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The studio lights are always warmer than she expects.
Angela thinks that every time — every single shoot — like she never quite learns. The set is too bright, too loud, too full of people pretending not to watch each other. There are cameras, wires, crew moving around them, the constant low hum of equipment, Shayne laughing somewhere off to the side, someone asking for water, someone else checking audio levels.
It should feel impersonal.
It never does when Amanda is this close.
They’re playing it up for the bit — obviously. Everyone knows that. That’s the joke. The premise practically demands it, flirting exaggerated and ridiculous, commitment pushed to absurdity. Angela leans into the performance because it’s easy. She knows how to be loud, knows how to commit, knows how to make a moment land.
Amanda turns toward her.
And the space between them changes.
It’s subtle. No one else would clock it. A shift in posture, a tilt of Amanda’s head, the way her voice drops half a register when she says Angela’s name—Toilet Girl. Not for the audience. Not really. It feels… directed. Focused.
Angela laughs, because that’s what she’s supposed to do.
They recite their vows — overdramatic, ridiculous, layered with jokes — and Angela plays her part, swaying drunkenly, rolling her eyes, smiling, performing annoyance. But Amanda is looking at her in a way that makes the rest of the room blur at the edges. The cameras, the crew, the set — all of it fades into background noise under the weight of it.
Then Amanda leans in. It’s supposed to be part of the bit. Angela knows that. Her body reacts anyway.
She leans back on instinct, heart lurching so sharply she almost misses her next line. Laughter erupts around them. Amanda exaggerates it into a fake-out make-out scene, turning it into comedy, making it safe again, making it a joke everyone can understand.
Angela laughs too. She even nudges Amanda’s shoulder like it was funny, like she isn’t acutely aware of how close Amanda had been — how she could still feel the almost of it hovering between them, unfinished.
They finish the shoot. Applause, chatter, movement. People disperse.
Amanda bumps her shoulder lightly as she drags her out of the studio, running her into the door on accident.
“Good bit,” she says, smiling easily and unbothered.
Angela smiles back automatically. “Yeah. Good bit.”
Amanda walks off to talk to someone else and the air immediately feels colder.
Later, when the office is quieter.
Angela packs slowly shoving items into her bag, zipping compartments she already zipped, rearranging things that don’t need rearranging. Everyone else is leaving in clusters, conversations fading down the hallway, doors opening and closing.
Her hands stop moving. Because now there’s no distraction. Now there’s just the memory.
The almost-kiss replays in perfect detail. Amanda’s face close to hers, the softness in her eyes right before she turned it into a joke, the split second where it didn’t feel like acting anymore. Where it didn’t feel like content.
Where it felt real.
Angela presses her palms against the edge of the desk and exhales shakily.
God. What she wouldn’t give to have let it happen.
The thought hits her so hard she straightens immediately, like she can physically shake it off.
No. No, absolutely not.
Amanda is her best friend. Amanda is her coworker. Amanda is safe and easy and constant and she is not something Angela is allowed to want like that. She rubs her hands over her face, trying to ground herself.
It was a bit. It was for views. Amanda didn’t mean anything by it. And she definitely didn’t look at you like that. You imagined that. She chides herself.
Angela zips her bag harder than necessary.
Amanda doesn’t like her like that. Of course she doesn’t. Amanda flirts with everyone. Amanda commits to jokes. Amanda turned it into comedy immediately — proof enough that it hadn’t meant anything.
Right?
The room is empty now. The silence presses in around her. Angela leans back against the desk and closes her eyes. Because the worst part isn’t that it almost happened. The worst part is she wanted it to.
And she knows — with a sinking certainty settling deep in her chest — if Amanda had actually kissed her, she wouldn’t have pulled away.
Angela swallows hard, grabs her bag, and turns off the lights.
The darkness doesn’t help. Neither does the realization she carries with her all the way to her car.
She’s in trouble.
And Amanda has no idea.
By the end of the night, everything is warm.
Not the room — the room is loud and bright and crowded and smells faintly like cheap alcohol and stage lights — but the edges of Angela’s thoughts are soft, blurred at the corners. She knows she’s drunk in the pleasant way, the kind where laughing feels easier and standing still feels optional.
She doesn’t remember exactly when she drifted closer to Amanda.
Only that at some point she did, and at some point Amanda didn’t move away.
They’re gathered for the outro, everyone half-talking over each other, chaotic and loose in a way they never quite are during filming. Someone’s saying their closing bit. Someone else interrupts. The cameras are still rolling but the structure is gone — just noise and overlapping voices.
Angela barely hears any of it.
Because Amanda is behind her.
Close enough that Angela can feel the heat of her through the thin fabric of the reindeer onesie. An arm settles lightly around her shoulders — casual, absentminded, like Amanda didn’t think about it at all — and Angela leans back without even realizing she’s doing it.
It’s instinctive. Comfortable. Her head fits against Amanda’s shoulder like it belongs there. She tells herself it’s the alcohol that makes her stay.
Amanda bends slightly, murmuring something into her ear — too quiet for anyone else to hear. Angela doesn’t even fully process the words, just the feeling of Amanda’s breath brushing the shell of her ear, the way her voice drops low and soft when she isn’t projecting for the room.
At one point Angela turns her head just enough to catch her expression, and Amanda smiles — small, knowing — and mouths something she can’t quite hear but thinks is I know.
Angela’s heart stumbles.
Then Amanda presses a quick, gentle kiss to the top of her head.
It’s nothing. It’s friendly. It’s normal. It detonates anyway.
Angela goes very still.
The world keeps moving around them — people talking, laughing, wrapping the video — but she feels suspended in place, like everything narrowed to one specific point. Amanda’s arm was still around her, the lingering warmth where her lips had touched her hair.
She doesn’t move. She doesn’t trust herself to.
Because she wants to turn around and pull Amanda closer instead of away. To tuck herself into her, to see what would happen if she didn’t treat this like a moment that had to end.
The want is sharp enough to sober her slightly. And with it comes the realization she can’t dodge anymore.
This isn’t just a bit she got caught up in. This isn’t a weird moment from a video she’ll laugh about later.
This is a feeling. A real one.
Angela swallows hard, staring ahead while everyone finishes their outro.
She’s in Amanda’s arms, and it feels right in a way that scares her.
Because Amanda is her best friend. The easiest person in her life. The person she looks for first in every room, the one she texts without thinking, the one she measures good days by. If she crosses this line — even by accident — she could lose that.
Lose her.
And that thought terrifies her more than the realization itself.
So she makes a decision right there, quietly, while Amanda’s arm is still around her and the cameras are still on and nobody notices anything except two friends standing close.
She will not say anything. She will not let it change how she acts. She will push it down, lock it away, pretend it never existed.
The livestream ends. People move. Amanda’s arm slips from her shoulders naturally as the group breaks apart.
The absence is immediate.
Angela forces a laugh at something someone says, grabs her things, and keeps moving with everyone else, matching the noise and energy like nothing shifted inside her at all. Preparing for the afterparty live, and then to turn in for the night.
But later, when she’s alone, she can still feel it — the ghost of a kiss pressed into her hair, the memory of warmth at her back.
She presses her hand briefly over her chest like she can steady it.
She can’t.
Because now she knows. And knowing changes nothing about what she allows herself to do.
She will bury it. She has to. Their friendship is too important to risk on something she’s almost certain Amanda never meant in the first place.
The table is a mess.
Little plastic bricks everywhere — reds and blues and tiny translucent pieces rolling dangerously close to the edge while Spencer and Shayne argue about X-Men lore like they’re about to go to war over it. Chanse keeps interrupting them. One of them drops a piece and groans like it mattered.
Angela should be paying attention.
Instead she’s hyperaware of Amanda sitting beside her.
Their knees keep bumping under the table. Not enough for anyone to notice. Just enough that Angela notices every single time. Every contact sparks a small electric jolt up her spine, and she hates that she notices. She hates that she anticipates it.
She tells herself she’s fine now.
She buried it months ago. After the holiday shoot, after she decided nothing good could come from wanting something she couldn’t have. She’s been careful. Normal. Good at this. Good at pretending the feeling was temporary.
Amanda leans closer to see the piece she’s creating.
Angela’s breath catches. Amanda laughs softly, close enough that Angela can feel it rather than hear it.
Then, casually — like it’s nothing, like it’s just another throwaway line lost under the noise of the laughter and stream.
“What if we kissed and went missing?”
Angela freezes.
She laughs automatically, a beat too late, hoping nobody notices. The others don’t react — they’re still arguing about mutants — but Angela’s brain replays the sentence like it was shouted into her ear.
Amanda says it again, laughing. “What if we kissed and went missing?” Her tone is joking. Entirely unserious.
Angela’s heart is not.
For a split second her mind betrays her —they stand up from the table, walk out of frame together. The hallway is quiet. Amanda’s still smiling but she isn’t laughing anymore. Angela pulls her in before she can think better of it and this time nobody turns it into a joke.
The image hits her with startling clarity.
Angela blinks hard.
The studio snaps back into focus — voices, lights, plastic clicking on plastic — but the feeling lingers, sharp and disorienting. Her face burns. Her hands feel unsteady.
Amanda says it a third time, still dissolving into laughter.
Angela pushes her chair back abruptly. She steps just off camera, into the edge of the room where the lights don’t quite reach, pressing her palm briefly to her forehead and forcing herself to breathe.
This is ridiculous. It was a joke. Amanda jokes like that all the time.
So why did it feel like she couldn’t stay seated? Why did it feel like if she stayed for another second she might actually do something she couldn’t undo or regret?
Her heart slowly steadies. She waits until her expression feels normal again, until she trusts her voice, and then she walks back and sits back down beside Amanda like nothing happened.
Amanda nudges her lightly with her elbow, easy and familiar.
Angela smiles back.
The stream carries on.
Afterwards, the building is quieter. Filming is finished, mic packs are packed away. The cast and crew are flittering about.
People gather their things, conversations drifting toward the exit. Angela lingers near the doorway, pretending to check her bag while Amanda laughs with Spencer across the room, waving goodbye to someone.
From a distance, Amanda looks uncomplicated. Relaxed. The same as always.
Angela watches her for a moment too long.
Because the feeling didn’t fade. Not after months. Not after ignoring it. Not after deciding it was safer to pretend it wasn’t there.
If anything, it’s worse.
Amanda turns, catching her eye, and smiles — small and warm and entirely unguarded. Angela smiles back automatically. Her chest aches. She understands now with a clarity she didn’t have in November, didn’t have in December.
This isn’t a passing thing she can outwait. This isn’t a crush that will burn itself out.
She’s in trouble — not because Amanda might feel the same, but because she doesn’t think she can make herself stop.
And she has no idea what to do about it except keep pretending she does.
Angela is already laughing before Amanda even steps out from behind the partition.
The jumpsuit is ridiculous — bright red, oversized in places and tight in others — and Amanda walks in like she fully expects applause, holding the astronaut helmet under one arm like it’s completely normal.
“Yeah,” Amanda says solemnly, “they had budget cuts.”
Angela immediately spits her water.
The room erupts. Someone claps a table. Angela coughs, wiping at her mouth, trying to recover, still laughing as Amanda steps closer.
“It’s linen!” Angela protests, touching the suit, voice wrecked with laughter.
Amanda leans toward her. And then— “Love you, honey.” Amanda moves in.
It happens fast. Faster than Angela can think. Faster than she can decide anything rational.
But she knows what’s about to happen. And in that exact instant — a single sharp flash of clarity — Angela realizes two things at once: She wants this. And she absolutely cannot let it happen right here and now.
The cameras are on. The crew is right there. The laughter is already building around them. If Amanda kisses her now it will be a joke, a punchline, a clip. Something replayed and memed and commented on and stripped of meaning before she even has time to feel it.
Her body reacts before her brain catches up.
“AH—!” She jerks backwards, flailing, nearly tipping off the stool as she scrambles away from Amanda’s face. Her foot hits the ground hard to catch herself and the room explodes into laughter around her — loud, delighted, completely unaware.
Amanda doesn’t miss a beat.
“Take care of our four children!” she declares dramatically, already turning away, continuing the bit as she exits.
Everyone is laughing. Angela laughs too.
She has to.
Her hands are shaking.
She lifts the bottle again just to have something to do with them, nodding along, pretending she isn’t still feeling the almost of it hovering inches from her mouth. Pretending she didn’t feel the moment before she moved — the exact fraction of a second where she nearly stayed.
Because she almost did. And that’s what terrifies her.
It isn’t just that she panicked. It’s that the panic wasn’t about Amanda. It was about the cameras.
She sits there, smiling and wiping her face like she’s recovering from the joke, while the realization settles into her chest with quiet certainty.
She doesn’t want their first kiss to belong to an audience. She doesn’t want it to be a punchline or a bit or something she has to laugh off afterward. She wants it to matter.
And the worst part — the part she doesn’t let herself examine too closely — is knowing she’ll probably never get that choice.
Because Amanda jokes. Amanda commits to bits. Amanda says things easily and walks away laughing, and none of it lingers for her the way it lingers for Angela.
Angela stares down at the floor, heart still racing. She wants Amanda — not the performance, not the flirting, not the version of them everyone else sees.
The real version.
And she finally understands the shape of the problem. Even if Amanda kissed her right then, it wouldn’t have been the thing she’s been quietly hoping for.
It wouldn’t have been real.
So she laughs with everyone else, lets the moment pass, and tells herself the same thing she’s been repeating for months now —Some feelings you just live with. Some things you just don’t get to have.
And if she’s going to keep Amanda in her life, this is one of them.
Angela reads the Spud Hut finale script at her kitchen table.
It’s late enough that the apartment is quiet — the kind of quiet where every page turn sounds louder than it should be. She’s half-smiling through most of it, already picturing how they’ll play certain jokes, where she’ll lean into reactions, how Amanda will inevitably commit harder than anyone else.
Then she reaches the last pages. And her eyes stop.
She reads the line again. And again.
FRITE pulls TATER close. They kiss.
Angela doesn’t move.
For a moment she just sits there, script open in her hands, the words refusing to become normal text. They feel heavier than ink should feel. Too solid. Too real.
A kiss.
Not a joke. Not a fake-out. Not a lean-away she can turn into laughter.
A scripted one.
She can already imagine it — the cameras, the lights, the room full of people waiting for the moment to land. She can hear the cheering that would follow, the jokes, the reactions, the way it would immediately stop belonging to them and start belonging to everyone else.
And the problem isn’t that she doesn’t want to kiss Amanda.
Her chest tightens.
The problem is that she does. Too much.
Angela presses the script against the table, staring at that single stage direction until her vision blurs slightly.
Because if it happens like this, she won’t get to keep it. It’ll be content. A moment she has to laugh through afterward while pretending it didn’t matter.
And she already knows — with absolute certainty — it would matter to her.
More than she could safely show.
She asks to talk to Erin the very next day.
Ian and Anthony are there too, casual, easy conversation before she even manages to say why she asked.
Angela forces herself to sound normal. “Hey–um, about the finale script?”
Erin looks up. “Yeah?”
Angela hesitates just long enough to feel her pulse in her throat. “I was wondering if we could… rewrite the kiss?”
Anthony blinks. “Rewrite?”
“Just cut it,” Angela says quickly. “Or change the ending beat. I think it’ll land just as well without it.”
Ian tilts his head. “Any particular reason?”
Angela shrugs, too fast. “I just think it plays cleaner as comedy. Feels less expected.”
There’s a beat.
They exchange glances — not suspicious, just curious — but she holds her expression steady, giving them nothing else to read.
Erin nods after a second. “Okay. We can adjust it.”
Relief hits so suddenly she almost feels lightheaded. “Thanks,” Angela says, already backing out of the conversation before they can ask anything else.
She doesn’t let herself think about why her hands are still shaking until she’s alone again.
The revised scripts go out a few days later.
Amanda notices immediately.
She flips to the ending once, then again, scanning like she missed something.
The kiss is gone.
She doesn’t think much of it at first — rewrites happen — but curiosity lingers just enough that she finds Ian near the office kitchen later that afternoon.
“Hey,” she says casually, leaning on the counter. “Did the finale script get changed for any particular reason?”
Ian shrugs. “Angela wanted it rewritten.”
Amanda stills. “Oh.”
“She just said she thought it played better,” he adds, already moving on to something else.
Amanda nods automatically, but the words don’t leave her.
Angela wanted it changed.
Pieces begin rearranging themselves quietly in her memory — the lean-aways, the laughter deflections, the way Angela sometimes stepped back right at the last second.
Amanda hadn’t let herself interpret it before. Now she can’t stop.
She finds Angela after work.
“Hey,” she says gently. “Can I ask you something?”
Angela looks up immediately, relaxed at first. “Yeah, what’s up?”
Amanda holds the script loosely in her hand. “Why did you have the kiss taken out?”
Angela freezes. It’s small. Anyone else might miss it. Amanda doesn’t.
“I just—” Angela starts, then stops. “I thought it’d be funnier.”
Amanda studies her for a long second. “…Did you just not want to kiss me?”
The question is soft. Careful.
Angela hesitates. And then — because she doesn’t trust herself to explain the real reason without saying too much — she nods. “Yeah.”
Amanda’s expression shifts almost imperceptibly, but the warmth in it pulls back.
“Oh,” she says quietly. There’s no accusation in her voice. No anger. Just understanding. “Okay.”
Angela’s stomach drops immediately, but Amanda is already stepping back.
“I’m sorry,” Amanda adds gently. “I didn’t realize I was crossing a line.”
“You weren’t—” Angela starts, but the words come too late.
Amanda smiles, polite and smaller than usual. “It’s fine. Really.”
She walks away before Angela can fix it.
And for the first time, Angela realizes she may have just protected the moment she wanted…at the cost of changing everything else.
Amanda almost leaves before Angela reaches her.
The parking lot is dim, the building lights buzzing softly behind them, most of the crew already gone. Amanda’s standing beside her minivan, keys in hand, focused very hard on unlocking the door like it requires all of her attention.
“Hey.”
Amanda startles slightly, then turns.
Angela stops a few feet away. The words she rehearsed in her head all evening evaporate immediately, leaving only the feeling — tight and uncomfortable and sitting somewhere high in her chest.
“Did I do something wrong?” she asks.
Amanda’s expression softens, but she doesn’t step closer.
“You barely hug me anymore,” Angela says, voice quieter now. “You didn’t even say goodbye today.”
It sounds smaller out loud than it felt in her head.
Amanda watches her for a moment, really watches her, and Angela realizes too late how much hurt must be visible on her face.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Amanda says gently.
“Then why are you acting like I did?”
Amanda looks down at her keys, turning them over once in her hand.
“You said you were uncomfortable kissing me.”
Angela blinks. “That’s not— I didn’t mean it like that. I just don’t want to kiss you—”
“Is there a reason why?” Amanda asks softly, not accusatory, just careful.
Angela’s throat closes. Because there is a reason, and saying it means giving the thing a shape, a name, something real enough that she can’t pretend it isn’t there anymore.
She shifts her weight, fingers curling into the sleeves of her hoodie, and Amanda’s expression changes — softer, warmer — as she steps forward and gently takes Angela’s hand.
“Talk to me, Ang,” she says.
Angela takes a shaky breath and looks up at her. “I don’t wanna kiss you for the first time for a bit or on camera,” Angela whispers, tears threatening to spill.
Amanda’s hand lifts slowly, carefully, thumb brushing beneath Angela’s lashes, wiping away the tears as she cups her jaw like she’s afraid of startling her.
She tilts Angela’s chin up, pausing and giving her a moment to pull back, but Angela doesn't.
“This one isn’t for the cameras,” she murmurs.
Angela’s breath catches. “I need it to be real, Amanda.”
Amanda’s eyes soften immediately. “It’s real,” she whispers, dipping her head down, breath ghosting over Angela’s lips so close. Her forehead rests against the younger woman’s. “It’s real, Angel.”
And then Angela closes the distance.
The kiss isn’t rushed. Not dramatic. Not performed. It’s careful at first — a question answered — and then steadier when Amanda’s hand settles at the back of her neck, grounding her there. It’s soft, electric, and radiating. Angela can feel the way it ignites in her bones like fire, warming every inch of her skin, burning in her lungs before she’s needing to pull back to just simply breathe. She pulls back first, forehead resting against Amanda’s, both of them still close enough that neither moves away.
The world doesn’t change around them. No laughter, no lights, no crew waiting for a punchline. Just quiet air and the hum of distant traffic and the realization settling between them that nothing about this has to be hidden inside a joke anymore.
Amanda exhales a quiet laugh of disbelief, eyes still closed. “It’s real,” She echoes one last time, thumb ghosting across Angela’s cheek softly.
For a long moment they just stand there, foreheads still touching, breathing the same air, Amanda’s hand still gently cradling Angela's cheek. Nothing rushes them forward. Nothing pulls them apart. The moment doesn’t have to be played off or laughed away or turned into a story later.
This one belongs only to them. No cameras in sight.