Chapter 5
5
Evie tours eleven apartments in three days and on a scale of one to soul-crushing, apartment hunting in LA is right up there with the balance of her medical bills. About $1,700 a month will get her either AC or a refrigerator. In those three days, she blew through an entire tank of gas driving to various listings across the city, a total waste of time because the decent ones already had multiple applications in process and the still-available ones had weird stains on the walls and roaches in the sinks. There was one spot in Palms, near Imogen, that seemed promising—hardwood floors, natural light, a fridge—until she found a bloody T-shirt in the shower. She and Imogen ran without so much as a goodbye to the broker because holy shit did they just tour a crime scene? Is their DNA now all over a crime scene?
After this minor trauma, they’re in stop-and-go traffic on the 110, still processing the Palms Incident, not processing that they’re en route to say goodbye to the bungalow for real, when Imogen asks, “Are you going to call Theo?”
Evie shrugs, easing up on the brake pedal just to crawl a few inches forward.
“Let me rephrase,” her sister amends. “ Call Theo . Did he do something stupid? Yes! Were his intentions sweet? Yes! Are you going to forgive him? Of course! He should be there to say goodbye.”
Imogen is right.
Of course she’ll forgive Theo.
But right now? She still wants to be furious. Evie hasn’t even had a chance to unpack her complicated feelings about Next in Foley with Jules, who’s off this week because therapists need vacations, too. Evie needs Jules. Because Theo crossed every friendship boundary. She said no. She meant no. And yet the tiniest part of her loves that he knows her well enough to see right through this specific no. Evie isn’t sure what this means, but being mad at Theo is pretty much the worst feeling in the world. Sometimes, she wishes her best friend wasn’t so nice. It’d be way easier to stay furious if he radiated just a smidge of righteous asshole energy. But Theo apologized profusely, took accountability, and gave her the beat she needed that resulted in three harrowing days of apartment hunting.
So.
Evie listens to her sister.
Theo answers on the first ring. “Hey.”
“I’m still mad at you,” she says, despite the relief she can hear in that one-syllable hey cracking her resolve to remain furious. “But Gen and I are about to turn over the keys to Pep and Mo and…”
She leaves the sentence unfinished, because she is mad at him, damn it , and not willing to say how she feels—that it wouldn’t feel right, saying goodbye to the bungalow without him. But it’s the truth. How many hours did they spend in that space—as kids doing homework together on the hideous mushroom rug in the living room during the ninety minutes between school and dance, as dancers rehearsing duets in the spare room with mirrored closet doors in the final hours before a competition, as adults watching Survivor together every week?
A lot.
“What’s your ETA?” Theo asks.
“Fifteen minutes.”
“I’ll be there.”
They pull into the driveway fifteen minutes later, and there he is, wrapped in a Peppy Bloom embrace on the front porch—and whatever anger remained dissolves in real time, neutralized by his simple act of showing up for her. She cuts the engine and pushes her car door open, not at all ready to say goodbye. Imogen squeezes her hand after they exit. Theo’s eyes meet hers as Pep greets her and Imogen with hugs at the bottom of the porch steps.
“It’s a lot, isn’t it? Goodbye.”
“Sure is.”
Evie pulls away from her grandmother’s embrace, fishing for keys that sank to the bottom of her tote bag. Once retrieved, a ballet slipper charm imprints her palm as she removes the key that has belonged to her since she was ten, the key that has meant home since she was twelve. Imogen mirrors her, as little sisters so often do. Placing the keys in their grandmother’s palm, Evie has never felt more untethered because she is someone who clings to roots. Stability. Someone who is content to stay. Imogen hugs Theo hello, then pushes the front door open, disappearing into a house that’s no longer home for a final walk-through.
Evie is still.
Pep’s calloused thumb reaches toward her to brush a tear from her cheek. “It’s just a place, Evelyn.”
“I know.”
Mo approaches, tentatively, holding an envelope out to Evie. “Don’t argue.”
Inside is a wrinkled check made out to her for five thousand dollars.
Her eyes widen. “Grandpa—”
“Don’t. It’s for emotional damages,” he attempts to joke, but when Mo’s eyes meet hers, his expression is serious. “Ev. We’re aware that we put you in a shit situation by asking you to move with no notice. A situation that you have handled with so much grace and maturity. So you’re going to let us help you. Are we clear?”
Evie nods.
Mo squeezes her shoulder. “Good.”
Peppy Bloom and Mo Goldberg put their retirement plans on hold fifteen years ago, when Naomi left her daughters on the bungalow steps in the pouring rain. I love you so much, my tiny dancers, but I need a beat , Naomi had said, squatting to be eye level with a ten-year-old Imogen. Evie remembers not feeling fear or abandonment, only grateful that the rare downpour hid her angry tears. At least her father was a consistent, expected absence. Naomi was much more unpredictable. Burned out on being a mom, she’d often leave Evie and Imogen with their father’s parents for extended beats.
Most times, Naomi would be gone for a week.
Two, tops. Not that time.
So Pep and Mo made a home for the Bloom sisters in every way their parents weren’t capable of doing. Cared for them in all the ways Naomi and David couldn’t. Evie has accepted more than enough help from Pep and Mo over these last fifteen years. She refuses to take even a penny of their retirement money, but for now she’ll slip the check into her back pocket because it’s easier than arguing.
And she’ll rip it to pieces the moment they drive away.
“Where to next?” Theo asks.
“Tahoe,” Pep says, her eyes sparkling with anticipation. “We’ve never been, if you can believe it.”
Evie laughs. “I can.”
Her grandparents were never the best at understanding the concept of a vacation. Pep had her radio show and Mo bounced around from studio to studio, overseeing the set construction for various films and television shows. Sometimes, the work meant traveling. But never—at least in the first twenty-four years of Evie’s life—had her grandparents traveled to travel , until Pep put down the mic three years ago.
“It turns out there’s a whole world outside of LA County,” Mo teases.
Pep shrugs. “Who knew?”
Mo’s nose crinkles when he smiles at Pep, an expression that single-handedly assures Evie that love is real. Her grandparents are coming up on forty years together. Pep was a single mother to a ten-year-old David when she stumbled onto one of Mo’s sets on the Paramount lot. Before her radio career bloomed, she was a sound editor for the studio, nursing a crush on a set designer. Need some help? she asked in her best (terrible) transatlantic accent. Mo, focused on the flower details he was painting on a gazebo, didn’t register the question, her presence , until she dropped the schtick and used her actual voice. Pep helped him put the finishing touches on the gazebo—or delayed him, depending on who is telling the story. After, Mo asked her how she felt about food. I eat , Pep said with a laugh.
Forty years later, it’s how he still asks her if she’s hungry.
They’re adorable, her grandparents. Still so in love, though they never married. Perhaps because they never married. Failed first marriages and messy divorces had dulled their desire to tether themselves together with a piece of paper. Evie doesn’t just respect the hell out of their love; it’s a love that she wants for herself.
“Tahoe is unreal,” Theo says.
Evie nods. “You’re going to love it.”
“Sure hope so! Ready to hit the road?” Mo asks.
“I left something in the van for Evelyn,” Pep says as she makes her way toward the RV parked on the street. “Come on, Sweets.”
Evie follows her grandmother down the driveway and up the steps into the decked-out mobile retirement home. Pep and Mo truly pulled out all the stops, hiring an interior designer to gut and renovate the RV, installing quartz countertops, Smeg appliances, and a Klipsch sound system—an aesthetic that screams, There will be no roughing it in the woods on our adventures. Pep sits on the cream leather couch and pats the empty cushion next to her. Evie takes a seat, prepared for a story and wondering what recipe or tchotchke or vintage accessory will be gifted to her before this goodbye.
Pep reaches for a box on the quartz countertop. “From one audiophile to another.”
She takes the box from her grandmother, feels the weight of it in her hands and… is it?
She opens it.
It is .
Inside the box is a vintage RCA 77-DX. A microphone. Not just any microphone, but the one that her grandmother recorded with during the thirty-year run of Some Pep in Your Step . It’s Peppy Bloom’s most prized possession, a symbol of the trailblazer she is and everything Evie wants to be. She swallows a lump in her throat because it’s so much, Pep letting go of the mic and passing it on to her.
“Genny may have mentioned the fellowship,” Pep says, her voice lowering in tone to something serious. “I wish I heard the exciting news from you .”
Evie shrugs. “I can’t do it.”
“Why is that?”
Of course, Imogen left that part out. “No benefits.”
“Ah.”
Her expression shifts to instant understanding. Growing up, it was Pep who’d been Evie’s most fierce advocate, the adult who believed her . Pep who obtained legal guardianship in order to put her granddaughters on her union health insurance. Pep who took Evie to so many doctors . Her adolescence was one sterile office after another, a paper gown chafing her skin as the doctor-of-the-month pressed on her tender, bloated stomach, then went over her normal ( always normal) lab results and attributed her pain to stress, to anxiety, to Naomi. That gut-brain connection is a powerful one! After she fell, the on-call trauma attending did a thorough workup, ordering imaging for the obvious injuries and bloodwork based on her accounts of the ever-present pain and accompanying fatigue that threw her balance off in the first place. She didn’t know in that moment that this would be the beginning of receiving an answer with so many questions, that she would soon have validation that her pain wasn’t in her head, that Pep and Mo would be so supportive emotionally—and financially—through numerous trial-and-error treatments until a combination of luck and medical alchemy got her into remission.
Evie doesn’t know, cannot fathom , the cumulative cost.
Pep won’t tell her.
She still struggles to accept this gift, that she’s merely swimming in medical debt and not drowning in it. Because Crohn’s is expensive to manage even in remission, even with insurance—requiring biologic medications, biannual colonoscopies, and so much bloodwork that she’s on a first-name basis with the phlebotomists at her local lab. It is not dramatic to say that Evie’s quality of life depends on the quality of her health insurance.
So.
She can’t do the fellowship.
It’s that simple.
“Their loss,” Pep says, wrapping an arm around Evie and giving her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Yours, too. I’m sorry, Sweets.”
She leans into her grandmother’s embrace, always appreciative that Pep has never pushed or gaslit her into believing that anything is possible. Some things are not possible for her. At eighteen, the metal in her reconstructed ankle took dance from her, a Broadway-bound future no longer possible. Now a dream fellowship isn’t possible. Not because of Crohn’s disease, but because of America and its fucked-up employer-based healthcare system.
“It’s bullshit.”
Pep nods. “It is.”
That validation is a loop in her head as she, her sister, and her best friend watch Pep and Mo drive away from the bungalow that meant home. It is. It is. It is. Evie feels the weight—the legacy—of Pep’s microphone in her hands. It is bullshit, but turning down a fellowship is not giving up on a career. Determination blooms in the pit of her stomach, a desperate need to be worthy of this gift that penetrates her jaded core.
Imogen blows a raspberry at the three missed call notifications that glow on her screen. “I need to hop on a few calls.”
“On a Saturday?”
“Don’t ask.” Imogen sighs, then turns toward Theo. “It’ll take an hour or so to get home right now. Can I take them from your place? My boss is overstimulated by café noise.”
“Course.”
His apartment is just ten minutes down the road. Once Imogen is settled on a beanbag at Theo’s and connected to Wi-Fi, a curious Puck looking over her shoulder, Theo’s eyes meet Evie’s and she locks in on his brown irises. “So. What now?”
What now?
Evie will keep apartment hunting.
Continue to freelance.
Diversify her portfolio.
Even—ugh— network.
But first?
“Afters.”
Their spot is open, a red metal picnic table and bench in the back corner of the parking lot of what used to be a gas station and is now the best place to get ice cream in Pasadena. Gas station ice cream isn’t something Evie knew she needed until it existed, though the vintage Texaco pumps exist solely to create an aesthetic. Afters—said gas station ice cream institution—opened their junior year and became a post-dance tradition of sorts for them, a reward after long Wednesday nights at Stella Hoffman’s Dance Academy.
“Afters after?” Theo asked during a break from learning new choreography, pushing back sweat-drenched curls that stuck to his forehead before kneeling to retie his tap shoes.
Evie focused on rolling out calves that screamed at her with a tennis ball. “Sure.”
“Sweet.”
He held out a hand. Evie took it and ignored the arm attached to it, the flex of his biceps as he pulled her to her feet. She let go, then turned her attention to Stella’s choreography. Or tried to. She kept starting early, on the down beat, and cursed under her breath with each false start. She looked over at her partner and caught him scratching the back of his neck, the hem of his shirt riding up to reveal a light trail of hair starting at the bottom of his belly button. Evie swallowed. Fuck. Theo was hot.
So what?
He was also Theo .
Fifteen attempts later, Stella instructed them to take off their tap shoes and run “Someone Like You,” because, as she so bluntly put it, Evie needed a win. Evie cursed under her breath. Sure, she could dance that routine in her sleep, but tap was safer. Less touching. Hand-holding at most. Contemporary was complicated lifts, his hands on her hips, their tangled limbs. Choreography that used to not faze Evie at all and now very much did. But she let the music take her to another place and in those 122 seconds, Evie could let herself love him like that. For the performance.
Obviously.
Because he was Theo .
If he were anybody else, by then she would’ve leaned into the attraction, the impulsive feelings. Evie loved kissing—boys, girls, everyone. Loved the brief bliss of feeling wanted by boys, girls, everyone. But she didn’t love the complicated after, jumping ship as soon as the vibe shifted away from casual and toward the potential of something more, of getting hurt, of being left. Theo—their friendship—was too important to risk.
So she squashed the crush, the lust, the whatever she was beginning to feel, and four hours of dancing concluded with ice cream and sharing a pair of headphones to watch the newest episode of Survivor on Theo’s phone. The following week, Evie was the one who asked, “Afters after?” and it’s been their thing ever since. The chill of the dry Southern California air paired with the chill of dairy-free mint chip a necessary cooldown after hours in the studio, a necessary reminder that whatever was happening to Evie’s heart inside the studio would stay inside the studio.
In the decade since, Afters has become the space Evie goes to reset.
She and Theo need a reset.
So they order their dairy-free mint chip in a cup and ube brownie in a cone and sit at their picnic table. Evie comments on the weather, how hot it still is for mid-October, as she scrapes the perfect scoop with a bamboo spoon. Fresh mint on her tongue is a sweet respite from the heat, from her grief. The bungalow is gone. Pep and Mo are gone. But at least after a shit day, there’s always Afters.
Theo looks at her. “Evelyn, I’m—”
Evie cuts him off, reaching across the table to take his cone and smush the tenth, twentieth, millionth sorry right back into his face in sticky-sweet ice cream form, and only when his nose, mouth, and chin are purple does she say, “I know.”
His purple mouth quirks. “I deserved that.”
“I know.”
Then she hands him some napkins.
He takes them.
And they reset the same way they always do—with Theo handing her an earbud and them watching Survivor on his phone. After the episode, Evie recounts her harrowing week of apartment hunting and the bloody T-shirt.
“It’s brutal out there,” she laments, crushing a now-empty ice cream cup in her hand. “Never give up your lease.”
Theo snorts. “I think I have to. Micah and Pranav closed on a condo in WeHo.”
“What?” Evie’s eyes widen at information that could solve at least one of her problems.
“How they swung that is a mystery to—”
“I’ll take it.”
He hasn’t offered. But it’s Theo . After a week on Imogen’s couch, Evie could tear up at just the idea of a bedroom. With a door. In this moment, she’s more than relieved to let Theo be the solution to her housing crisis. She is not a damsel in distress, but her bank account is very distressed by the prospect of shelling out more than half her monthly income to rent an apartment without a necessity—a renter’s right —as basic as a fridge.
“I wish it were that simple.”
“It’s not?”
“I had that thought, too, so I spoke with Sal. My landlord. He informed me that we’re not eligible to take over the lease, like, financially.”
Not eligible financially? What? They’re both adults with full-time jobs. W-2 jobs. Salaried jobs. She’s aware that neither of their chosen paths has provided them with the financial stability of padded savings accounts and stock market portfolios. But they’re fine.
Evie’s brow creases, confused. “I thought the unit was rent-controlled?”
“There’s a stipulation in the lease that, sans a guarantor, each tenant must provide proof that their monthly salary is at least three times the rent.”
Evie does the calculation once, twice, three times, triple-checking her mental math because the number she gets every time is obscene. “Each?”
Theo nods.
“You’re sure?”
“Unfortunately.”
“Fuck.”
“I know. Micah’s parents were on the lease, so it’s never been an issue.”
Evie doesn’t have a financial safety net. Her father literally fled the country, working on an excavation site in Argentina and pretending his six-figure student loan debt disappeared… so his credit is presumably in the toilet. Naomi has money. Well. Jean-Paul has money. But she’d rather take the Palms apartment where someone was probably definitely murdered than ask her mother for help. Theo asking his dad is as much of a nonstarter as Evie calling Naomi.
So.
Pep and Mo’s crumpled check is still in her back pocket. Evie supposes she could call her grandparents, but that feels more like a last resort than a viable option. They’ve already done so much— too much —to help her out. She wants a worry-free retirement for them. Doesn’t want to burden them with her financial woes.
“Sal is giving me until the end of the week to figure something out, but unless we rob a bank or one of us wins the lottery…”
Theo lets the sentence trail off as he scrolls through the rental agreement on his phone. Evie can almost hear him thinking, just two words bouncing around in his skull in a loop. Fix this, fix this, fix this. It’s Theo’s best worst quality, his desire to be a fixer. Because some things can’t be fixed—not her ankle, not her diagnosis, and not the bullshit terms of this lease.
“What are we going to do?” Evie asks.
We .
In moments like these, she’s here to remind him not to be so in his head, that they can problem-solve together. He fixates on the lease, his expression unreadable at first, but a moment later it relaxes into his signature smirk—and just as she can hear his brain working, she can also see the moment a solution clicks into place.
“There’s a way that we can qualify to renew my lease.”
She arches a single eyebrow. “Without committing a felony?”
“It’s a… let’s call it a loophole. A brilliant one, actually.”
“I’m listening.”
When Theo looks up, she resists the urge to inform him that he still has a bit of ice cream on his face, the purple ube in his dimple adding a touch of levity to this moment. A rogue curl falls in front of eyes that meet hers and Evie is starting to believe that loophole is a generous descriptor for whatever he’s about to suggest. It’s going to be a felony. A misdemeanor at minimum. Theo pushes his hair out of his eyes and flashes her an ube dimple grin, and Evie braces herself, wondering what it says about her that she would rob a bank for him, if he asked.
She opens her mouth to say this.
To assure Theo that she’d do anything for him, if he asked.
She doesn’t. Thankfully. Because his brilliant loophole solution? It’s the one thing—the only thing—that she’ll never, ever do.
“Marry me, Evelyn.”