Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter
Twenty-Five
Dylan slept so hard, it took her a few seconds to realize that the incessant knocking sound was not a dream. She pried her eyes open, blinked at the wavy hair that was splayed across her chest and over her face a little. She looked down at the dark head burrowed under her arm—actually, in her armpit—and the hand resting directly on her right tit.
Ramona .
God, so she hadn’t dreamed it.
For a moment, she really thought she had—the mind-warping sex, Ramona in her bed, kissing for hours into the night, then eating peanut butter and jelly on Ritz crackers in bed at two in the morning because that was all Dylan had in her kitchen, followed by even more incredible sex until they finally fell asleep near sunrise, limbs tangled like kittens.
Thank god it hadn’t been a dream. Dylan closed her eyes, then ran her fingers over Ramona’s hair. She’d nearly drifted off again when something else proved itself very real—the incessant pounding on her front door.
“Mph,” Ramona said without moving. She was so adorable, Dylan couldn’t help but smile.
“Go back to sleep,” Dylan said, not moving either. “Whoever it is will go away.”
But a minute later, the knocking continued, and Dylan’s phone had joined in the fun, buzzing on the nightstand over and over.
“Goddammit,” she said, reaching over to grab it. The screen was loaded with text notifications—never a good sign—and the first one that unfurled in its full glory was from Laurel.
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
That was alarming enough, but the other seventy thousand texts were from her father. And her mother. And then her father again.
She blinked at the screen, hoping all that sex had blown her mind to the point of hallucinations.
But then…a voice, spoken loudly but muffled on the other side of the front door.
“Dill Pickle?”
“Fuck me,” she said, then sat up, Ramona’s hand flopping from Dylan’s boob to her lap.
“Readydid,” Ramona mumbled, her eyes still closed, which Dylan translated to already did , which, dammit, was so ridiculously cute, Dylan wished she actually was hallucinating.
“Pickle!”
Ramona finally lifted her head, hair a mess, eyes bleary. “Did you order pickles?”
Dylan laughed. “God, if only. Stay here.” She leaned over and kissed Ramona on the top of her head, then got out of bed and threw on her robe.
The knocking continued, as did the nicknames, but she paused before heading out into the living room to text Laurel.
Dylan: You’re fired
Laurel: A comedian this morning
Dylan: I contain multitudes
“Dylan Page Monroe!”
“Jesus god,” Dylan said, scrubbing a hand down her face. She set her phone on the cream-colored dresser, then tightened her robe’s sash as she went into the hall. She closed the bedroom door as quietly as she could before walking to the front door, where she could see her parents’ silhouettes through the wavy inlaid glass. She flung open the door and fake smiled at Jack Monroe and Carrie Page.
“Dill Pickle!” Jack said, pulling his daughter into his arms. He was dressed in his usual black tee and low-hanging black jeans, chipped black nail polish and ear-length brown hair streaked with gray. Same rocker style he wore in the nineties, same thin frame, just a few more lines on his face.
“Sweetheart,” Carrie said when Jack released Dylan, patting her face. Her mother had a silver pixie cut, heavy black eyeliner, and about a thousand gold chains around her neck, different pendants hanging at different lengths, everything from tiny skulls to weed plants and birds to a heart engraved with the initials JDC.
Jack, Dylan, Carrie.
A gift from Jack a few years ago when they got married.
Again.
“Mom, Dad,” Dylan said. “What are you doing here?”
She tried to keep her voice level, but her pitch was high with panic. Whatever the answer to her question, it couldn’t be good.
“I’m producing the soundtrack,” Jack said. “I thought I told you that.”
Dylan blinked, the word soundtrack suddenly a foreign word in her brain. Gobbledygook.
“Soundtrack,” she repeated. “Soundtrack?”
“And we wanted to meet your new girl,” Carrie said as she stepped farther into the house, her black combats clomping loudly on the hardwoods.
“New girl,” Dylan said, because apparently all she could do was repeat words, like a toddler learning how to talk.
“What’s her name?” Carrie said as she lifted a fake orchid from a milk-white vase and smelled it. “Ramona?”
Meaning joined the words, a slow unveiling of the full picture.
Ramona.
Soundtrack.
Laurel’s apologies.
“Soundtrack,” she said again.
Jack grinned. “Pretty cool, yeah? Just compiling artists, though I was thinking about having Jocelyn do an original. Attach a fresh sound to the film, you know?” He wandered around her living room as she spoke, completely clueless about how his words landed.
“Jocelyn,” Dylan said again, still unable to move past repetition. Her mouth was dry, and she couldn’t tell whether her heart was going so fast she could no longer feel it or if it had stopped beating altogether. She wished she were wearing actual clothes, because if so, she’d simply walk out the door, actually fire Laurel, and then find another place to stay under a pseudonym like Black Widow or Jessica Rabbit.
Hell, maybe she’d just quit the movie altogether. Work at Dickie’s. Or the Earthstars Museum. She could get over her trypophobia long enough to sell some tickets. No problem. And she and Ramona could—
Fucking hell.
Ramona.
Her new girl .
Ramona was in her bedroom, sweet and soft and sleepy. And here were Dylan’s parents, two hurricanes ready to blast through everything Dylan was trying to—
You’re in a publicity stunt, Dylan.
She closed her eyes, took a few deep breaths.
“Breakfast,” she said.
Carrie glanced at her from where she was inspecting the fabric of the couch pillows. In her older, more sedate years, Carrie Page had gotten severely picky about her surroundings. All the art frames in her house with Jack were white or cream colored, the walls never darker than a storm gray, and every linen had to boast a thread count of at least a thousand.
Serene surroundings, serene mind was Carrie’s mantra, which Dylan supposed was an improvement over the cacophony of Carrie’s younger rock and roll days, where eighty percent of the photos capturing Dylan’s mother featured smeared red lipstick and flaky mascara.
“You haven’t eaten?” Carrie said now.
Today was a rare day off from shooting—Gia’s wife being in town and all—and Dylan had no idea what time it was, but the light outside didn’t look brighter than nine or so.
“We ate on the plane,” Jack said, “but I’d love to get a cup of terrible coffee in this little hamlet.” He rubbed his hands together, and now Dylan panicked about where to take them.
Couldn’t go to Clover Moon, which was closed for a few days due to filming anyway.
Definitely couldn’t ask Ramona—couldn’t risk her parents realizing Ramona was all but twenty feet away. The last time Jack and Carrie met someone she was seeing, that someone got a recording deal and Dylan ended up saddled with a ten-thousand-dollar fine in damages.
She’d find somewhere—she knew there were a few other places to eat on Lake Street, though the idea of walking through downtown Clover Lake with her infamous parents made her want to puke. Still, she had to get them out of here.
Now.
“Five minutes!” she said, then rushed quietly to the hall bathroom, where she’d never been so thankful in all her life that she’d left some clothes on the floor when she’d changed for a swim the other day. She threw on the dirty cutoffs, bra, and a T-shirt featuring a skeletal hand on a tarot card with its middle finger lifted in the air. But even in her desperation, she couldn’t bear to pull on dirty underwear, so she just went without, hoped her morning breath wasn’t too noticeable, and yanked her hair into a messy top bun.
“Let’s go,” she said when she emerged.
“Brunch!” Carrie said, looping her arm through Dylan’s as Jack opened the front door.
“Whatever,” Dylan said. She looked back at her closed bedroom door, her heart crawling up her throat, but there was nothing for it. It was this or let her parents ruin everything.
“I’m so excited to hear all about your big movie,” Carrie said as she pulled Dylan out the front door and onto the sidewalk. As they walked under the summery morning sun, Dylan tried to focus on her mom and dad prattling on and on, but even with her lakeside house half a mile behind them, she couldn’t stop thinking about leaving Ramona.
It would be fine.
She’d text her. She’d text her right now. She dug into her pocket—
Her hand froze. Then dipped into her other pockets, front and back, but she already knew—she’d left her phone on the dresser in her bedroom.
“Fuck,” she said.
“What’s that, love?” Carrie asked.
Dylan didn’t respond as they turned onto Lake Street.