"…so we want you to fly in for a few days to talk it over. Are you busy next week? We can get you all booked in now," Maya's agent said to her over the phone. Everything she had been working towards since she was a teenager was finally coming together; after the moderate success of her self-produced EP, the buzz around her music had been growing. What had started as a tiny number of followers had grown and grown until she wasn't able to go anywhere further out, only up. She had seemingly reached about as far as she could through word of mouth and her internet presence, and the time had come to find someone to represent her and start getting her music into record companies. The only real trouble with having an agent like Brent was that he split his time, and an increasingly large portion of his work seemed to be LA based.

"Actually, next week isn't great," she confessed, "I have an engagement party, and-"

"Send them a nice bottle of wine and apologise and get your butt over here, Matlin. Missing one party when you could be here won't kill you."

"No, you don't understand. This is my engagement party. We've been planning it for months. My sister is coming." She started pacing around the kitchen. She wasn't prepared to drop her party, and Brent was going to be a tough person to convince.

"Maya, you have your whole life to play weddings. I'm asking for you to come visit for a couple of days so we can lock in this deal. We're talking albums and tours here. Look, it's not my life, I can use this meeting slot for another client. But I'm offering this one to you because I think you're the one who can really sell it. I'm doing this for you, Maya."

She sighed, ensuring that it wasn't directly into the phone to be heard by Brent. She didn't want to seem ungrateful for what he was doing for her, but then again, that was his job. He was being paid by her to do this. "I just can't do next week, I'm sorry. I'll be letting too many people down." People who were vastly more important to her than her agent.

"One day. Come to LA for just a day, that's all I'm asking. I'm doing this all for you."

"Maybe like Monday or Tuesday? Just… not close to the weekend, okay? I can't stay any extra days this time."

"Gee, well, it's going to be tough to get a meeting with these guys at such short notice, but I'll see if I can pull out the stops. You gotta be here when I get it though, yeah? This is all for you, Matlin."

Maya looked out of the kitchen to the living room, where Zig, Zoe, and Grace were throwing popcorn at one another. She figured they had started by trying to catch it with their mouths, but it had since disintegrated into more of an all-out popcorn war. She so wanted to join them, but she had to get this right. "Yeah," she said, "Monday or Tuesday, and I'll be there. I just have to tell Zig."

"The boyfriend?"

"He's my fiancé. That's why we're having an engagement party?" she corrected. She was proud of her music, but she was also very proud of her fiancé, and she wasn't going to minimise the importance he had in her life.

"Of course," Brent said. Maya could imagine his forced smile as he said the words. Her agent didn't get to have opinions on the important people in her life. She wanted to make that very clear.

"Great, well, I'll see you next week then," Maya said, poised to hang up. The conversation had taken way too long for her liking. She cut the call before Brent could add anything more onto the end of the conversation. She silenced her phone and left it on the counter in the kitchen, prime position for ignoring any further business calls. Anyone else she could get back to later, or they could try calling Zig if they had to get in touch with her. Either way she wasn't answering her phone.

Zig raised his arm in defence, trying to signal to the girls to go easy for a moment, as Maya re-entered. "You were out there for a while," he commented, "was it Brent?" He over pronounced Brent's name, making sure it was emphasised in just the right way. Zig had never liked the agent, not that Maya especially liked him either. Zig didn't have to work with him though.

"Yeah, he wants me to fly to LA for some big meeting next week," she said, sinking down onto the couch beside her fiancé. "I don't want to go."

"Why not? That's a big deal," he said, draping his arm around her.

"He was annoyed when I said I couldn't skip the party on Saturday."

"Did you point out that it was your engagement party?" Grace asked, the popcorn fighting seemingly having stopped, leaving Zoe and Grace to pick up the pieces around them.

"Of course," Maya assured, "Brent just thinks I should put everything else on hold for him and all that he does for me, or whatever."

"You can't have an entertainment industry career and existing relationships," Zoe said with a sigh. Maya had been surprised how much Zoe's acting career had opened doors for conversation between them. They both had agent issues, for starters, but Zoe had a lot more experience in the industry. She had gone so far as to confide that, following her exit from West Drive for Gatsby's death, she had recorded an album. It never left the studio walls, but she had an insight for how the business dealt with it that she could share with Maya. The two understood one another's career pathways better than they had anticipated.

"And what exactly does he do for you?" Zig asked. He received three matching looks from the girls, all questioning his confusion on the topic. They all thought it was fairly obvious what talent agents did for their clients. "No, I mean, you were just on the phone with him for twenty minutes and he didn't even want to listen to you. Why is he your agent? He's no closer to booking you anything if he isn't prepared to work around your life."

"Exactly. I'm not signing anything that isn't going to be good for me. For us. And unless Brent can learn to let me have a life that isn't in LA it's not going to work out and he isn't going to make any money."

"Wait, you don't pay him?" Zig really was confused now.

"He gets ten percent," Maya explained, "so for every dollar I make on my EP, he's getting ten cents. If I made ten million, he gets one of the ten. But we both need for me to sign some deals before it pays off for him."

"Zig makes a good point though," Grace said, "Does he even do anything for you? You're so unhappy about him getting you in the door. Isn't that why you got an agent?" Maya shook her head.

"I'm not unhappy about him booking meetings. I'm unhappy about him expecting me to fly to LA every other week for meetings he hasn't even booked yet."

"That's your representation?" Zoe said, obviously surprised, "Maya, you need to change agents. This guy is making ten percent and he won't even listen to you? How does he expect to get any deals if he can't do that part of his job properly? You have to be able to show up." Zoe folded her arms, shaking her head and taking breaths to try to calm down, having worked herself up so much about agent drama. "Management, honestly. You should ask to be transferred. If the agency won't move you to a new rep then you say you'll walk. Any agency would be lucky to have you. I have contacts I can hook you up with. Don't stress it."

"Thanks," Maya said, genuinely touched by Zoe's gesture. She spoke her words in a way that made it seem like it was no big deal and it she would only do it if and when convenient, but Maya realised that she actually knew Zoe well enough, even having known her for such a short amount of time, to recognise that it was all part of the image she had to keep up. It was something that meant a lot to Maya.

"That's that then? You'll leave Brent?" Zig asked.

"I'll see how LA goes first?" Maya suggested, "We'll wait it out and see how things go. There's no way I'm missing the party and-" now that the threat of having an intimidating agent that rarely seemed to care about her best interests wasn't hovering over her, she could actually let herself be happy for the current offer on the table and the meetings that Brent had promised. "And this a really big thing for me and I should see where it leads."

"Okay," Zig pressed a kiss to the top of her head, "whatever makes you happy."

"I want to hire a wedding planner," she blurted, "I don't want our wedding to be any later than it has to be. Maybe if you're my husband instead of my fiancé the agency will stop treating you like you aren't my family."

"Family?" Zig couldn't hide his smile.

"Well yeah, I don't know what else to call it."

Grace moved over to sit on the same couch as Zoe and nudged her gently. "Can you imagine that one day there will be little Blondies running around?" she said, "Hey, will they be Novaks or Matlins?"

"Novaks," Zig said immediately.

"We haven't talked about it," Maya amended.

"If you're hiring a wedding planner, does that mean you're setting a date, finally?" Grace asked.

Maya nodded. "I guess so. I'll just be happy to know that something is being planned even when I'm not thinking about it."

"They've done a lot of not thinking about it," Grace stage-whispered to Zoe.

"Are you ever worried that you're too young for this?" Zoe asked, "Sorry, is that getting too personal? I don't actually know you guys that well-"

"No, it's fine," Maya assured, though she paused for a moment to consider Zoe's question. She knew that she was young, but she was also ambitious. There was a reason she was looking to pursue a music career of her own rather than producing tracks and writing for other people forever. Maybe part of the reason she had agreed to marry Zig was to tick something else off the list before she hit thirty. "We've been together for a long time," she said, leaving it at that.

"Well, why did you ask her?" Zoe directed at Zig. He didn't need to pause for answering.

"Because I can't picture my future without Maya in it. Why wait?"

Zoe smiled. "That's… nice," she said. Slightly understated, but it seemed she wasn't sure where else to go with that thought. "I can't picture a future with anyone. Just me alone. Sometimes with my mom."

"I hope that wherever we end up we're still all together," Grace said, the vagueness of who we included left open. Everyone was rooting for Zoe and Grace to be properly together in the first place. "You two will have your kids in a big house that you bought with all the money Maya is going to make, I'll live in a tent in your garden, and Tris and Miles will still be living right across the road."

"You can do better than a tent, Grace. At least an apartment over our garage," Zig teased.

"You could be a surrogate for Miles and Tristan. They would probably pay you for that," Zoe suggested.

"Too much pregnancy involved," she shuddered. "Wait, you're not pregnant, are you? Is that why you got engaged?"

"What? No," Maya said, "I'm not pregnant." Though, in all honesty, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if she was. They were financially secure enough that they could make it work, and they were already engaged. An unexpected pregnancy would be survivable now. Maybe that was the real sign that they were actually adults now, engagement or not. How strange. It was also strange how that indicator didn't apply to any of their friends.

"Aww, you got me all excited for baby Matlin-Novaks," Grace said. "We should get a puppy."

"Yeah, we should get a puppy!" Zig said, leaning over until he was in high five range of Grace, who was all too happy to comply.

"Do you really want to co-parent a puppy with us? What about when you move out?" Maya asked. She knew as well as anyone else that Grace was planning to leave the apartment before the wedding, and she understood. She probably wouldn't stick around if she was living with Tristan and Miles, their best example of couple friends that they had, and that was before they got engaged.

Grace was almost too quick to come up with an answer. "Consider this: two puppies."