I pull Alice forward, practically stumbling in my haste to move.
“Hi,” I say, sticking out my hand. My voice cracks. God. How did I think I could do this?
“Hey,” he says, grabbing my hand. The contact almost makes me jerk. At least his voice is as easygoing as his smile. “Hope you didn’t have too much trouble finding this place. I know it’s out of the way, but my agent took me here the first time I came to L.A., and it’s just been, you know, like a home base since then.”
I wish I had a home base. Alice is supposed to be a piece of home, but she just stands there, looking between the two of us. I wish she would say something. I wish time would slow down so I could catch my breath. Instead, I stare down at Marius’s hands. They’re bigger than mine, warm brown. I can’t stop staring. It’s easier than looking at his face.
“So you’re Josephine?”
I can’t speak. Alice clears her throat.
“Yeah, she is,” she says, taking a seat. “I’m her older sister. Just here to chaperone.”
“Wow.” He sits, and I figure I should, too. “You were at the press conference yesterday, right?”
My throat goes dry. What do I say to that? I can’t lie. But I don’t want to admit to being that awkward kid, either. I force myself to nod.
“I thought your question was really interesting,” he says. “I’ve been thinking about it since then. Sorry you didn’t get the chance to finish.”
I can’t tell if he is just saying that to make me feel better or if he really means it.
Marius clears his throat.
“So you must be pretty young, right? That’s so cool. When I heard Deep Focus wanted to do an interview, I thought it would be this journalist my dad’s age asking me questions about sex scenes or something, but then they told me about the contest.”
“Oh, yeah,” I say, because I’m not sure what else to say. “I’m seventeen.”
“Really? That’s crazy.”
I need something to do with my hands while we talk, so I tug at my bag, pulling out supplies—my notebook, a pen, and my recorder. Alice takes out her phone, something familiar, and it gets a little easier to focus.
“Uh, do you mind if I record you?”
He waves his hand and scoots his chair forward.
“So,” he says, “how did you get started? Writing and everything?”
I blink. Most people don’t ask about me when I’m interviewing them. Marius is staring at me like he actually wants me to answer, like he’s not just making small talk. It’s hard not to stare back.
In real life, his lips are pinker. His hair is longer—or taller, really—but still dark brown. Sunlight streaming through the windows bounces off the silver hoop at the side of his nose. That definitely wasn’t in the movie. I make a mental note and file it away for later.
“Josephine?”
Alice steps on my foot. I squeak.
“Sorry.” I clear my throat, glancing up. Brown. His eyes are brown, like the rest of him, except darker. “Uh, it’s Josie. Josephine is my grandma—well, was, before she died.”
“Right, okay.” He nods, smiles. Easy. “So how’d you get started with this?”
I feel Alice’s gaze on my face. Is this how this entire interview is going to go? Not only will she have tons to tease me about later, but it’ll just make me feel like even more of a baby.
“Alice.” I turn my head a fraction, barely moving my mouth. “Could you, like, sit somewhere else? Anywhere else? Just till we’re done?”
Her eyes narrow. Both of Marius’s brows rise, his entire face going with them. His fingers are lazily folded together on the table.
“It’s no big deal,” he says. “Really, I don’t mind if she stays.”
Alice smirks.
“No,” I say, glaring at her. “She needs to go. Like, I need her to.”
We glare for several long seconds. I’m not sure what this will cost me—maybe more whining when we get back to our hotel or tattling to Mom and Dad. Whatever. I just know I can’t work when she’s sitting right under my ass.
Eventually, she pushes herself to her feet with the most dramatic eye roll I’ve seen in my life. “Ungrateful,” she mutters as she walks toward the other side of the room, where several young people with intern badges are clustered. It takes no time for her to launch into conversation with one of them.
“Sorry,” I say, turning back to my notebook and opening to a fresh page. “It’s just a little weird to have her sitting here.”
“That’s okay.”
I pause. My eyes dart up. He’s staring, expectant. I tug at my hair before forcing my arm down. Laura, my therapist, is always hounding me about self-harm, about how scratching or hair pulling counts, even if I don’t think so.
“So,” he says, smiling like I’ve made a joke. “How’d you get started?”
“Oh.” My cheeks burn. “Right, right. Uh, I wrote stories for my school newspaper. Well, I don’t think that really did anything, ’cause no one reads it except the parents. Then I started this blog and I posted on Twitter, and then I started pitching essays to different websites. Sometimes my blog posts went viral, so that helped me get pieces on bigger websites, like BuzzFeed and Vox. After a while, an editor for Essence contacted me, so I’ve been writing there a lot lately. But, uh, yeah, I won this contest to be able to be here, and that’s sort of…it.”
I wave my hands in the air to end the sentence. He’s nodding, though, eyebrows knitted together with interest, so it wasn’t a complete failure.
“I knew about the contest, but wow, I didn’t know about the rest of it.” I wish I could take notes in italics, because that’s the way he sounds. “That’s so impressive. My friends and I weren’t doing anything close to that when we were younger.”
“Okay, but you were acting,” I say, not bothering to hide the
