Page 16 of Snow Place Like LA
I felt that covered a whole host of reasons to play hooky. My unresolvable boner. My broken heart. My bruised ego.
I was unwell, indeed.
The next day I called in sick too. Sunny had texted to let me know what a great job Angel did in my place, and even though it was meant to comfort me, it made me feel even shittier.
I spent the morning curled up on my couch in my favorite caftan and rewatching my favorite episodes ofThe Great British Bake Off, flipping through old bridal magazines as I did. My hands were starting to feel usable again, so I opted to make peanut butter ramen, my favorite comfort food, rather than order out.
Just as I was settling in for an afternoon ofLove Island, there was a knock at my door.
I lived in a Silver Lake pool house apartment behind the home of a retired voice-over actress who made a small fortune as the voice of CVS. She was rarely home and hadn’t raised my rent since I’d moved in three years ago. I had access to her pool and I also had air-conditioning. It was pretty much perfect. But in order to find me, you had to know I was back here.
When I opened the door, I found Angel standing on my doormat that read, “Where the hell have you been, loca?” (My favorite quote from theTwilightfranchise.)
“Sunny said you were sick,” he blurted as I stood there with my arms crossed over my chest.
His eyes trailed over my body, hovering on my hands for a moment.
I held a fist to my mouth and let out a patheticcough, cough. “So sick.”
Angel studied me for a moment longer, and with each passing second, I could feel the invisible armor I always seem to have beginning to crack. If only he could see it too.
“I guess you might as well come in,” I told him.
He shoved his fists into his pockets and shook his head. “Nope. If I go in there... I can’t trust myself in there with you alone, and I’m pretty sure you can’t either. Besides...” He peered past me to the nest of blankets and bridal magazines on my chartreuse and pink plaid sofa. “You could probably use some air.”
I squinted at the bright blue sky behind him. He wasn’t wrong. “Give me ten,” I said. “Are you sure you don’t want to come in?”
He shifted a moment before nodding.
After a quick-ish change into some platformed Converse, black jeans, and a white shirt that saidferalin very small letters, I reappeared at the door, donning my sunglasses with as much dignity as I could muster. “I’m ready.”
Outside, Angel led me to his old Bronco, a Teddy Ray Fletcher hand-me-down, parked out front. “Can you swim?”
“Um, I am not wearing water appropriate attire. These are Marc Jacobs Converse.”
He glanced down at my feet. “I didn’t say we were actually going swimming.”
We stood at the entrance of the Echo Park boathouse under a sign for swan pedal boat rentals as the employee handed us each a musty old life jacket. “And these are required?” I asked, holding mine away from my body so I didn’t inhale any rare and deadly must-germs.
The teenage boy looked from me to Angel with dead eyes.
“Ignore him,” Angel told him as he tightened the straps on his, somehow making the vest look hot.
He stepped onto our boat and then held a hand out for me, which I refused at first, but the moment my foot left the safety of the dock, I lost all sense of dignity and allowed him to assist me. I had a keen eye for color, but I’d never claimed to have any sense of balance.
“I’m not really a big fan of water,” I admitted. “Especially being out in the middle of it with no escape.”
“The no escape part is really important actually,” Angel said as he began to pedal and steer our two-person boat.
The pedals spun at my feet, their plastic and metal whirring sounding very judgmental. So begrudgingly, I began to pump my legs up and down to help Angel. “You said we would get fresh air. Not that you’d be subjecting me to manual labor. And in the middle of a body of water! Where I can’t even escape!”
“Well, that’s sort of the point,” he said plainly as he steered us past the large fountain at the center of the lake. “My mom brought my dad out here when she told him she was pregnant with Astrid. She didn’t want him to be able to run away or flip out.”
“Did he?” I asked. “Flip out?”
“Legend says he stood up and dove into the water. Dad says he was so excited he fell in. According to Mom, it was more of a shock response.”
“Teddy’s a good dad,” I told him. My parents never disowned me or anything, but they never really knew what to do with me. We did a short phone call on holidays, with very rare visits, while Teddy side hustles Christmas movies to fund Angel’s and Astrid’s dreams.
