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“Hard to say.” Everett pulled the Jeep up to a Spanish-style rancher in desperate need of a new coat of paint. “At least three months. We’ve got tour dates through August.”
“Are you sure you can’t wait a few days to leave?” She hated the note of pleading that bled into her question. “I don’t know anyone else in Los Angeles.”
A face from the past, blurry through the lens of adolescent memory, flashed through her mind before she pushed it away. “I don’t have a job here yet. Hell, I don’t even have a car.” She tried to laugh, to lighten the mood, but what came out sounded more like a grunt.
Everett frowned. “I’m sorry, Cee. I know I promised to help you get settled, but this is a huge break for the band. You get that, right?” He reached over and squeezed her hand. “Look, this doesn’t have to change the plan we made. Everything I said over the phone is still true. This move, California, getting out from under your mother’s thumb . . . It’ll all be good for you.”
He held his palm out for a high five in a long-familiar gesture. They might as well have been back in homeroom cramming for the SATs. Reluctantly, she completed the unspoken request.
“L.A. is summer vacation from real life. Relax and have fun. I’ll be back before you know it.”
Fun? She wanted to scream. Fun was a luxury for people with less to lose, but like generations of Wheaton women before her, Clara resigned herself to silent fuming instead of confrontation.
If a friend had told her a week ago that they planned to move across the country and give up a better life than most people could lay claim to for a shot with a guy—even a particularly handsome guy—Clara would have invested significant energy into trying to stop them. That’s insane, she might have said. It’s always easy when the shoe is on the other foot. No one from Greenwich knew the consequences of an ill-conceived impulse better than a Wheaton. Unfortunately, like grain alcohol, unrequited love grows more potent with time.
Everett unloaded her bags from the back of the Wrangler and hugged her—too tight and too fast to provide much comfort. “I’ll call you from the road in a couple of days to make sure you’re settled.” He fumbled with his key ring.
Clara stared at her own hand with detachment as he pressed the small piece of metal into her palm. The urge to run, primal and nonsensical, sang under her skin.
She had two choices. She could call a cab, book a seat on the next flight back to JFK, and try to rebuild her old life, piece by piece.
Or she could stay.
Stay in this city she didn’t know, live with a man she’d never met, without a job or friends, without the clout her family name commanded on the East Coast.
The Greenwich gossip hounds would salivate over her disgrace. She could already picture the headline. No Longer “In Bloom,” Careful Clara Shacks Up with Stranger.
Not this time. She straightened her shoulders, smoothed her shirt, and ran her tongue over her teeth to ward off rogue lipstick. You only got one chance to make a first impression.
The heavy thump of Everett’s car stereo pounded in her ears as he pulled out, but Clara didn’t turn to watch him drive away.
Paint peeled back from the faded door when she pressed her palm against it. Damn. The society pages were going to have a field day with this one.
Bracing herself, Clara entered her new home the way soldiers enter enemy territory: with light footsteps, eyes mapping the terrain, and elbows tucked tight against her body.
Plush carpet muted her heeled sandals as she surveyed the living room. Without rose-colored glasses crafted by over a decade of repressed lust, the space left much to be desired.
She ran a fingertip through the blanket of dust coating a bookcase in the corner. An odor of decay wafted from abandoned take-out containers littering the coffee table. Clara tried to inhale through her mouth.
Underneath her foot, something crunched. Kicking up her heel, she identified the remains of a potato chip.
Despite the stench and the mess, the little house radiated a retro coziness that stood in direct contrast to both her family’s sprawling colonial in Connecticut and the cramped Morningside Heights walk-up she’d rented near campus.
The faded wallpaper exuded kitschy charm, fighting for her affection, but she couldn’t shake the crushing weight of her disappointment. Clara wiped off the seat of the sofa before sitting down.
“So this is how it feels to be well and truly fucked.”
“I get that a lot,” said a low voice behind her.
Clara sprang to her feet so fast she stumbled. “Oh . . . um . . . Hello.” She scrambled to stand behind her massive wheeled suitcase, creating a fifty-pound shield between her and the man standing in the doorway separating the kitchen and the living room.
He leaned against the door frame. “I don’t suppose you’re robbing me?”
When Clara frowned in confusion, he gestured to her ensemble.
She lowered her chin and scrutinized the sleeveless black turtleneck and matching skinny jeans she’d picked out that morning. Some time in her midtwenties, she’d traded the Argyle and houndstooth of her youth for a closet full of well-tailored monotone basics. Unfortunately, it seemed black clothing, while widely considered slimming and chic in New York City, was the preferred attire of home intruders in Los Angeles.
“Er . . . no.” Clara tugged at her collar, glad, in retrospect, that she’d suffered the indignity of touching up her makeup in the tiny airplane bathroom while one of her fellow passengers pounded on the door. “I’m Clara Wheaton,” she said when silence lingered.
