Leo tossed the pizza box aside and straddled one of the loungers, beckoning Win to him. She sat cross-legged in front of him and took the joint when he offered it up to her, tilting her head down so he could light it. He tucked her hair behind her ear, out of the way, and Win took in a deep, indulgent breath. Leo was smiling, crooked in the corner of his mouth, and the lounger was still baked hot beneath them from the day’s sun.
“Where is everyone?” Win asked.
“It’s closed to other people. Tell me about the Paramount meeting.”
Win took another drag and then handed him the joint and told him, running through the details, the tight timeline, the issues with Spencer, the good news. The moment was the kind of familiar that hit her right in the chest, sitting in some quiet hideout Leo had found for them, talking through her decisions. Saying it aloud to Leo made a situation make sense, helped her work out what she actually wanted. When they were apart she would call him sometimes, listen to him saying, Wait, one sec, and the noise surrounding him would subside as he closed a door between Win and the rest of the world. But it was better like this, Leo’s face intent on hers, the weed setting in and her muscles slackening.
“It went well, then,” Leo said.
“Well enough,” Win said, and picked up his hand, setting her fist in the center of his palm, sleepy and stoned. Leo slipped his hand out and pressed it starfish-style to her face, pushing her gently away, both of them giggling at each other.
“Cards?” Win said, because their knees were overlapping and she was edging closer to him.
“You’re dangerous when you’re high,” Leo told her. “I think we should cool down first.”
He undressed and ran for the pool before Win could really process it, arms pointed neatly as he dove. She trailed after him, slow, watching. His skin looked green under the water, and when he surfaced, drops of water were running down over his buzz cut to his collarbone. Win could only see his chest now, the rest of him distorted under the water. If she focused, she could just make out the V of his hips, the black line of his briefs. Win dipped a toe in.
“Don’t be a baby,” he said.
She’d left her heels downstairs, so there was nothing to delay the slide of the zip down her back. It was a thin, gauzy sundress that fell neatly off her shoulders, and Win had expected to feel cold, but it only felt good, like shedding unnecessary skin. Leo had made it to the far end and stood in the shallows, his back against the wall and his elbows up behind him over the side of the pool. He was watching her.
“If you’d warned me, I would have brought a swimsuit,” Win said. Her bikini wasn’t any less revealing than her underwear, but somehow she felt more exposed like this, in lacy black with Leo’s gaze tracking across her.
“We’re old friends, Whitman,” Leo said. “No need to be shy.” His mouth was crooked in the shadow of a grin.
Leo always wanted her company in such a frank, straightforward way that she could give herself over, into his hands, before she even knew what she was doing. She half considered running off, with the pizza and all the clothes, to leave him stranded up here. She had done that to him once before in LA, but he had only shrugged and met her at the hotel bar in his soaking swim shorts, running a wet hand affectionately along the back of her silk shirt. It was hot and stuffy in her room tonight, and the water seemed fathoms deep. She dove.
It was much colder than expected. She came up cursing, running her hands through her soaked hair in shock and kicking her feet to stay above water. Leo was moving closer, gliding through the water with wide, effortless strokes. He swerved around her, swam sideways behind her shoulder, and headed back up the pool again. She watched him, focused and intent. She remembered that if a shark came after you in the ocean, you were supposed to punch it.
“Feel better?” he asked.
“Yes,” Win admitted. She started swimming, slow and distrustful around the edges of the pool. They were circling each other.
“This reminds me of Miami,” Leo said. “Poolside at midnight. The only thing missing is a tattoo gun.”
Win laughed. It had been so long ago—back when she was on the short list for her starring role in the Reckless action series, a secret-agent superhero franchise that would consolidate her staying power and give her a decent five years of regular premieres and a fanbase to match. But Patrick heard that the casting manager thought Win was too straight-edge for the job: prudish was the exact word they had used. She had needed to prove she could be cool. Leo, when she called him, thought it was hilarious. But sure, he said. He was ostensibly in Miami Beach for a cameo in a music video, but mostly for a string of parties, still in his fast-car bad-boy phase. Why didn’t she come out and join him?
They spent a week racing around town, drinking beer out of cans and crushing them underfoot, making out against the walls of nightclubs in South Beach, molly under bright lights and seedy mornings with Bloody Marys and sunglasses against the paparazzi flashes. Leo announced his intention to get PROPERTY OF WHITMAN TAGORE tattooed on his chest, and pitched a huge fit when Win refused to get a matching one. They argued for so long that their tattoo guy passed out.
It was a relief to let go, even in such a calculated way: to take what she wanted, to slam shots and make obscene gestures at photographers, to unleash the anger and boredom she kept so closely contained. Leo called it the Win Gone Wild tour. Finally, the producer called. Win put him on loudspeaker while Leo and his friends played pool and the clamor of the bar was loud in the background. “All right, all right, we get it,” he said. “The part’s yours, baby, when can you get here for the first table read?”
She could still remember the thrill of triumph. After she hung up she had raced across the bar and flung herself up against Leo, looping her arms around his neck and kissing him. It wasn’t the first time they’d kissed that week, but this time there weren’t any cameras around.
They pulled back and looked at each other.
Win said, “Better not.”
“The pining,” Leo said. He didn’t clarify who was in danger that time. “You’re probably right.” She’d had to leave the next morning, so she and Leo had left the bar and gone back to the villa they’d been staying in, stretched out in the backyard, and played long rounds of Sixty-Six, the card game Leo had picked up in Switzerland as a teenager. He’d taught her late one night in New York. They’d been fascinated with each other, making excuses to stay up. “We used to play this in dorms,” Leo said as he shuffled, “after poker got banned because some kid put up half his trust fund.”
“You’re like an alien species,” Win had said. She kept having to wrench her gaze away from his hands, his mouth. The next night they would discover a good alternative for stretches of unoccupied time—Leo’s hands, his mouth—but in Miami, she realized the cards were safer. Now they played between shoots, while Marie was still organizing their next location, in hotel bars after long days, in the early mornings before the car arrived or when Leo was watching her a little too closely and Win’s thoughts kept circling back to those nights in New York. Leo kept a note in his phone, a long spiraling list of scores.
She wondered if he’d brought the cards up to the pool with them tonight. They could play sitting cross-legged in their underwear, dripping on the heat-baked concrete, Leo’s throat cool and the smell of chlorine rising off him.
Win struck out for the deep end and dove under again, reaching out to brush the bottom of the pool with her fingertips. She could just catch Leo’s silhouette, blurry in the pool lights. She pushed her feet against the tiles and propelled herself upward, bursting out of the water again and sending waves out around her.
“Show-off,” Leo said, drifting past her. She could see the solid line of his shoulders, his narrow waist, and then she let her eyes slip away. She didn’t know how much of her body was visible under the water. When he reached the other end of the pool, he dragged the pizza box over and flipped it open. Win tried not to think of it as bait.
“I have a proposition
for you,” Leo said.
“Oh god,” Win said. “You’re not going to suggest we get engaged again, are you?”
“No,” Leo said, and gave a high, barking laugh. It was a startling contrast to his usual low laughter, and Win twisted in the water to look at him. “Why would you say that?”
“I was kidding. I can’t let you forget your youthful idiocy.”
Leo rubbed the back of his neck, shaking his head. “No,” he repeated. “Obviously not. I wanted to ask you to be my date.”
That piqued her attention. “Does your sister have another premiere?”
Unlike her relatively aimless brothers, Hannah was the only junior Milanowski who had carved out a genuine career for herself. She produced intricate documentaries with obscure subjects, like Canadian fishing towns or radio telescopes in the desert. Hannah was reclusive, happier behind a camera than in front of one, and she tended to wilt under the spotlight. A few years ago Win had run into both siblings at a Sundance after-party. It was the year that Hannah’s short film was panned by critics, and she’d been almost certainly about to cry in front of the cameras before Leo grabbed Win’s hand, begged a favor, and they crashed the interview, playing drunk with their arms wound around each other. Hannah had made her escape unnoticed. Marie had not been impressed.
“No, Hannah’s in Thailand,” Leo said. “She’s tracking down witnesses for some true crime documentary. I meant to the wedding.”
“Shift’s?”
“What, you thought I wouldn’t get an invite?”
“No, I guess—I hadn’t started thinking about dates yet.”
Leo shrugged. “I figured since we’ll both be there, we might as well go together. Saves me from having to make small talk with whatever hot new talent you dredge up.”
“My dates are always carefully selected through a matrix of prestige, attractiveness, and conversational ability,” Win said. Leo laughed, but he was still waiting for her answer. She stretched and struck out toward him on the far side of the pool. He listed away when he saw her coming, watching her and paddling backward. Her bra was soaked through, near transparent. She slung her elbows up on the edge, and Leo shook his head, gaze slipping away. She took a slice of pizza for herself.
“I don’t know,” she said after she’d swallowed. “I mean—yes, if it all works out, of course I’ll go with you. I’m worried about finding the time for it.”
“Ah, c’mon,” Leo said, his shoulders relaxing again. “You’re the big movie star. Just pull a diva moment, you can take a few days off.” He held his hands up when he saw the look on her face. “I know, I know, you have this big planned schedule and everything’s crazy all the time, but come on. It’s your best friend.”
“I know who it is,” Win said. “It’s fine. I’ll sort it. Let’s stop talking about it now.”
“Okay.” Leo changed tack. “It looks like Gum’s going to be the best man. He keeps calling it Charlie’s last hurrah and he says it’s a joke, but I’m starting to worry it’s not? It’s going to be a nightmare.”
Win laughed but didn’t respond. She knew how responsible Leo felt for his older brother. When Gum was arrested for drunk-driving in Santa Barbara, Leo had sped up the news cycle by appearing in a series of dazzling shots cavorting with Win around Morocco’s Atlantic coast while she filmed the second Reckless movie. Truthfully, they’d barely seen each other. He’d been distracted and worried, fielding endless calls from his family members, Gum calling tearfully from rehab, and Win was busy with twelve-hour days on set. She remembered watching him drive out to meet her in the desert, his skin burnished by the sun, his boots heavy with sand.
She finished her first slice of pizza and helped herself to one more, trying not to think about what her nutritionist would say. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten like this, hot cheese and grease and the weed sharpening every flavor. The air was warm and smelled distinctly of Saint-Tropez, palm trees and clean asphalt and the rich drift of gasoline from the sports cars as they raced through the hills.
“It would be nice to go to Montreal,” she admitted to Leo. He was gliding up the pool again. Soon he would be right next to her. “I haven’t seen snow in a long time.”
“We can drive to the Alps tomorrow, if you like,” he said.
“You can suggest it to Marie,” Win said. “I think it might conflict with our reservation at Château de la Whatever.”
“God forbid,” Leo said, but didn’t push it. Win could feel herself becoming melancholy, and was irritated by it. Now he was close enough to give her the searching Leo stare, the one she’d had so many times before: in LA, when he was trying to talk her into ditching a party to go make their own fun; in Paris at New Year’s, when she said she didn’t believe in resolutions; in Singapore, when he suspected her of cheating at cards. Tonight she wasn’t in the mood for scrutiny.
“I think I’m done,” she announced. Leo didn’t argue. He followed her out of the pool and handed her a clean towel.
They were quiet on the way back down. Win couldn’t stop yawning. Her head was drooping, weighed down with wet hair. She wondered if she could let herself go to sleep without showering. She had an impulse to apologize, as if she’d somehow let Leo down.
“Sure you’re okay, Whitman?” he said, when they were almost at her door.
“Just something a producer said. It’s good, though, they like me.” She didn’t want to get into it tonight. Too much fuss over one word, and it would be easier to hold her own once contracts had been signed. Leo would take it seriously, offer to spread mean rumors, wonder if maybe Win should turn down the role altogether. He wouldn’t understand that biting her tongue was dull necessity, rather than indifference.
* * *
Once, nearly four years ago, Win had gone to an industry party and met a guy. Leo had been jetting around with a model who loathed Win, and Win herself had been sequestered in the West Village preparing for a role. Neel lived between New York and Mumbai; he was a journalist, and some of his longer pieces had been optioned for film. He and Win ended up spending most of the party on the balcony, not unlike the one at La Réserve, above the roar of Manhattan traffic instead of the sea.
Neel had a girlfriend in Mumbai, and Win had a movie to shoot. It was one of those strange, prickling nights, the tension between them as understood as if they’d said aloud ruefully, Ah well, maybe in another life. They didn’t kiss, but they leaned in close, the conversation jolting with energy. He touched her wrist, her shoulder. She knew she was looking at his mouth too much. They swapped stories in the way that first-generation immigrants do, familiar in their incongruity, Win’s mother’s blank distrust of her career and Neel’s disdain for the white yogis preaching spiritual awareness out in LA.
Win had thought the balcony was private, but it wasn’t, and the next day there were photos of Neel and Win together, leaning close, hands touching. What surprised her most was the tone of the headlines: settled, smug, a little bored. Only a few were outright racist—BOLLYWOOD BEAUTIES, read one; IS MAMA MATCHMAKING? demanded another—and most of them seemed almost pleased, as though at last Win had done something conventional. She’d texted Neel to apologize for the fuss and ask him whether he wanted her to reassure his girlfriend that nothing had happened. It was a pleasure, he replied, and no problem, Mahani is very understanding. They really want you to shut up and settle down with an Indian guy, huh?
It was a weird jolt, to be understood so clearly. To have someone put into words what Win mostly experienced as a nameless, simmering undercurrent.
“What happened to that one journalist guy,” Leo said when they met a few months later. The supermodel had ditched him unceremoniously once fashion week season was over, and he had shown up on Win’s set to play cards in her trailer and lick his wounds.
Win said, “Oh, that wasn’t a thing. People just got excited that I was finally back in my own lane. Settling down with an Indian guy at last.”
Leo laughed. “God, that’s so r
eductive. You weren’t even born in the same country. It’s almost funny, isn’t it?”
“Well, not really.” Win waved a hand when Leo went to apologize. She hesitated. “The worst part is—I had a really nice time with him,” she said. “He got it. I didn’t have to explain things to him. It was like…recognition.”
“Well,” Leo said. “You’re Whitman Tagore. If you want something like that, I’m sure you can get it.”
“Ha. Thanks,” Win said, and laid down her cards. “Your shuffle.”
She never saw Neel again, more by happenstance than deliberate avoidance. She didn’t mind it—she was used to dealing with these things alone, and the click of recognition she had felt with him was a passing thrill, something she had enjoyed but could live without. But every now and then she wished she had someone else to call, to get a second read on a word like exotic, to understand her discomfort without needing an explanation. Now she couldn’t even properly remember the producer’s phrasing, his exact words. Was it a compliment? Was she overthinking it?
* * *
They lingered at the door of her suite, wet hair dripping onto the plush carpet. Leo leaned against the doorjamb, halfway through a yawn when something came to him. “Oh, shit. Listen, I forgot to tell you—I got a weird call this evening.”
Win tensed. “A journalist?”
“No, it was...” He paused, looking almost embarrassed. “My mums, actually.” My mums was how Leo referred to his mother and her wife, who’d been together since Leo was a child. “There’s some kind of disaster going on with their friend Anya—don’t worry, disaster for them usually means somebody’s shih tzu got quarantined for sneezing at customs.”
“Ha,” Win said, trying to conceal her relief.
“The thing is, Anya’s already down here for work, so they want me to meet up with her on Saturday.”
“Of course,” Win said. “Just let Emil know what time you’re going.”
Leo nodded. “Right, I was just going to duck out for an hour, but—she wanted me to ask if you’ll come for brunch? She said she likes your aesthetic.”
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