Chapter 3
The night before my eighth birthday, I had a dream about a fire in my house. The next morning, my mom told me it was auspicious—that fire dreams mean all your troubles and worries will go away. That was the day my mom had a brain aneurysm and died while doing a load of laundry.
So I don’t put too much stock into dreams.
And thank god. I wake up to my alarm and tiny talons poking my scalp on Saturday morning after a bad night of weird dreams about my middle school crush being in the circus.
“For crying out loud, Betty!” I yell and my cockatoo flies off my head. I touch my scalp and see that she drew blood. “You are a fucking demon.” From her perch on my nightstand, Betty stares back at me with her soulless black eyes.
I shake off the rough night in the shower, and head to the kitchen to get coffee started, trying not to let the specter of birthday week dreams throw a shadow over everything.
My bare feet slap on the Spanish tile as sunlight fills the kitchen, the windows left open all night to let in the cool spring air.
I stand by the windows, looking out into the sunlit canyon, inevitably thinking about my mother.
Our mornings would start chaotically—her barely getting dressed in time to make me breakfast, in this very kitchen.
Breakfast usually consisted of whatever we ate the night before: a cold chicken leg with a tortilla or spaghetti warmed up with a glass of milk on the side.
But we’d be blasting music the entire time—Blondie was a favorite—the windows open wide.
Bringing in the same sage-laced scent that comes into the kitchen now.
The garage is cool and dark when I open it to grab my bike from its rack on the wall.
My grandfather installed it for me four years ago when I started my bike rides.
His joints aren’t what they used to be, but he can still build almost anything anyone needs.
Although he immigrated here with a medical degree, my grandfather started doing construction work when he first arrived in L.A.
While Halmoni built One & Only, he built his own contracting business and did that for decades before retiring.
My little bungalow in Mount Washington reaps all the benefits of his skills—from a deck overlooking the hillside to the cabinets in my kitchen.
Betty benefits most. He built her a giant cage in the backyard so she could commune with the hawks while being very safe from them.
That said, many mornings I’m tempted to accidentally leave it open.
My grandparents raised me after my mom died.
When people would remind me that I was an orphan because I lost both my parents, I would always bristle.
Because in my mind, I only ever had one parent.
My dad was a nonentity. He left us when I was only two, and while my mother raised me alone in this house, I had never felt the absence of a parent until she died.
The pitying looks when people found out about me would make me sad until they made me angry.
For a bike ride, the weather is cooperating in L.A.
, which seems like a no-brainer but you’d be surprised.
We have humidity and summer storms now—this isn’t the steadfastly mild L.A.
I grew up in. I only need an oversized Sade concert T-shirt and bike shorts for today’s ride.
I put my long hair into two French braids then strap on my helmet, secure my giant water bottle on the frame of the bike, and pop in my AirPods.
A podcast about scammers blasts in my ears as I take the easy ride downhill, coasting by the mid-century homes tucked into the scrubby hillside.
The ancient, leafy oaks and shaggy pepper trees shade me as I zoom under them.
People walking their dogs and pushing strollers wave hello to me and I wave back.
Parts of L.A. can feel like a small town sometimes.
By the time I reach the street traffic of San Fernando, the sun is a little stronger and I take a break to drink a giant swig of water by a gas station under a freeway overpass. Cars almost clip me and I’m not even mad. This is a car town, I get it. I’m a little insect on a bicycle huffing along.
But riding my bike on Saturdays has been the joy of my life. It reminds me of being a kid, riding up and down steep hills in my neighborhood. Before all the heavy things became heavy. How easy it was to feel light as air, free as a bird.
When I finally reach Frogtown, my riding group is already at the coffee shop that sits alongside the L.A. River. Which, thanks to torrential rains this winter, is still flowing in May.
Marcella has my flat white waiting for me with outstretched hands by the time I reach the group.
“My baby,” I say. “Thanks.”
“Mm-hmm,” she says, distracted. “Do you think my neck skin is looking saggy?”
I glance at her neck before I catch myself. “What? Shut up.”
“Pardon, but Nora Ephron wrote an entire essay on this very topic,” Marcella says. “It’s valid.”
The flat white is creamy and hot and exactly what I don’t need after a four-mile bike ride, but I appreciate the second shot of caffeine. “Mar. Your neck looks fine.”
“I bet you’ve never even looked at your neck,” Marcella says with deep distaste. “You have the skin of a toddler.”
“My fave beauty products are endorsed by preschoolers,” I say. “And when I say your neck looks fine, I mean it.”
She pulls out her cell phone and turns on the selfie camera to inspect her neck. “Hm. Maybe. For your birthday this year, let’s go to Seoul and just get a ton of treatments done for ourselves. You can be my translator.”
I’m spared from this conversation when our bike group starts getting a move on.
A ragtag group of adults with varying athletic abilities, we take the path that follows alongside the river, which runs about nine miles from Burbank down to Elysian Park.
Here, in Frogtown, the river is filled with greenery and wildlife, one of the few areas of the river with an earthen bottom.
Thick groves of shrubs and trees dot the center of the river, which has a concrete basin on its sides.
It’s one of those mornings when everything feels exactly right and you can’t imagine ever complaining about anything ever again.
“My thighs are feeling the burn!” Marcella shouts, making several other riders around her laugh.
She’s never given up her class clown mantle.
Mar and I met in a run club almost eleven years ago and we bonded because we both immediately hated it and ditched halfway through our first run to grab martinis at a dive bar.
She made me laugh so hard I almost peed in my overpriced leggings.
We started this bike club as a bit of a jokey nod to our friendship origin story, but the joke’s on us because now we’re obsessed.
The wind whips a long strand of one of my braids into my face and I try to bat it away at the exact same moment someone in front of me slows down on their bike. I grab my handlebars with both hands to avoid them, but I overcorrect and find myself veering off to the right—on the side of the river.
The bike tips over and I instinctively curl my body into itself as I hit pavement. Hard. But it doesn’t stop there—the momentum of the fall sends me rolling down the concrete incline toward the river. After a few painful seconds, I’m stopped by something leafy and green.
I hear shouting voices as I lie there and register what just happened. Shooting pain starts in my right side and my arm feels like I seriously shouldn’t move it. Fuck.
When I try to lift my head, the world spins and my eyes tear up from the disorientation. In my blurry view, I see a pair of feet jogging up toward me. I think it must be one of the other riders, but I realize I’m facing the river.
The feet—in men’s boots—stop by my head. “Hey, you okay?”
It’s a man’s voice and he’s concerned. I wonder if I look busted up. I blink to clear my eyes and try and move to look up at him. “Um, kind of?”
“Don’t move!” He crouches down. I register blue jeans and bright yellow socks peeking over his boots. “Okay, I don’t see any blood.”
I smile and it hurts. “Amazing news.”
A low huff of laughter. Then he says, “Just in case, though, I’m going to call nine-one-one.”
Something about this delivery is very considerate and I feel instantly soothed. “Okay, thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” There’s an amused tinge to it before I hear him on the phone with the operator. The call is quick and the guy is talking to me again before I can zone out. “I’m Ellis, by the way.”
Ellis. Somewhere, buried deep under panic, I understand this name is cute. “Cassia. Hi.”
“Hey, Cassia. So, you’ll be getting some help soon.” He’s crouching down now and when he leans over, I catch a flash of a silver chain beneath a white T-shirt. Then I see his face.
I blink at the sight.
“Thanks, again,” I say as I try not to stare at the devastating combination of wholesome and beautiful in the features of a mixed-race Asian guy in his twenties. Not a day over thirty, that’s for sure.
“Of course.”
Something occurs to me. “Did you run down here? Or are you a river troll?”
Again, the huff of laughter, but now it’s matched with two incredibly deep dimples. “I was working down at the river, actually.”
“Working?” I automatically turn my head to look and wince. His hand shoots out and touches my chin.
“Sorry!” he says as he pulls his hand back. “I feel like you’re not supposed to move your head when you get injured?”
“You’re probably right.”
“Anyway, yeah, I was working and I kind of saw you…roll down here.”
I laugh and it hurts, again. “There was no way that wasn’t funny.”
A pause. “Well, I don’t want to say it was funny until I know you don’t have any head trauma or, like, internal bleeding.”
Then I hear my name being called and thundering footsteps. Marcella.
“Cass!” she shouts as she reaches me, flinging her body to the ground, her helmet thrown off, blond curls flying everywhere. “My god. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m in some pain but I think I’m fine. Ellis called nine-one-one.”
I see her register Ellis then. A tiny lift of a dark brow. “Thanks, Ellis.”
He gets up and steps back. “Of course.”
Marcella’s hand strokes my forehead. That mom touch. “That was fucking gnarly.”
Marcella’s kids have said “fuck” since they were able to talk. I sigh. “I’m kind of embarrassed but mostly too worried I broke several bones and my brain.”
“You look cute despite having rolled down a hill like a Homer Simpson GIF,” she says tenderly.
I try not to laugh, and she slides a look at Ellis again. “Only you would get hit on by a hot guy after a humiliation like that.” For once, her voice is blessedly quiet.
“Get out. He’s, like, twelve.” I also keep my voice as low as humanly possible.
“Who cares? You’ll be done with him before he has to buy school supplies.”
Marcella knows why I don’t date men for longer than a few months at a time. For many years, she didn’t, and thought I was just delightfully slutty. Other than my family, she’s the only person in my life who knows about Daniel and the whole past-life-fated deal.
We hear sirens in the distance. Suddenly, I am super embarrassed. More than when I actually fell. Am I really hurt enough to call an ambulance? It seems like a lot for what’s possibly just a few scrapes.
“You can’t be too safe.”
My eyes whip over to Ellis, who’s gotten close, again. Dimples, again. “You looked like you regretted me calling nine-one-one.”
This is a level of perceptiveness I am not used to from any man and I’m so startled by it that embarrassment melts away to curiosity. “Do you read minds?” It sounds like I’m joking, but I’m not. If I can see past lives, he could one hundred percent read minds.
But he just laughs and runs a hand over his chest. A weirdly confident “aw shucks” gesture. “It’s just how I would be feeling. I’m sure your girlfriend agrees.”
Mar and I look at each other before Mar says, “She wishes. We’re just friends, sorry. I’m married. She’s single.”
Before I can absorb the embarrassment of that pointed remark, an army of medics descends on me and I lose track of both of them in the chaotic good intention.
Authoritative and comforting, they check my body, ask me questions, and gingerly touch my arm and head.
After what feels like forever, it’s determined that I might have a concussion and a sprained wrist. They load me up in the ambulance and Marcella hops in with me.
Before the doors close, I see Ellis standing back, his hands in his pockets.
Sitting up with my vision no longer blurry, I can see him clearly—relaxed posture, broad shoulders, and a great head of wavy brown hair.
His jeans are covered in dirt smudges, as is one part of his cheek.
“Thank you!” I shout out.
Dimples. “No worries!”
The doors shut and Marcella rolls her eyes. “Just bone already.”
The medics laugh and I rest my head back, the movement reminding me of Betty’s morning scalp assault. Birthday week, as per usual, is off to a great start.