The door to the ladies’ room opened. Holly stood. Behind her, the sun went behind a cloud.

“There you are,” Holly said to her assistant, lurking behind Phoebe. “We should go. I don’t want to be late.”

“Yep,” the woman said, already heading for the hallway. “The car’s outside and waiting.”

“Nice to meet you,” Phoebe said.

Holly smiled and walked away with practiced indifference, as if she were abandoning a paparazzo across the velvet rope.

6

Zanne

Zanne flitted from the calendar to the clock to her email inbox, and then the clock again. She ran spell-check on the talking points she was waiting to send, even though she’d already reviewed them at least a dozen times and knew there weren’t any mistakes. Ted’s ten thirty was a deal proposal call with Marty and the producers of a martial arts robot film. She’d given Ted a time check ten minutes ago, and he’d told her Marty could wait. The fact that the interview was going long, as per the clock Zanne kept checking, was a good sign—unsurprising, given Gaby’s strong academics, though Ted sized people up quickly and usually didn’t take all of the allotted interview time for administrative staff.

There it was again, that queasy rush whenever Zanne imagined working so near Gaby every day. Holy shit, she thought. She might actually get the job. This spring fling might survive the summer and become something Zanne could depend on.

Stop it, she told herself. One day at a time.

It was the mantra she’d been force-fed in rehab, but it finally clicked in NA. Focusing on only the twenty-four hours directly in front of her, committing to staying clean for just that long, tackling only one problem at a time. She’d never been so terrified, because when she looked back at everything she’d managed to accomplish up until that point—coming out, somehow getting herself out of LA and into college, supporting herself—she should have been proud. Instead, she was terrified. She had no idea how she’d managed it. She’d been using that whole time. When she’d looked forward, it was even worse. She’d had to do something infinitely harder—be herself stone cold sober.

Just for today, she’d learned to say to herself. Don’t use, just for today. Go to another meeting, just for today. Do the next right thing, just for today. It ended up being good advice for working for the Stablers, too. Just for today, do what you’ve been asked to do, as well as you know how, because who knew when Ted was going to ask you to drop everything and look into suborbital space flight? Who knew when Holly would decide to take the entire family on vacation to Morocco tomorrow?