Chapter 19
T he bonfire was aglow when we got up to the landing of Quinn Canyon.
Mom was sitting on one of the chairs, with Petra next to her, then the guy Jasper from the other night who I hadn’t met yet, and a young woman holding an acoustic guitar across her lap.
Mom was a night owl. Always had been. She could stay up until the sunrise and sleep all day.
She used to say that’s what Stevie Nicks did, and she idolized her.
She thought Stevie was the perfect example of a woman who lived her life on her own terms and didn’t let a single external opinion dictate what she did.
She also loved to tell the story of when Stevie breezed into Quinn Canyon with her “coven” one night (Stevie was friends with one of Mom’s friends at the time) when I was only two years old and Stevie had—as legend has it—held and rocked me to sleep, which Jackie always believed to be the most magical thing that ever happened to her, not least because I was a fussy child and getting me to sleep was apparently very hard for Mom to do.
Stevie had sung “Landslide” to me like a lullaby.
Of course I have no recollection of it, but the amount of times Mom has told the story, it’s almost as if I could remember it myself.
“Charlie,” Petra called out, already out of her chair and barreling toward me.
Petra was tall and slim, with long straight brown hair laced with gray.
She’d once been a supermodel, but had left those days behind years before.
I always expected her to carry with her remnants of superficiality, but she never did.
She let her hair go gray, didn’t wear much makeup, and heartily didn’t believe in cosmetic procedures.
She used to say all those years of caring about her appearance made her never want to spend another second of her one life fixated on how she looked.
“Petra!” I held my arms out for a hug.
She smelled the same as she used to—a slight hint of the lavender oil that she pressed to her wrists and temples every morning.
“We’ve missed you,” she said, grabbing me by the shoulders and kissing me on the cheek. She touched a few strands of my hair. “And when did you go blonde?”
“Blonde?” Mom asked, and shot to her feet and joined us. Her face broke into a wide smile. “How unlike you. I love it. It looks perfect on you.”
“You did this today?” Petra asked.
“Yes, and today was quite the adventure,” Benny said, cutting in and throwing her arms around Petra and me.
I shot her a look, but I knew Benny was going to do what Benny does best and give them all a detailed account of every single thing that happened.
There was no stopping her, so I just accepted it.
“Don’t leave us out,” the woman with the guitar said, loudly enough for us to hear. “Jasper and I need to hear the story, too.”
“Of course you do,” Mom said. “Jasper and Willow, this is my daughter, Charlie.”
I went over and shook their hands, then Benny and I sat in the two empty chairs across from the four of them.
“Jasper is a very talented actor who just got his first starring role in a Netflix series,” Mom said. “And Willow is talking to Capitol about signing a record deal. She’s amazing.”
“Your mom collects all the best people,” Willow said, her voice a melodic lilt. “You’re so lucky.” She was ethereally beautiful and had straight chestnut hair that hung past her shoulders.
“For real,” Jasper said. “I would never have navigated this whole audition process without your mom.”
I sat there, not quite sure what to say, because being friends with Jackie Quinn, or having her as some sort of temporary mentor, was one thing. Having her as a mom was much more complicated.
“We got you Red Vines,” Benny said, pulling the package from the bag and handing it to Mom.
She ripped into them immediately and passed around the container.
When Willow handed it to Benny, she mimed vomiting and said, “We are so full we may actually burst. We ordered every single thing on the menu at Wavy, Jasper. Tell Sophia it’s as amazing as she said.”
“I will,” Jasper told Benny.
“Before that, I took Charlie for her makeover. Doesn’t her hair look incredible? We also went shopping, and Charlie had to buy a bunch of things she wouldn’t normally wear.” Benny stopped and looked at me. “We forgot the bags in the car by the way.”
“I’ll get them in the morning,” I said.
“You all went shopping without me?” Mom asked. “You know, I want in on this little experiment of yours.”
“What experiment?” Jasper asked.
Benny made a whole show of explaining the experiment again, detailing my workaholism and cataloging all the ways in which I was doing life wrong. At this point, I just laughed.
“That sounds so fun,” Willow said.
“Lovely,” Petra agreed. “I want to come with. What’s next?”
“Well,” Benny said, kicking up the flourish again. “Mom and Petra, you’re going to die when I tell you who the executive chef of Wavy is and, Willow and Jasper, you’re going to have to take my word for it—this is juicy.”
“I’m so glad I decided to come over tonight,” Jasper said, laughing.
“Alex Perry,” Benny said, dropping it into the conversation like it was a bomb and letting it hang there.
“No way,” Mom gasped. “Charlie, baby, you were so into him.”
“Beyond,” Petra agreed.
“Well, apparently, as we found out tonight, Alex Perry was into Charlie right back.”
Mom let out an actual squeal while Willow and Jasper burst into laughter.
“Are you dying right now?” Mom asked me. “He liked you back? Teenage you would have dropped dead.”
“Thirty-year-old me kind of wants to right now,” I said back wryly as Willow snorted.
“Charlie is going on a date with him,” Benny said. “On Monday. And he’s so hot. Like, he got hotter.”
“Stop,” Petra exclaimed.
“I am giddy,” Mom said. “I’m actually giddy over this, Petra!”
“I am, too!” Petra said back.
“I hate this,” I quipped and all five of them laughed even harder, as if I were joking.
“You did text him back, right?” Benny asked me.
“Not yet,” I told her. I’d been driving us back and then I was here.
I hadn’t had a moment alone to even process that text, to let my body feel it the way it wanted to, to savor it, to lie on my childhood bed in disbelief that Alex Perry was somehow in LA and wanted to see me.
It was one of those things you just wanted to exist with for a moment before talking about it.
“He’s probably checking his phone every second after that text,” Benny said, aghast. “You have to text him back. He’s positively desperate for you to.”
“The drama in this family,” I said. “It’s been like thirty minutes.”
“Inquiring minds want to know what the text said,” Jasper chimed in.
“Inquiring minds, yes please,” Willow repeated.
Benny didn’t even wait for me to take my phone out. She just recited it back to them, almost word for word. The four of them reacted at once.
“He’s down bad.” Jasper.
“You have to text him back.” Willow.
“I’m living vicariously through this.” Petra.
“I’m losing it!” Mom.
“I’m going to text him back,” I said, trying to calm them all. “Give me a minute.”
“He doesn’t want to waste any time,” Petra said. “You dazzled him.”
“Alright, alright,” I said. “Let’s take it down a notch.” But inside, I was bubbling up, like champagne fizzing away in my body.
“Wait, didn’t he move away?” Mom asked. “Like to Michigan or something?”
“Yeah, during our senior year,” I said. “A few months before graduation.”
“Oh, God,” she said, hand over her mouth. “Now I remember.”
“What?” Willow asked, fully invested.
“Alex’s parents had a production company and they had become incredibly successful,” I explained.
“But during his senior year, his mom was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and within the span of a few weeks, she was gone. It was so unexpected. And the Perry family was honestly one of the best—the kindest, happiest people. Alex’s mom and dad were so in love.
And his dad was devastated. He moved the whole family to Michigan to be closer to his parents. It was all so sudden.”
I didn’t say anything about the weekend before Alex left school, when I was out at a party and he showed up, and we spent the entire night in someone’s backyard, talking. We were two seconds from what seemed to be a kiss when the cops showed up and we had to run to disburse into the neighborhood.
That moment had been years in the making.
Alex and I always had classes together. We’d attended the same elementary, middle, and high school, but hung out in separate groups.
Sometimes we talked during class or when our groups of friends got together, but I was always too afraid of getting rejected to take it any further.
I started going to parties the last semester of my senior year when I’d received early acceptance to Stanford and could relax for a minute before college began.
Of course, I always hoped I might run into him at those parties.
But after that night, it was Monday at school, and he didn’t show up.
He left without saying anything, and I didn’t find out why until months later.
It wasn’t enough to stay in touch. It’s not like we were dating.
But, what could I do? Hold it against him?
Never. But it definitely hurt, before I found out about his mom and why he left.
That night had seemed like it was a beginning, but instead he became my last unguarded crush.
I learned to protect myself because of Alex Perry.
The first to say anything was Jasper. “That is heartbreaking.”
“They were the good ones,” Petra added. “Cindy and Scott Perry. They were the best of the best people. God . I haven’t thought about them in a long time. I wonder how Scott is now. And their daughter. I forget her name.”
“Amber,” I replied. “Amber and Alex. They were only eighteen months apart. Irish twins.”
“Give him our best,” Mom said. “Poor things. That was such a tragedy around here. We all loved Cindy. Everybody did.”