

“That’s not breakfast,” I say. “That’s a chemistry experiment.”

“It’s what Aurora recommends,” he says, “and she knows of which she speaks.”

“Don’t say that name when you’re the closest thing to punch.” My eyes flash at Jake and to my relief, he laughs.

What is his relationship with Aurora in this realm? If he and I are somehow... married, then the two of them can’t be dating. Are they non-boinking cohosts? Why does Jake subject me to her dietary whims?

Realizing that I’m too hungry to reason this out, I turn my thoughts to Winchell’s Donut House on Melrose and plan to stop there as soon as I escape from here.

“You’ll be off by six, right?” Jake asks.

I think back to Ivy’s email. It said something about trying to get off at six. Do Jake and I have dinner plans? Where do we like to eat? The way he’s looking at me makes me think it must be something more concrete than slurping noodles on the couch. Does he drag me to functions and red-carpet stuff? Does the Juilliard-pedigreed me know how to act at those things? Can I make that cocked-hip, half-akimbo pose? Or do I lurk in theshadows, furtively scarfing down canapés? Have we ever fooled around at a premiere?

That thought curls my toes and convulses my lower stomach. Which tells me Ican’tcome back here tonight, to this man who needs tofuck his wife. Because his wife needs to figure her shit out before her husband busts out the handcuffs.

I rise from bed and try to center myself on two feet.

“I’m gonna need for us to have a fight!” I announce to Jake, because fighting is how we relate. Fighting with him makes me feel like me.

“I know,” he says, and sighs.

“Don’tagree! Fight!”

“I mean, I know why you’re mad... you saw the new toothpaste I bought. But you’re murdering your enamel with that whitening stuff, and one of these days—”

“Thisis what we fight about? Toothpaste?” I look at him, disgusted. “You suck at fighting. You fight like a Quaker on ecstasy.”

“Ohhh,” Jake says, his eyes lighting up. He gives me a knowing nod. “More role-playing! Dr. Kenyon will be so proud”—he raises one eyebrow—“Mistress Cherise.”

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