Monica pointed her toward the waiting room without being asked, a small courtesy that told Arianne she hadn’t hidden the search on her own face as well as she’d thought. "Second door on the left. She’s been in there since the panel started."
Sam was on the couch with her shoes off and her feet tucked under her, scrolling through something on her phone that she set face-down the second the door opened. A garment bag hung on the back of the door, tomorrow’s early call already laid out before tonight had finished with her. She looked up, and for a second the practiced ease she wore for cameras slipped into something plainer.
Arianne shut the door behind her, muting the noise from the hallway to almost nothing, and crossed to the armchair across from the couch. She lowered herself into it and took a moment to arrange her dress before she looked up again.
"You look tired," she said.
"I look like I’ve been on three different sets in five weeks." Sam pushed her hair back from her face. "Which is accurate, so I can’t even be offended."
It had been weeks since they’d been in the same room. Longer than either of them had meant to let it go, calls and messages standing in for the version of this friendship that used to happen over actual tables.
"How are you doing? Really."
"Busy. Tired." Sam considered it a second longer, like she wanted the honest answer instead of the easy one. "I like it, though. Modeling was good to me for a long time, but it never asked anything of me the way this does. Acting has this — I don’t know. A pull. You spend a scene being someone who isn’t you, and then you go home and you’re more yourself than you were that morning. Nobody warned me about that part."
"Modeling didn’t do that?"
"Modeling wanted my face. This wants everything underneath it too." Sam smiled, quick and real. "I’m not complaining. I asked for this."
"The new series is doing well. Better than well, from what Monica said tonight."
"Monica’s numbers are always three weeks ahead of everyone else’s. If she says it’s doing well, it’s doing better than that." Sam picked at a loose thread on the couch cushion. "It’s strange, having people recognize me for the work instead of the family name. I spent so long being ’Gilbert Pemberton’s little sister’ that I forgot what it would feel like to just be Sam."
"You earned that."
"I know. It catches me off guard every time." She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, an old habit that hadn’t changed since she was nineteen. "Enough about me. Tell me something that isn’t work. How’s Lexx? Is he doing the thing where he screams every time someone tries to put him down?"
"He’s stopped screaming. Now he just looks personally betrayed."
Sam laughed, short and genuine, and the tired lines around her eyes eased, briefly. It didn’t last.
She stopped talking after that, the kind of pause Arianne had learned to read as a held breath rather than an empty one.
"How’s Gio," Sam said, not looking up.
Arianne didn’t answer right away, and Sam filled the space herself before she had to.
"I haven’t seen him since the twins’ birthday. Since Lexx’s month celebration." She counted it out loud like she needed to hear the number. "That’s five months. Five months, and it feels longer than that. I’ve been on set more than I’ve been home. It’s easier that way."
"Easier for who?"
Sam didn’t answer that one.
"You two should stop it," Arianne said.
"Stop what?" Sam’s voice came up half a register, the practiced ease trying to reassert itself and failing.
"Whatever this is. The scheduling around each other. The eight years of finding reasons not to be in the same room." Arianne kept her voice level, the same register she used for board members who needed a fact stated plainly rather than dressed up. "You care about each other. That’s obvious to everyone but the two of you, apparently. Watching you both pretend this is protecting anyone takes more effort than either of you actually has."
Sam’s jaw set, then let go. She pulled her knees up instead of answering, wrapping her arms around them like she was fourteen again instead of a woman with her face on a skincare campaign in six countries.
"I’ve actually been thinking about walking away from it. All of it. Not the industry — him." She said it to her knees, not to Arianne. "I’ve spent more than a decade wanting someone who won’t choose me on his own. A relationship doesn’t look like this, Arianne. This is just a very long waiting room."
"You don’t have to justify it to me."
"I know. I’m justifying it to myself." Sam’s mouth curved, not quite a smile. "I’ve rehearsed this speech in the mirror more times than I’d like to admit. It sounds better out loud than I expected. Small mercies."
"How long have you been thinking about it?"
"Since the birthday party, if I’m honest. Watching him hold Lexx like that, and then watching him leave the second I walked toward him." She shook her head once, sharp. "A man doesn’t cross a room like that unless he’s avoiding a conversation he’s had eight years to prepare for."
"The longer I look at him, the more I think I’ll never be enough. Not smart enough, not — I don’t know what the word is. Worthy, maybe. That’s an ugly word to use about yourself, but there it is."
"That’s not true."
"Maybe not. But it’s what it feels like, and after a while the feeling starts doing the deciding regardless of what’s true." She looked up finally. "I know I’m not you. Franz waited twenty years and never once asked you to owe him anything for it. I used to think that was romantic. Now I think it’s just rare, and I’m not sure I get to have rare things. A woman’s allowed some dignity in this. She’s allowed to know when to stop."
"You’re comparing yourself to something you didn’t witness firsthand. Twenty years wasn’t romantic while it was happening. It was a man refusing to move on with his life for a woman who wasn’t ready to let him in."
"That’s a generous way to describe it."
"It’s an accurate one." Arianne folded her hands in her lap. "You’re allowed to want more than that for yourself. I’m not arguing against the dignity part. I’m arguing against the idea that this is the same story with different names in it."
Sam didn’t answer right away. She looked down at her own hands instead, turning them over like there was something on them she needed to check.
"Maybe it isn’t," she said eventually. "But it feels close enough some nights that the difference stops mattering."
Somewhere down the hallway, a door opened and closed, laughter carrying briefly before it cut off again. Neither of them acknowledged it. Whatever else was happening in the building tonight, it wasn’t happening in this room.
Arianne studied her without speaking, and Sam let her, the two of them sitting in a room built for other people’s comfort while the real conversation of the night happened here instead of on any stage.