But Ted just couldn’t—or wouldn’t—understand. She stood and started tidying the piles of paper on the kitchen table. She’d review her presentation one more time later, after she was rested. There wasn’t much more she could do at this point, anyway. Jerry would either back her or he wouldn’t, according to his own reasons.

“Look, can I just say one thing?” Ted asked.

Phoebe took a deep breath. She tried to send herself to a patient place beyond words, beyond listening. Because there was never just one thing he needed to say and because she didn’t have the bandwidth today and because, maybe, she was also scared of what he was going to say and of how little she wanted or needed to hear it.

“I hate the idea of you answering to Jerry Silver every day,” Ted said. “Any idiot knows you can do this. You’re so talented. I just want to make sure you know that. Why is that wrong?”

She grunted. It was a feral sound. He flinched in his chair.

“Because like it or not, the world doesn’t see me the way you do, okay? And if your name is anywhere near Warrior Bride, they never will. And if I can’t do this thing that I’ve always wanted to do—that I’m ready to do—I don’t know what will happen to me.”

Could they ever bridge this gap? She thought she might break if he couldn’t really see her, if he kept regurgitating the operating rules of this town as if they actually applied to her. She had loved him since the day they met, when he knocked on her dorm room door and asked if he could borrow her hair dryer for the film he was making. Film? she’d thought, grabbing her hair dryer and following him. But what if they never got past this thing? What if he kept trying to give her advice about how to make it in this business when the truth was, he had no clue what she really put up with on a daily basis?

Ted stood and wrapped his arms around Phoebe. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

She hugged him back. No one else loved her like this, not even Umma and Apa. No one else understood how badly she wanted to make it, that she was burning for it. He pulled back, dipped his head low, and she pressed her forehead to his.

“Don’t be sorry. Be on my side.”

“I’m on your side. Always.”

Ted had meant it when he said it, but that was before.

Phoebe fingered the fabric of the hanbok, the ruffles she’d asked Mrs. Park to add at the neck, imagining herself channeling Gemma Chan at the Oscars tonight, serving up Crazy Rich Asians divinity.