by Piper Lennox
“Oh, God,” Georgia laughs in our elevator. She’s already opened the wine, swigging straight from the screw-top with one hand, holding her phone with the other. “Look at this shit.”
I do, letting her tip the bottle into my mouth as I take her phone.
Delaney Durham just posted a selfie. Her hair, as usual, is the same shade of pink as mine, and the angle and pose are suspiciously similar to Georgia’s post. Another Video Coming Soon! She even chose the same emojis.
“Don’t let her get to you.” I shove the phone away and take the bottle as we arrive at our floor. “She’s just a kid.”
“Sixteen is old enough to know better: you don’t outright copy other people. It’s a bad look.”
“Then it’ll sort itself out.” I unlock the door and let her go in first. “Someone’s gonna call her out in the comments, sooner or later.”
“You’d think.” Shaking her head, she turns off her phone and tosses it onto the sectional before tumbling into the cushions herself. “Whatever. Honestly, I think it’s just her being a Durham that pisses me off. That whole family’s full of assholes.”
I know I must be imagining it: the way it feels like she’s waiting for my agreement.
“Gaping assholes,” I add.
“Windsocks.”
We crack up, and I relax. The wine helps. The fact we get to hang out together without one ounce of work for the rest of the night helps more.
When I finally drag myself into bed, though, I lie there feeling every tiny lie pile up like the minutes on my clock.
Two months, I remind myself. I’ve survived worse. I think.
My fingers brush the regrowth over my ear. I practice my exercises, but none help. Every few minutes, I’ve suddenly got a few strands between my fingertips, and that familiar sting in my scalp that still hits me like a drug.
I get up and pace a while, then grab the coconut oil from my dresser. It makes the hair too slick to grab and, as a bonus, reminds me of Santa Barbara: all our friends applying coconut-scented sunscreen before a day at the beach.
Unfortunately, my brain now turns all those memories into something else, replacing Cali beaches for one in Florida. Sunlight for moonlight. Coconut for cologne.
“You don’t want to know.”
I add my gloves for good measure. With the urge to pull subsiding, I get back in bed and will myself to sleep.
My memory won’t wipe the image away: Wes with his cock in his hand this morning, and how he wasn’t even embarrassed that I caught him.
For about five seconds before he woke, I just stood there and stared.
I hadn’t gotten a chance to see it in the cabana. Not in proper lighting, at least. And if I did, I wasn’t in a state to memorize anything.
Even soft, it was big. A vein protruded near the head, on the underside of his shaft. Staring at it, I’d suddenly remembered something: what it felt like to run my tongue over that ridge.
My thighs squeeze together. I feel my underwear dampen.
At the same rate, my face reddens.
I can’t get caught up in it. Working for Wes Durham is the awful means to a necessary end—the only way to keep my secrets safe. He shouldn’t get my blood roaring, or my heart thumping.
He shouldn’t hover at the edge of my thoughts the entire night, ready to step into frame the moment I’m dreaming.
Seven
“Fuuuck. Just do it, already.”
“I don’t deserve a victory dance?” On screen, my character slashes his sword through Van’s character’s body, head to crotch down the middle. My headset buzzes with his sigh as the gore ends.
“And...game. Who’s next? Theo, you in?”
“If you play fair. Stop button-mashing. Actually do your attacks deliberately.”
“Excuse me? I play perfectly fair.”
“Yeah, right.”
“What looks like button-mashing is simply speed. Not my fault you guys haven’t memorized the attacks.”
They give me more hell. I’m full of shit, and my cousins know it.
“So how’s ‘Hashtag: Van Life,’ Van?” I ask. A semi-pro skater with a decent internet following of his own, Van’s currently hefting his all-terrain boards across America in an old Sprinter, hoping to land a new sponsor or two.
As for why the last ones dropped him? Let’s just say he doesn’t play nice with suits telling him what to do, either. Actually, Van doesn’t play nice with damn near anybody.
“Dude, I’m going insane. This is the first solid internet I’ve gotten all week. Decent trails, though.”
“Must be tough.”
“What?” he asks. “Living in a shack on wheels?”
“Nah, having to cover yourself in dirt and mud so chicks can’t see how fugly your ass is.”
Theo laughs while Van cusses us out. “Just for that, I’m not visiting you dicks in the Hamptons this month.” His laugh turns into a cough and hits his mic hard. It grows muffled as he throws off his headset, most likely hunting down his inhaler. Idiot spends every day filling his lungs with dirt and dust, then tops it off with cigarette smoke. Sometimes I think he chose his career thinking he could scare his asthma into submission.
We wait until he returns. “You good?”
“Yeah,” he croaks, and I can hear the embarrassment all the way from Arizona, or wherever he currently is. Self-absorbed jerk that I am, I’ve already forgotten. “Oh, hey, how’s the album going?”
I glance at my computer, open to my video from yesterday. A little over 100,000 views, almost 50 comments. Normally I’d read every last one, but a quick scroll showed me most were from people pining for my sitcom days.
One guy wrote this gem:
Such a tool. He’s the holdout on the reunion special, acting like he’s got anything better in the works. This is what he’d rather do?
“Slowly,” I tell Van, while Theo kicks my virtual ass for once. I’m suddenly finding it hard to concentrate.
“I like that one you posted last week,” Theo offers, before shoving a grenade down my throat. In gorgeous if not completely unrealistic graphics, we watch my guy’s chest explode like his heart itself was the bomb.
“You’d be the only one.” The track didn’t do horribly, but not half as well as I’d hoped. “I don’t know. I’m rethinking the album, to be honest.” I pause. “Hell, the entire channel. Maybe go back to bar shows.”
“Why’s it have to be one or the other?”
The round ends and takes us back to the setup screen. We leave it; I hear them stretching. Actually, I hear Van taking a piss, until Theo and I yell at him to mute his headset.
“Have you thought about an audit?” Theo asks, suddenly.
“An audit? Like...taxes?”
“No, for your content. You know, have an expert look over your channel, tell you what to improve.”
“Oh. Yeah, no, fuck that.”
Van comes back on laughing. “Can’t believe you even suggested that, man. Wes doesn’t listen to anyone for shit. Why would he pay someone to tell him what to do?”
“Especially since all they’d do,” I call over their arguing, “is tell me to do that goddamn reunion special, so I can blather on about it in a few posts for easy traffic.”
Theo’s quiet. I brace myself.
“Would that really be that bad?”
Van loses his mind laughing again.
Just when I’m about to colorfully explain to Theo why that would be a very bad thing, my phone lights up on the end table. “Hey, gotta go. Laney’s calling.”
They quiet. “Tell her we said hi,” Van says.
“I will. Bye.”
They echo it. I throw my headset off and grab my phone. “How’d it go?”
“You know, people do still use this word called ‘hello.’”
“Hello.” I set the phone to speaker and start dinner. “But seriously, how was it? Everything good?”
“Yep. Bloodwork was great.”
I know she wouldn’t lie i
f things were bad, so I relax—but not completely, because I also know “great” often means “just barely okay” in Durham language.
“You don’t have to come out this weekend, you know.” I clear my throat…and the weird sting settling at the back of it. “Just because you technically can now doesn’t mean—”
“I’m not missing your birthday.” The line gets quiet. “Mom’s still kind of upset you’re not flying back for it, though.”
“What’s she care? She’ll be summering”—gag; my mother actually uses words like that—“with the shiny new husband. Although, their first anniversary is pretty soon. Think she’s ready to trade this one in yet?”
“You’re horrible.”
“Yes, but you’re laughing.”
“She only booked her trip once she knew you weren’t coming home.”
Not my home anymore, I think, but I don’t say it. My sister still likes Burbank.
Then again, she also likes Adler, so I’d say her judgment needs refining.
I set the rice to simmer, then throw some leftover chicken into a skillet. Bowie stands at attention the minute he hears the sizzle, so I toss him a piece. “I’ve got a present for you, when you get here.”
“I’m supposed to give you a present.”
“Huh. Well, if you don’t want it.... Would you happen to know scalper rates for Newsies tickets?”
Delaney’s squeal floods the phone. At least her lungs still work just fine.
“You’re the best! Oh, my God, I’ve wanted to see that for, like...ever.”
“I know you have. And listen, anything else on your New York list I can help with, just say the word. Okay?”
“But it’s your birthday.”
“But it’s your first time in the city. So I mean it: don’t hesitate.” I check the rice, cringing to myself when I add, “I’ll even take you to that stupid makeup store in SoHo you’ve been obsessing over.”
Another squeal. Smaller, but brain-bleeding just the same. “So you have been watching.”
“A few.” I watch almost all my sister’s uploads, actually, even if I secretly hate them even more than the Hurley twins’ videos. Whatever appeal they find in doing their own makeup for thirty time-lapsed minutes escapes me—but for Delaney’s sake, I’ll grit my teeth and watch. At least she’s finally happy, for a change.
“The Hurley twins and Ari Bakers and Jefferson Cole all go there. I’m so excited to finally see it in person. Their videos look amazing.”
For all of two seconds, I think about telling her I hung out with Clara today. A nicely timed burn to my thumb reminds me that’s a bad idea.
For one thing, I didn’t hang out with Clara. If it weren’t for that email, she’d never step foot in this apartment.
And for another, I’d have to explain to my sister just why Clara was here, which probably infringes on our agreement. I’m sure she not only wants the contents of the email hidden, but its very existence.
And despite what she thinks of me, I’m not that much of an asshole.
“Hey, Lane? Have you ever heard of, like...a channel audit?”
“Yeah. Like a blog audit.”
Ah, so that’s how Theo knew about it. His mom was one of the first mommy bloggers, back before the term even really existed. Poor guy had every event of his life spelled out in HTML and low-res photos for all the world to see. The site may be long gone, but nothing on the internet ever really dies. Especially embarrassment.
“Why?” In the background, I hear Adler’s NutriBullet commence its launch sequence. “Are you thinking of doing one?”
“Yeah, right. You know me.” I swallow and spoon the food onto my plate, even though my appetite’s long gone. “I don’t listen to anyone for shit. Why pay someone to tell me what to do?”
She laughs. It’s bubbly and loud—the kind that you’d either find cute or obnoxious if you heard it out in public.
I find it something in-between, personally, because she’s my sister.
But I’m always so damn happy to hear it, nowadays. There were too many years she stopped doing it.
Before we hang up, she gives me her flight info for this weekend, and I promise I’ll be there at the airport the second she lands.
“Love you,” she adds quickly, just before we hang up. She knows I don’t like saying it.
She also knows she’s the only person on this earth I’ll ever say it back to, though. Which is probably why she keeps doing it.
“Love you, too.”
Eight
“Look at that, right on time.” I pass Clara the leash. “Dog park, coffee, back here, then dry cleaning.”
“What,” she says, tilting her head, “no ‘good morning,’ first?”
I step close, my bare feet touching the tips of her shoes—Toms with a constellation print that, knowing her, probably glows in the dark—and duck my face to hers.
“Good morning,” I whisper.
Her eyes get wide behind her sunglasses.
Then, instantly, they squeeze shut as she shoves me away.
“Jesus, get some mouthwash,” she coughs. I laugh and whistle for Bowie to come tell me goodbye, but he’s already circling Clara’s legs in excitement. I tell myself it’s just because she’s got the leash.
As soon as they’re gone, I remind myself of today’s plan to be a little nicer to her. I’m still pissed over what she wrote in that email, but I’ve realized it’s kind of my own fault. Maybe she wouldn’t regret what we did so much if I made myself less...regrettable.
Just thinking about it gets my blood hot again, so I get to work finishing my latest song. I started it at four a.m. after an hour of sleep, and haven’t slept since.
It’s another rock song with some metal, which my mother will hate. I’m sure Kawaii43 won’t be fond of it, either.
When Van moved out, I turned my old bedroom into a studio. It’s not the best setup, but better than most: drum kit in one corner, all my guitars lined up on the wall, and even a soundproof booth in the closet for when I want really clean captures. It’s the size of a coffin, but it blocks city noise perfectly.
Today, I keep things simple. Just a mic, my guitar, and myself, working quietly through the rest of my song while Clara and Bowie wander from view on the street below.
“Drop it. Drop it.”
I wedge my fingers into Bowie’s clamped mouth until I feel it: the condom he scooped off the sidewalk like a damn seagull.
I dry-heave all the way to the trashcan, then drown my hands in sanitizer. Thanks, New York.
Bowie smiles at me. I know dogs can’t really smile, but this one is basically a four-legged grin. In fact, he looks downright proud.
“You’re disgusting,” I scold him, but he headbutts my hand until I pet him, all forgiven. “Fine. You’re not disgusting.”
We never had a dog. Georgia’s terrified of them, mostly because our neighbor’s mutt back in Berkeley bit her leg when we were little. She does all right with medium-sized ones; Bowie wouldn’t cause complete panic. But she’s never been comfortable with the thought of owning one. So we never have.
Maybe I should be scared of dogs too, since I witnessed her getting bitten. It was mildly traumatizing: I still remember the puncture wounds in her calf, and how I could see all the way to her muscle when Mom sprayed the blood away with a hose before realizing the damage required stitches.
But something about dogs always drew me in, even as she drew away. I think it’s how in-the-moment they are. They don’t worry about tomorrow, or next week, or next year. They only think about right now.
Bowie plows forward as soon as he smells the dog park. I’m out of breath by the time we get inside.
“Easy,” I tell him as I undo his leash, leaning back when he tries to lick my face. Let him save that condom breath for Durham’s unsuspecting, smug smile.
The second he’s free, Bowie bolts down the length of the park. I find a bench and collapse.
“He’s wild, huh?”
; I look up, startled. A guy about my age stands behind the bench.
“What?”
“Your dog,” he says, and hitches his thumb in the direction Bowie launched himself. “Wish mine still had energy like that. He’s so old, I’m lucky he doesn’t make me carry him here every day.”
My eyes follow the leash attached to his hand, landing on the shaky black terrier at his feet. The fur around his muzzle is gray, and his eyes look clouded and blue from cataracts.
Still, when the guy leads the dog around the bench and sits, I lean down to pet his ears like I’ve just been handed a brand-new puppy. “Hi, baby,” I coo. “Aren’t you the cutest?”
“He likes you.” The guy gives a shy smile when I glance up again. “His name’s Thor.”
“Clever.” I scratch the dog under his chin. He shuts his eyes, reveling in the attention before giving my shoes a thorough sniff. I sit up and look at the owner. “What’s yours?”
“Ewan.” He sticks out his hand. We shake. “You?”
“Clara.”
He repeats it quietly, his strange accent softening the “R” so that it sounds like a guitar string being brushed with a sleeve. “And your dog?”
“Oh, he’s not.... I’m just watching him.” Flustered at the situation all over again, I adjust my hat and sigh, “It’s kind of my job. Dog-walker. Among other things. Anyway, uh...his name is Bowie.”
“Ah. Well, I would compliment your choice, but you didn’t pick it.”
I smile. “Unfortunately.”
We’re quiet for a while. Ewan eventually frees Thor from his leash, though the tiny dog stays close to our bench the entire time. He cowers behind my ankles whenever a larger dog runs too close.
“Thor is actually my grandmother’s dog,” Ewan explains, when I ask how long he’s had him. “She’s really...cautious, I guess you could say? So I think he’s picked up on that.”
“Probably doesn’t help, being so small in such a big city.” I scoop the dog into my lap and let him lick the spot on my jeans where I dripped syrup this morning, in my rush out the door. I wasn’t sure if Durham would actually punish me for being late, but I didn’t want to find out. The fact my pulse was pounding like this is a real job, all the way to his floor, made me furious before I even saw him.