7. Noa
NOA
Cyndi Lauper’s Goonies song yanks me out of REM sleep, and I jolt upright on Aiden’s plush couch, disoriented and embarrassingly hungover from a single cocktail. The blackout curtains in his backhouse, no doubt a necessity for the bizarre hours he keeps, make it impossible to tell the time of day.
My eyes fumble through the darkness, locking onto the cuckoo clock above his TV.
Eight fifteen a.m.
Panic seizes me for three chilling seconds before I remember… Wait, it’s Saturday? Why the hell is my commute alarm going off?
The panic I momentarily assuaged rises back up as I pick up my phone and realize Cyndi is belting out her ode to the Goonies because I’m getting a call . From my boss. On the weekend.
“Stella? Is everything okay?” I croak.
Spoiler alert: everything was not okay. My pint-sized flavor genius of a boss had driven to the lab overnight after an epiphany about the cherry ribbons.
She’d cooled them to the perfect temperature, only to spill the viscous red liquid in front of her designer loafer, slip, and wipe out spectacularly.
The end result? A sprained ankle, a mild concussion, and me, careening Ringo Carr down the 101 in a panic so that I can fill in for my injured boss at our biggest meeting of the year with an apparently huge celebrity I’ve never heard of. This oughta be good.
In the frantic five minutes I had to collect myself in Aiden’s backhouse, I ransacked his kitchen for every ice cream tool I’d ever passed down after upgrading my own equipment.
I stuffed spice sachets, food coloring, and a nitrogen sprayer into a beat-up rolling suitcase from the back of his coat closet–no real plan, just blind hope that a Mary Poppins bag of food science props might help me channel my expertise and calm my nerves during my first-ever celebrity pitch.
I know this is a chance to prove myself.
To show that when sage collides with poached pear and my brain lights up like the Fourth of July, it isn’t just neurons misfiring–it's because I'm creating something others can actually taste, too. Still, there’s a safety in clocking every working hour in the BFI basement rather than out in the world.
Aiden loves to remind me that a lifetime under Stella’s exacting eye will never pave the way for me to make my own name in the ice cream industry.
But for all the hours I’ve spent dangling from my Thinking Rod, refereeing pre-dawn flavor tournaments with my spice rack, and daydreaming about pitching my original creations to Jen and Mary, the truth is this: I’m terrified that stepping out from Stella’s shadow won’t illuminate my talent, only my flaws.
As I merge onto the 101, a familiar voice slithers in: You didn’t earn this opportunity today. Stella had to face-plant in maraschino juice for you to even get a shot.
Meet Jerky McGee: my therapist’s idea of creating separation between me and the part of my brain that’s convinced I’m one mistake away from everyone realizing I’m a fraud.
Except Jerky McGee isn’t some external demon.
He’s just me at three in the morning, replaying every fumbled social interaction, every promise I’ve broken to myself, every ounce of blame I’ve ever siphoned from other people’s pain.
People pleaser sounds so much tamer and sweeter than the reality.
Someone honks at me for refusing to turn left into a pedestrian. I wave an apology in my rearview mirror. Even road ragers in traffic awaken my desperation to please.
I circle the brutal congestion around Hollywood and Highland for the third time, hunting for the studio entrance like it’s the wardrobe to Narnia. When I finally spot the CBT Studios sign, I nearly clip a tour bus making my hasty turn.
After I explain the Stella situation, a wary security guard waves me through with directions to Studio 3B.
I hurry across the bumpy concrete lot, Aiden’s rolling suitcase clinking and clanging.
I crouch down and unzip the bag, donning the large gloves necessary to handle the nitrogen canister before tucking it under one arm.
Probably best not to be responsible for an explosion this early in the morning.
Passing through the double-wide brass doors of 3B, I’ve never seen anything like it, despite my decade of living in LA.
Gigantic black-and-white photos of late-night hosts line the walls, interspersed with sleek display cases filled with fancy-looking trophies.
I’m sure the space would impress me more if I’d grown up watching TV, but even without context, the air of legacy and importance is thick in this place.
A harried-looking green-haired woman with a headset barks something about meal penalties while four guys hurry past carrying half a living room set with a disgruntled-looking extra dressed as a banana trailing behind them.
I look around for someone to direct me, but everyone here seems to be marching to their own orders. I decide to do the same.
I follow the flow of traffic down a corridor, past dressing rooms and offices, catching glimpses of the machine behind late- night TV as I stroll: bulletin boards plastered with index cards, producers hunched over laptops, racks of clothes being wheeled about.
Then I spot her .
The crazy woman who crawled out of the bar window last night is holding court in a conference room, that same silky hair pulled back into a high pony, effortless flyaways framing her captivating face.
Even under fluorescent lights, she radiates a compelling magnetic energy, like she knows a secret, and if you can catch her off guard for a moment, maybe you’ll be privy to it, too.
On second thought, I suppose I did catch her off guard and do know one of her secrets.
Our eyes lock through the glass, and her face goes white as a freshly churned helado de coco.
She stands up so quickly her chair rolls backward and crashes into a whiteboard, sending dry-erase markers scattering.
She speed-walks toward me with the kind of practiced smile a flight attendant gives just before informing you that you and the ghosts you’re seeing are no longer welcome on this flight.
Then she’s standing in front of me, so close that I can smell her perfume, a nutty gourmand that would pair super well with a Madagascar vanilla bean.
“You’re here, too?!” I ask her incredulously. “Thought we’d sworn to never see each other again.”
Her brows raise as she glances at the metal canister under my arm and my other hand gripping the handle of the suitcase.
“I’ll be right with you,” she tells me, before promptly clicking the door shut in my face. And locking it.
I stand there, baffled, as she turns back to the room. Through the glass, I can see the other people looking curiously in my direction while she grabs her phone and speaks rapidly into it, shooting glances my way that make me feel like I’m some kind of dangerous animal at the zoo.
Which is when two pairs of burly hands grasp my shoulders.
Security. She called security on me.
“Ma’am, you’ll need to come with us.”
“What? No, there’s been a misunderstanding–”
Dumpster Lady emerges from the locked room and stares me down coldly.
“I’m not sure how you got in here, but it is completely inappropriate and frankly pathetic that someone would go to such lengths to stalk me.”
“Stalk you? I don’t even–I’m here for a meeting! About ice cream!” I try twisting around to face her as the guards steer me, my canister, and the rolling suitcase toward the exit. She’s trailing behind by a few feet, but she glances up at my latest outcry.
She smirks, then speaks like she’s talking to a child. “Okay, well, if you go with these nice men out to the Boulevard, you can have your ice cream meeting there.”
I look at my captors, who honestly do seem like pretty nice men, their faces apologetic as they do this crazed parkour princess’s bidding. “Aarti Nair. Aarti Nair! That’s who I’m looking for! She knows we have a meeting!”
There’s a snort behind me. “She most certainly does not.”
The record scratch in my brain is so loud I’m convinced everyone can hear it.
Oh my God.
Oh my God!
Dumpster Lady and Aarti Nair are one and the same.
Wait.
Oh .
Everything about this interaction comes into focus in one fell swoop.
Remember how I said my brain and mouth short circuit sometimes around a pretty girl? It turns out they do that even if she’s about to call the cops on me, because I don’t have the cognitive ability at this moment to try and explain any of this mess articulately. So I just shout:
“This isn’t blood, this is maraschino cherries?!”
We’re right by the front doors. Aarti walks around to face me. “What?”
“Zis isn’t blood, zis is maraschino… ch-ch-cherries,” I say, suddenly less confident in my secondhand impression.
“Have you ever actually seen that sketch?”
I groan. “No. But in my defense, I didn’t grow up with a TV!”
Aarti gives me a withering look. “That’s a new low, a stalker that’s too lazy to do their research.”
And just as the guards are pushing me out to the Boulevard to have my ice cream meeting, I give one final battle cry, because I have nothing left to lose.
“Stella Wexler! Jen & Mary’s! The FBI! I mean the BFI!”
The double doors slam shut in my face. Aarti turns on her heel and strides away without a second glance, while the guards eye me through the glass.
I’m frozen in place, hugging my nitrogen sprayer like a security blanket, unwilling to accept defeat but equally uncertain of my next move.
I’m weighing the consequences of laying down in front of the doors amongst the Hollywood stars and seeing what the gods have in store for me when the door whips back open. The green-haired woman I saw earlier stands in front of me, headset askew, looking between me and her tablet.
“Stella Wexler?”
Oh, sweet relief . I fish out my Jen & Mary’s corporate badge from my suitcase.
“That’s my boss, I’m here in her stead. She had a… cherry-related incident.”