Mama made atsking noise into the phone. “You could have asked me that, you know, but your problem is that you always use a nuclear weapon when a simple knife to the back would suffice.”
“I like to make sure my adversary is dead.”
“Eddie is your flesh and blood, and you aren’t at war. However, if Iwereto do what you’ve asked—and I have not agreed—keep in mind that I would have to tell your father.”
“No!”
“And fair warning—it will not stop me from showing Miss Jane an apartment.”
“What?Where?” I asked, heart hammering. “Mama?”
“Mm, maybe we’ll see you. It’s a small town.”
AHHH. I held the phone away from my face and briefly considered pitching it into the lake but stopped myself. I’d already sacrificed two other phones to rage under my current wireless contract. I couldn’t afford a new one again. “Mama—”
“Good night, my love. Don’t call again so late unless you are dead.”
Kind of felt like I already was. Mama wasn’t going to do anything about Eddie. I’d asked too much, too impulsively. Which meant he’d be back in three weeks. Or… he could be texting Jane right now and telling her to stay away from me, and maybe Jane really did like him, and I was reading all her signals wrong, and this was all pointless.
But the way she’d looked at me tonight…? I had to think there was a chance. I needed to see her again. If she told me to fuck off, then I’d leave her alone and be miserable forever.
“Tea’s ready,” Moonbeam said from inside the house. “Did you fix your problem?”
“No, I fucking did not.”
“Well, you tried.”
Did he know me at all?
If I only had Jane’s number! I couldn’t just keep showing up at Mad Dog’s. Sooner or later, that would get his security after me, because Mad Dog was on Team Serj. And no way in hell she was going to just show up at the record shop. I didn’t know where else to find her.
Hold up. Jane said she was working for Velvet. I knewexactlywhere to find Velvet on Friday afternoon. Same place everyone who was anyone in town would be. Not only that, but Velvet was making an official appearance as one of the judges.
If I could find Velvet, then there was an infinitesimal chance I’d run into Jane, too.
I’d risked more for less.
I texted Aunt Pari:Remember how I said I’d rather burn offall my own skin with a cigarette lighter than go to Battle of the Bands this year? Oops, jk. Looks like I’m gonna need that free pass after all. And the day off.
PS I stole two Curtis Mayfield records.
Track [11] “If I Believe You”/The 1975
Jane
“Who is this ‘J.H.’ person?”Velvet teasingly asked my dad from the backseat of one of the Larsens’ SUVs as we took another steep switchback turn up the mountain. “They’re texting you like the world’s falling apart, Leo. Might be an emergency.”
Dad grunted from the driver’s seat. “Just a friend.”
“Someone from here?” she asked.
“Santa Monica, right, Dad?” I sat in the passenger’s seat next to him, brushing dog hair off my jeans. Frida wasn’t with us physically this afternoon—Exie was watching her back at the lodge—but her spirit lingered.
“Yeah. Helicopter pilot for a famous actor. Won’t say who, so don’t ask me,” Dad said, eyes tightening in that funny way they do when he’s getting anxious. I knew why.
Pretty sure Dad was using an online dating app. He was very private about his love life—if he really even had one. Maybe this magical J.H. person truly was ajust a friend. He wasn’t saying.
Honestly, he wasn’t saying much to me at all, not since the pool party and Mrs. Sarafian spilling the beans about me staying at the lake at the end of the summer and moving in with her son.Let’s just say he was blindsided, and we were still speaking, but not warmly.
