Chapter 9
“Is everything okay?” Nick asks after she unlocks and opens the door, though he can probably answer that question for himself.
He debates for a moment before stepping inside the bathroom.
Ramona just stares at him. Blinks a few times.
He makes his voice as gentle as he can, as though she’s a deer he’s afraid to spook.
“I came as soon as I got your message. Sorry, there was traffic.” Stating the obvious.
She’s wobbly as she lowers herself to the floor, eye makeup smudged, giving her the look of someone at the end of a long night of partying as opposed to some midday shopping. He’s seized by an overwhelming urge to give her a blanket and a bowl of soup.
“What are you doing here?” she says, wrapping a strand of her hair around two fingers.
Nick’s brow furrows. “You called me.”
“But—I left a voicemail, I assumed you were gone for the day, and I—I shouldn’t have called.” When she tries to get to her feet, she stumbles, off balance.
“Whoa there,” he says, reaching forward to catch her arms.
“Sorry,” she mumbles. Her hair sways across her face. She’s determinedly not making eye contact, almost like she’s embarrassed. He has about a thousand questions, but he’s not sure which ones he has the right to ask.
“Nothing to apologize for.” Slowly, he helps her back down to a seated position and crouches next to her.
She’s shaking.
Ramona Wilder, international pop sensation and UCLA freshman, was hiding in a mall bathroom trembling, and despite all the frustration she’s brought him since the quarter started, it’s a punch to his heart.
It doesn’t make sense that she called him, but she did. And here he is. Maybe that doesn’t make sense, either.
After they snapped at each other, he had to take a few minutes to cool down.
He had another class to teach, and he didn’t want them to get any version of him that was less than his best. Ramona had riled him up once again, though this time he thought he might have gotten the upper hand.
Or at least the upper few fingers. So why hadn’t it felt better?
The first time he listened to her message on his office phone, he thought it was some kind of prank. Then he played it again, already zipping up his bag, her voice sounding urgent and self-deprecating and a little afraid. He’d have to be a real asshole to ignore something like that.
It’s happened a few times over the years, a student calling to ask if he can DD. Mostly freshmen going too hard being away from home for the first time. But this—this feels different.
Only now does it dawn on him that they’re enclosed in a tight space, no matter how luxe this bathroom is, with fancy lotion and perfume bottles lined up on the counter and a basket full of breath mints and mini deodorants.
He can barely wrap his mind around the fact that the girl in front of him is the same one who flunked his pop quiz earlier today.
Who leaned across his desk and told him off the first time they met.
“Do you have any water in there?” he asks, gesturing to her monstrous purse.
“Would be smart, wouldn’t it.”
Without missing a beat, he passes her an unopened bottle from his messenger bag.
“Sparkling?” she asks, and though he shakes his head, she downs half of his evidently inferior still water in a single gulp. “Thank you,” she says quietly. “I’m sure you love seeing me like this. The big bad world taking me a down a few notches.”
“I can assure you, I don’t.” In fact, he’s relieved to have this opportunity to do something nice after what happened earlier. That stupid remark he made about her next album cover. He stretches out his legs, trying to get comfortable in this bizarre situation. “What happened?”
Ramona braces her elbows on her knees, dropping her head to her hands as she lets out a groan.
“Group of preteen girls stopped me in the mall. I haven’t had that happen in a while.
I…don’t go out much these days.” She lifts her head, takes another sip of water.
“It was a lot, and I guess I got overwhelmed. This used to happen before I’d go onstage—I can’t breathe, and my whole body locks up.
My therapist is out of town and my best friend wasn’t answering, and… ”
Her words twist at something deep inside him. “And then you called me.”
“Well, it was either you or my private-jet salesman.” When he doesn’t respond, she adds, “That’s a joke. I don’t have a jet.”
Nick scrapes a hand down his face, wishing he’d shaved this morning. It just doesn’t compute—there must be dozens of people who’d drop everything at a moment’s notice to help her out. Surely it was the proximity of UCLA, the assumption that if he was still at work, he could be there soon.
All of a sudden, Nick feels like absolute shit for judging her. Someone planning a comeback would not be hiding in the bathroom because they were mobbed by a group of fans.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Ramona says. “You’re relieved I’m in therapy.”
It’s so unexpected that a laugh bursts from his chest. “I am too,” he says. “Along with eighty percent of LA, I’m guessing.”
She nods. “I really didn’t think you’d get the message. Or that you’d, you know…” Her gaze drops, nails scratching at the label on the bottle. “Come.”
“Your message sounded pretty intense.” They sit in silence for a while, Nick struck by her sudden vulnerability. The girl who called him out in his own office and sings about getting revenge on her exes. “You need a ride home?”
“If you don’t mind. But—I’m kind of afraid of going out there.”
Biting back a smile, he reaches for his messenger bag again. “This is going to sound ridiculous, but I had this in my trunk. My niece was in Shrek the Musical at school last year, and I thought, if you needed a disguise for a quick escape…”
She gapes at him as he pulls out a rubbery green ogre mask.
“Now I know why you’re in therapy,” she says, but she accepts the mask and stretches the band around her head. “Does this look as good as I think it does?”
“Even better. Careful,” he says as she attempts to lift herself to her feet, but she holds up an arm, indicating that she’s got it. Either that, or the way he touched her earlier was more intrusive than she wanted it to be. Well—noted.
They draw a few questionable looks as they head for the parking garage, but there are no cameras. No whispers. They’re incognito, ogre-Ramona falling in step with Nick, her long strides matching his while he does his best not to laugh.
As they approach his Prius and she pushes the mask to the top of her head, her eyes widen at the scratch along the passenger side.
Nick turns sheepish. “Oh, uh, haven’t had a chance to take it in yet. But don’t worry, your insurance is excellent.”
“I’m so sorry,” she says. “I wanted to leave my number, but I didn’t have any paper. If it’s any consolation, I felt like shit about it. Especially when the whole class put me on trial.”
“The scrape-and-crawl.”
“It was a very pitiful crawl. Tail between my legs and everything.”
“Range Rovers can be pitiful?”
“Oh, anything can be if you hate yourself enough.”
Nick’s not sure how to respond to that. The idea of her hating herself makes him unreasonably sad. “You don’t—” he starts, and she rolls her eyes.
“I promise, I only have a normal amount of self-loathing. Working on it with my therapist.” She climbs inside. “Thank you,” she says before she shuts the door. “Really.”
He pictures her going home to some big empty house in the Hills. The kind that echoes when you so much as exhale, surrounded by all kinds of expensive, soulless stuff.
She called him.
She could have called anyone, and she called him, the professor she can’t stand—and maybe that means she didn’t have anyone else.
So he tries to imagine what he might want if this situation were reversed, because maybe, just maybe, this is how they blank-slate the whole thing. “Are you hungry?”
—
His favorite taco truck is in a strip mall parking lot in Culver City. They’re in between rushes and the scattered tables are mostly empty, which he can tell Ramona is grateful for.
After he orders in Spanish, Ramona brandishes one of those heavy black Amex cards he’s never actually seen in real life, before the guy at the register points to the sign that says Cash Only.
“I owe you,” she says when Nick pays for them both, and he waves this off. Besides, he can’t imagine an occasion when she’d be able to pay him back. They’re not about to start getting lunch together.
They carry drinks and a basket of chips to a table while they wait for their burritos.
“Your Spanish is pretty much flawless,” Ramona says as she sips from her Topo Chico.
Nick opens a mango Jarritos. “My dad’s side of the family is from Mexico City.
He moved to California for college, met my mom in grad school, and I was born in San Bernardino.
Grew up speaking Spanish with his side of the family.
” He waits for her to grab a chip to avoid a clash of hands.
“You’re from here too, you said in class? ”
“Well, Lancaster. But we moved to LA when I was twelve, so I think I can call myself a native.”
They fall into silence, the only sound the crunching of chips, as Nick realizes he has no fucking clue how to talk to someone in Ramona’s economic bracket. He hops up to grab their order when it’s called out, almost too eager.
And then tries to process the utter absurdity of eating burritos with Ramona Wilder.
In the car, she pulled down the sun visor and touched up her makeup—just as Audrey’s mix transitioned into “Regret Me.” Her brows shot all the way to her hairline as Nick hastily switched the music to classic rock.
“I love Jefferson Airplane” was all Ramona said while he stumbled through an explanation about the playlist, ears burning with embarrassment.