Even saying it embarrasses me. It clearly embarrasses him too. “They’re probably going to go with a big name, anyway. Like Margot or Saoirse or Evan. Maybe Lily. Someone who’s … you know, done more.”

“So if you were going to suggest—ugh, forget it. God.” I shake my head. “How are you going to play Hitchcock?”

I motion at his CrossFit-keto-intermittent-fasting-sculpted body.

“I’ve got a freezer full of Van Leeuwen and a kegerator being delivered on Monday. My trainer has a plan too. Gotta pack on the pounds.” He pats his hard stomach, and it sounds like he’s banging on a marble countertop. “This is it, babe. I’m going to kick my career into hyperdrive.”

One would argue that came when he did the remake of The Outsiders as a teenager, played Sinatra in the Luhrmann Hollywood Canteen movie, or, yeah, when he got the lead role in the newest chapter of the limitless Marvel Cinematic Universe, a film that grossed the most since Avengers: Endgame.

Grayson Gamble is not just famous. He’s nepotism famous. Hollywood royalty famous. His grandmother was in movies with Bing Crosby. His mom was a producer on most of the erotic thrillers of the nineties. His cousin headlined the last Coachella. His whole family tree is hyperlinked.

“I wanna be taken serious, you know? I’m over going to like, Kardashian Christmas parties and doing collabs. I want to be … like … eating dinner at Vespertine with like … Joan Didion.”

I shut my eyes with desperate patience. “Grayson.”

“Is she dead too?”

He says too because he is constantly making this kind of mistake. So many women on this earth would do anything to be with this guy and they have no idea the labor it takes. I am, in fact, simply impressed he even got her name right.

“Yes, Grayson. She’s dead.”

“Why?”

“Why? Do you mean how?”

I’ve confused him. “Well. You know what I mean,” he says, shaking his head like an Etch A Sketch. “Look, this is really important to me. Can you not ruin it?”

I gape at him. “Are you being serious?”

“Yeah?”

I let out a deep breath. “When our agents hooked us up, and we decided to go for it, we swore we’d be honest with each other if something needed to change. We’re supposed to help each other, not make things worse.”

“I didn’t cheat on you.”

I stare at him for a long moment and then say, “Okay. Then I have no choice but to believe you.”

He closes his mouth and nods slowly.

Grayson rejoins the party with ease, and I take to floating around the place like a barely remembered ghost.