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Your rebound
(Blakely)
LA sucks when your life is falling apart around you. I had proper traveling clothes, but I was covered in a layer of dirt and dust, my suitcase was beat to hell, and I didn’t feel like wearing anything sophisticated so instead I wore pajamas, trudging through LAX with my backpack/suitcase careening on bent wheels behind me.
Jess picked me up, wearing her classic slacks and a floral shirt, her dark hair held back with her sunglasses on her head. Her eyes were wide. “What the hell happened to you, is this what happens to people when they leave LA? Do I need to report an identity theft?”
“Very funny.” I tossed my suitcase into the trunk of her Land Rover and climbed in the passenger seat. “I love you by the way, thanks for picking me up.”
“Where to? Want to stay with me?”
“Can I — guest room?”
“Hell yeah, that way I can overhear what’s going on.”
“You want front row seats at the dissolution of my marriage?”
“Nah, babe, I want skybox seats to watching you take him for everything he’s worth.” She smiled over her driving arm. “Just after you take a shower, get dressed, you know, this is not your A game.”
“I took a shower.”
“What is up with their water? Was a hillbilly pouring a bucket of water over your head?”
We both laughed then Jess pulled out of the airport into highway traffic. We were at a standstill. I sighed. “Did you know that I haven’t been in traffic in weeks? I was on roads, Jess, sometimes with no other cars.”
“Jeez, sounds frightening.”
* * *
Later, with a bowl of Chinese chicken salad on my stomach, I was lying on one end of the couch with Jess on the other. She said, with her pen poised over a pad of paper, “So your list so far is this: one, find a bad-ass lawyer that won’t take any shit. Two, get Darren out of your house, change locks. We have ‘possible restraining order’ in between them. We added, ‘split the business’...”
I chewed salad. “I suppose in there somewhere is: talk to Darren.”
“Ugh. Do you think you have to?”
I sighed. “Yeah. Add to the list: find out if Ainsley Potter’s parents are going to press charges against him.”
Her mouth opened and closed.
“Just put it on the list.”
“God, do you want me to add, ‘Find out if Darren is a prosecutable sex-offender’ before or after ‘change the locks’?”
I sighed. “Who knows. What order does one do really shitty awful things?”
Jess took a bite of her salad, then said, “Well, to make the list at all acceptable, down here at number six, I’m going to write, ‘meet and rebound with a hot guy.’” Her pen scribbled on the pad of paper.
“I met someone.”
“You did? Where, at the airport?”
“No, in the town where the cabin was.”
She grinned. “Did you rebound with a lumberjack?”
“No, it wasn’t really like that, it was more like we became friends. He rescued me.”
“Hey no fair, I’m the one who rescues you, but...” She shrugged. “It is a full time job sometimes and I wasn’t there so I’m glad he helped. But, that’s not really the point. I’m not talking about some ugly dude that you became ‘friends’ with, you need a hot—”
