Look

by Zan Romanoff

  “Oh god, not premiere.”

  Lulu slips into Ryan’s abandoned seat at the table. So this is what a Riggs-eye view of the world looks like.

  It looks nice.

  “He said one of your videos had gotten a lot of attention.”

  Lulu sucks in a breath.

  “I haven’t seen it,” Roman continues. “But if you ever want to talk about opportunities with Flash—branded partnerships, that kind of thing—any friend of Ryan’s is a friend of mine.”

  How many girls would die to be in Lulu’s shoes right now? A young millionaire offering to help her get famous, to pay attention to her and help her promote herself. Six months ago she wouldn’t have thought twice about saying yes, assuming that she could make him work for her even when it looked like she was working for him. Now, thinking that only makes her feel sick.

  “Thanks,” Lulu says. “That’s generous.”

  “I trust Ryan,” Roman says. “He has an eye for talent.” He glances over his shoulder to the stairs Cass and Ryan walked up. “I never would have noticed Cass, but he’s right. She photographs beautifully.”

  “I’m sure.” Lulu has never seen prints of the pictures Ryan takes at The Hotel. She’s never even seen digital thumbnails. He doesn’t pass the camera around after, looking for commentary or praise. He seems so private about the images. Lulu is sort of shocked that Roman has seen them.

  “He definitely knows how to pick ’em,” Roman says. “Ryan has a real eye for girls.”

  * * *

  “So what happened after you went upstairs?” Lulu asks Cass when they’re safely in Cass’s car.

  Cass sighs. “He’s pissed that I didn’t come over the other day. You know, when I went over to your place instead.”

  “You couldn’t hang out one day and he gives you the silent treatment?”

  “It’s a little more than that,” Cass says. “He’s been feeling jealous in general. Since you.”

  “Since me.” Lulu catches Cass’s eye and can’t hold her gaze. She feels like there’s a lit firework inside of her, something that could explode at any second.

  “He’s so sensitive,” Cass says. “I should have given him space. He would have gotten over it. He said he was gonna call me tonight. He didn’t think I’d worry so much.”

  Lulu frowns. She doesn’t like that Cass has to make excuses for Ryan.

  “I feel stupid,” Cass says.

  She’s driving, and Lulu doesn’t want to distract her, but she reaches out anyway to wrap her fingers around Cass’s elbow. “I wish you wouldn’t,” Lulu says.

  * * *

  Lulu is almost out of the car at her house when she remembers that Cass’s present is still sitting, ungiven, in her bag. She picked it up when she and Naomi were out shopping for their mom a few weeks ago, and it’s not much. Naomi was the one who suggested it in the first place.

  She hates the idea of it sitting around in her room, taunting her, so she leans her body back in the open door and thrusts the package at Cass so suddenly that Cass throws her hands up to defend herself before she realizes what it is, and takes it.

  “For me?” she asks.

  “Merry Christmas.”

  “I didn’t get you anything.”

  “I don’t celebrate Christmas,” Lulu reminds her.

  “Hm. True. Still.”

  “It’s not—it’s just sentimental,” Lulu says. Great. Perfect. That’s definitely gonna make this look casual.

  “Can I open it?’

  “Of course.”

  Lulu loves to watch Cass tear the paper off of something. She doesn’t slide a thumbnail under the Scotch tape to preserve the wrapping. Instead, she rips it all to shreds.

  “The Bloody Chamber,” she says. “Angela Carter.” The volume is a slim paperback with a beast’s head drawn on the cover.

  “It’s a version of the Bluebeard story,” Lulu says. “It’s supposed to be beautiful.”

  “Thank you,” Cass says. “I can’t wait to read it.”

  She presses the book to her chest and looks up at Lulu, smiling.

  Helpless against herself, Lulu smiles back, and leans in to kiss her.

  * * *

  Lulu keeps expecting Bea to message her, but it keeps not happening. They’ve never fought before, and she doesn’t know how to handle it. Does Bea’s silence mean she’s still mad about their conversation the other night, and Lulu should leave her alone? Or is she taking Lulu’s silence to mean Lulu is mad, and it’s her job to make the first move?

  She stews on it through Christmas dinner (delivery from Café Gratitude, so at least it’s edible) and while she and her mom and Naomi watch Love, Actually. Finally she decides Christmas is as good an excuse as any, and sends Bea a picture of herself wearing her Shapiro sweats with the message:

  Merry Christmas my goyishe princess!

  Happy Jesus!!!!!

  Can you believe what my mom made us wear today

  Haha, Bea sends back.

  Classic.

  And happy hanukkah to you

  Hanukkah ended a few days ago, but of course Bea doesn’t know that.

  Lulu waits for her to say something else—something about how annoying her mom is, or what she’s been up to with her family, but nothing comes. Lulu even puts her phone down, goes into the kitchen, and eats a paleo-brand yogurt (she doesn’t think they had yogurt in the Paleolithic era, but whatever, it tastes fine), and still nothing.

  She can’t help herself. She writes, Not to be weird but since when are you and Kiley BFFs?

  Bea responds, I thought you guys were cool?

  She said you’d been hanging out

  At that hotel place

  Why are you even talking to her, Lulu types, and then deletes. Of course Bea wants to be friends with Kiley. Kiley’s beautiful and cool and she’s dating Bea’s boyfriend’s best friend. She’s the kind of girl who messes up and then apologizes instead of freaking out and picking fights and making everything in her life elaborately weird.

  We are. It’s just still weird, Lulu sends instead.

  Well she’s not my BFF. You are!!!!! Bea says.

  Lulu believes her. For now.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  WHEN RYAN TEXTS Lulu, Hotel has a reservation for you today, you gonna keep it, on the twenty-seventh, she feels like she has to go. If she doesn’t, who knows what bullshit Ryan will try to pull on Cass. He’s such a baby.

  Cass does kind of let him get away with it, though.

  Lulu finds Ryan, Owen, and Kiley sitting around in the lobby, which has been furnished with plush armchairs. She curls herself into one, grateful that its wide, high back keeps her from craning her head to see if Cass is walking in the door.

  Instead she hears it when Cass enters: the whoosh of the door opening, and then the sound of her boots on the floor. Cass walks up to them and pauses next to Lulu, hovering for a bare moment. Lulu’s eyes find the cup of coffee in Cass’s hand.

  “Can I?” she asks.

  “Sure,” Cass says.

  Lulu lets their fingers brush in the handoff; she puts her mouth on the cup where Cass’s mouth has been and pinks it with her lipstick. She licks a stray drop of coffee, pale with cream, from the plastic lid. She hands it back. The whole exchange takes maybe fifteen seconds, but Lulu feels like the rest of the room freezes, just briefly, to allow it to happen.

  “I would have gotten you some if I’d known you wanted,” Cass says.

  “It’s fine,” Lulu tells her. “Next time.”

  Owen says, “Lulu always wants coffee.”

  Los Angeles is in the middle of a funny rush of desert weather, warm dry days and long, clear nights, and Cass is dressed uncharacteristically softly, in a loose white shift that stirs in the breeze that followed her through the door. It gives Lulu glimpses of the
outline of her shoulders, her hip, the curve of one thigh. It’s very distracting.

  “What’s up, Ry?” Cass asks. “Your message made it sound like there was something, like, happening.”

  Lulu’s glad that she’s not the only one who noticed the demand in his tone.

  “Something is happening. It’s by the pool,” Ryan says. He laughs. “I mean, it is the pool, actually.” He nods for them to follow him.

  Lulu sees it before she understands what she’s seeing. It’s just so— She’s gotten so used to—

  The pool is a pool now. Full of water.

  The concrete hollow where Lulu and Owen slept that first night, nearly a month ago now, and where Kiley taught herself to skateboard and Ryan photographed Cass draped in blankets in the tent—it’s submerged now. Swallowed. Drowned.

  “What are you waiting for?” Ryan asks. “Let’s swim.”

  Owen tugs his shirt over his head without thinking twice. Lulu can’t even imagine that kind of freedom in her skin.

  She distracts herself by watching Cass as she slips off her shift. Lulu is so busy looking that she doesn’t even have time to think about the fact that she’s taking off her own clothes, skinning gracelessly out of her jeans. She’s vaguely aware that she’s glad she decided not to wear a thong today, that the chlorine probably won’t do her bra any favors, that she’s maybe three pounds heavier than the last time Owen saw her mostly naked, but she’s still pretty tan, so—

  Owen isn’t looking. He’s the first one in the water, cannonballing in with a splash.

  “Go!” Ryan is yelling. “Go go go go!”

  Cass dives in, smooth and easy, and Lulu watches her body disappear into the water. She follows her there.

  She understands why Ryan wanted them to do it fast as soon as she’s in. The pool is not heated.

  The pool is fucking freezing.

  “What the hell!” Owen heaves himself over the edge and onto dry land to tackle Ryan, who’s laughing too hard to get away in time. “See, asshole, now you’re all wet too!”

  Owen is holding Ryan fast and flinging his hair around, trying to get him as damp as possible.

  “Hey!” Kiley says, twisting from the spray. She didn’t jump in either. In fact, she’s still fully clothed. “O, come on, my hair!”

  Owen lets up, and Ryan takes the opportunity to go after Kiley.

  “You think you’re exempt?” he says, wrapping his arms around her and butting his damp head against her neck. “You think you’re too smart for me, Kiley?”

  Kiley uses her elbows to keep him away from her head, but it just means he ends up with his face in her boobs.

  Lulu looks at Owen, waiting for him to break it up, but that’s not Owen’s style. He doesn’t get bent out of shape about what things look like. He’s not gonna make a big deal out of some roughhousing.

  Cass appears at the pool’s lip, wrapped in a towel and carrying another. “Lu,” she says. “Here.”

  Lulu swims to the edge and lifts herself up. Cass wraps the towel around her shoulders, her arm lingering as Lulu grabs the edges and pulls them tight. She can see the blue of the veins under Cass’s skin.

  “See,” Ryan yelps from where he’s allowed Kiley to maneuver him into a headlock. “There were other surprises! You animals!”

  “Where did you find those?” Owen asks

  Cass points to a pile in a lounge chair, and Owen proceeds to wrap himself in four towels: one for each leg, one around his torso, and another around his shoulders like a cape.

  “Nice look,” Ryan says. “But also, the pool’s not the only thing that got an upgrade. The rooms are ready too.”

  * * *

  The lobby is still mostly empty, but Ryan really has set up rooms for each of them: robes in the closets, chocolates on the pillows. There’s no shampoo in the shower, though, let alone conditioner. Removed from the thrill of the moment, Lulu thoroughly regrets getting her hair wet. There’s no way it’s going to dry presentably. Her makeup is a lost cause.

  At least the water pressure is strong, though, and the spray comes out hot. She stands under it and tries to adjust to this latest version of The Hotel. It’s not like Cass didn’t warn her that it was always changing. It’s just that she wasn’t entirely ready for this iteration, for it to stop being a safe, in-between space and start looking like everywhere else in the world.

  She startles when someone knocks on the shower’s glass door.

  Cass is standing on the other side, looking uncertain. “There’s a drought on,” she says when Lulu opens it. “I didn’t want to waste—”

  “Come in,” Lulu says. “Come in.”

  * * *

  Afterward they can’t stop laughing. Lulu doesn’t know what’s so funny, only that everything is: this improbable girl in this improbable place, the late afternoon light slanting through the window, Cass’s stick legs and knobby wrists poking out from the ostentatiously fluffy robe she’s wrapped in, the shape of the spot her damp hair leaves on the pillow.

  Cass eats Lulu’s chocolate and kisses her when Lulu complains. We could do this, Lulu thinks. We are doing this. Something in her stomach zips tight, and she has no idea if it’s excitement or fear.

  Because she’s done this before—with Owen, who’s probably kissing Kiley right now, too serious to laugh about it. Because she did this with Owen and then he got tired of her and she got tired of him, and there’s nothing there anymore. Or not nothing. But not enough.

  She’s never done this with a girl before, and it’s different, and it’s so good.

  “Cass?” Ryan calls in the hall. “Cass, where did you go?”

  Cass knows better than to keep Ryan waiting. She goes to the door and pokes her head out. “Here!” she calls.

  Ryan brushes past her into Lulu’s room. Lulu doesn’t like the idea that Ryan can just insert himself into their moment like this. We’re on his property, she reminds herself.

  “We were just—” she starts to say, but she can’t think of an excuse. What would she have here that Cass would need?

  But then, why wouldn’t Cass just come visit her? Like friends do?

  And doesn’t Ryan know anyway? What’s the point in trying to hide it?

  Still, she finishes her sentence, says, “Cass came to steal my chocolate,” and tries not to hear how unconvincing she sounds.

  “Good news for you, then,” Ryan says. “We’ve got hot chocolate downstairs.”

  “And booze to spike it with?” Cass asks, coming around to hook her chin over his shoulder.

  “And booze to spike it with,” Ryan agrees, giving Lulu a smile that says, Don’t worry. Of course I know.

  * * *

  This, at least, feels familiar and appropriate. Lulu texts her mom that she’s spending the night at Bea’s and lines the bottom of her cup in peppermint Schnapps, followed by enough hot chocolate to make it taste decent. Kiley and Ryan are still dressed, but the rest of them are in robes, hair damp and tangled, faces fresh and bare, and it feels like The Hotel is supposed to feel—off-kilter and unpredictable, a wild, lawless place.

  It occurs to Lulu that Ryan must be sentimental about this goodbye too; he’s gone to a lot of trouble to arrange the evening for them. There’s the hot chocolate, and then the dinner he produces, an assortment of salads and sandwiches, cheeses and meats and crackers, more fancy little candies from a shop in Beverly Hills. It feels more like Christmas than anything that’s ever happened to Lulu before, like a family celebration: the five of them sitting around on the floor and eating with their hands.

  “No, but Lulu tried to learn to surf, kind of,” Owen says at one point. Kiley has been telling them a story about her dad, one of his scars, Lulu wasn’t really listening. Cass is sitting next to her, cross-legged, one bare knee touching Lulu’s, and she can’t stop thinking about it: whether anyone has noticed, if she car
es if they do, or if she even sort of wants them to. “Last summer. She went out once.”

  “I went three times,” Lulu says. “You just think it was once because you only came once.”

  “You only invited me once!”

  “And you saw why!”

  Owen shakes his head at her. Lulu thinks this might be the first time they’ve joked about something that happened during their relationship since it ended.

  That day he wore a shirt Rich had made for him that said Surf Groupie on it. He sat in the sand, watching her wipe out over and over again.

  It’s true that the day he came was the last time she went. She didn’t want to mention surfing to him again and know he was thinking about what she looked like flailing in the waves.

  “I’ve always wanted to learn to surf,” Cass says, “if you could be convinced to try again.”

  “Yeah,” Lulu says. “I mean, I actually bought a wet suit and everything. So I probably should.”

  “We can find someone cool to take lessons from,” Cass says. “It won’t be warm enough until, like, July, but—” Lulu lets that we rattle around inside of her, trying to find a space to rest in her body.

  “I’m really bad,” she says.

  “I’ll be worse,” Cass says. “I do not have the guns for it, let me tell you.”

  “You’re saying I’m built for power?”

  “Lulu,” Cass says. “No one is ever calling you fat. You know that, right?”

  Ryan got up a few minutes ago to go to the bathroom; when Lulu turns she sees him standing just behind them, watching the little group they make without him, hovering as if uncertain.

  Cass distracts Lulu by poking her in the hip. “Maybe I’ll start calling you fat,” she says. “Reverse psychology. Just tell you a thing that’s obviously not true until you get so frustrated—”