Barbie
LA’s infamous traffic is at a standstill, which is a nightmare, a test of sheer will, and business as usual. I stare blankly ahead and try not to smack my head into the steering wheel and give up on life.
“Maybe we should reconsider if LA is right for us?” I ask blandly.
Bell snorts from the passenger seat. “We should have left an hour earlier—”
“And whose fault is that?” I counter. “Who decided to wake me up this morning—”
“That was my bad.” Bell holds her hands up in mock surrender. “I’m sorry. I should have told you right away when the landlord scheduled the tour.”
I heave out a muted sigh and shove my fingers through my hair. After the all-nighter and the few hours of sleep I managed last night, I’m running on fumes. “It’s fine, Bell.”
“No, it was super irresponsible of me,” she responds. “I was gonna tell you last night when you came home, but I forgot.”
“At least we’ll make it on time for the tour,” I say, pausing for a beat. “Hopefully.”
“At least you get to spend some time with your favorite sister,” Bell says. I glance sideways at her for a split second and return my attention to the road. “Hey.”
“Betty doesn’t give me ulcers.”
“Betty doesn’t give you the stray curly fry from her normal fries, either.” She leans over, grabs my phone from the cup holder, and skips the current song, then the next ten. “Do you have anything from this decade?”
“That song was on the radio last year.”
“Nobody listens to the radio anymore,” she teases. “Here. Let me introduce you to—Who’s Unphotogenic Pilot and why did he text where are you?”
“Bellie, it is rude to read other people’s conversations,” I gasp, extending my arm to reach for my phone.
“And saving the guy as unphotogenic in your contacts isn’t?” she shoots back, slapping my hand away. “He doesn’t even look bad. He’s—hmm. Okay. Why are his shoulders like that?”
“Don’t make fun of how dorky he looks.” The freeway’s still a parking lot, so I turn to glare at her. “Give me back my phone.”
“Pay attention to the road.” Her hand flaps in the air. “I can text him for you.”
“Absolutely not,” I hiss. “Put my phone down—”
“Aw, Barbie, he’s now asking if you’re okay,” she cuts in. “Let me tell Unphotogenic you’re okay.”
“Betty is now my favorite sister,” I declare, and she cackles.
“Just for that, I’m texting Unphotogenic about the road trip incident—”
“If you do that, I’ll tell Betty you were the one who broke her porcelain doll, not Pie.”
“It was creepy,” she protests. “Its vacant eyes followed you wherever you went.”
“Just put my phone down,” I say. “Please?”
“Ugh. Fine.” She lets out an exaggerated sigh and sets it back into the cupholder. “Out of the generosity of my heart, I’ll leave Unphotogenic on read for you.” She pauses. “But really, though. Is he an actual pilot, and can we get free flights?”
I snort. “He’s not a pilot, Bell. It’s… an inside joke.”
In the corner of my eye, my sister lifts a brow. “Oh? An inside joke with whom?” she asks, adding a suggestive note to her voice.
Despite myself, I can feel my cheeks blooming with heat. More so when I can sense the giant, shit-eating grin spreading across her face. I stare pointedly ahead and mutter, “It’s Ethan.”
“Who the fuck is Ethan?” is her immediate and extremely blunt response.
“Carter.”
Her head jerks, and she gasps. “The fucking sheets guy?” She snatches my phone again before I can respond. “This is the guy you’ve been arguing with for over two years now? I wake up at seven a.m. every morning because of him?”
“He’s not so bad,” I reply, biting back my smile. “We hashed things out. My last month at the company should be a lot smoother—”
“Oh my God,” she says in an accusatory tone. “You like him. You like-like him.”
“What are we, in middle school?”
“I know when you have a crush on someone,” she responds. “Your eyes get all googly, you’re all smiley, and—aha—you’re wearing your locket.”
“It goes with my outfit.”
“It goes with everything,” she retorts. “You never wear it unless you’re harboring a big-ass crush.”
“Okay. I wouldn’t say it’s a big-ass crush,” I counter.
“But he was surprisingly really sweet. And funny. And nothing like I had expected.” I trail off at the sudden fluttery feeling in the pit of my chest and stamp the thought from my head.
It does little to stop the sharp pang of melancholy following in its wake.
“Oh my God,” she repeats slowly. “You slept with him.”
“Bellie,” I choke out. “Jesus.”
“I don’t want to know the details,” she continues, “but I’m so happy for you for finally moving on from that shithead. Even if it’s with the sheets guy. When do you plan on seeing him again, and can I break the news to Bets?”
“I…” My bottom lip worries between my teeth. “It was a one-time thing. We don’t have plans to see each other.”
She jerks her head again, this time with a groan as she brings her hand to her neck. “What? Besides Bets, you’re the most monogamous person I know. You’ve never been a one-time thing girl. All of your relationships have been long-term.”
“And none of them worked out,” I remind her. “Look. I don’t mind being friends with him. It’s for the best. I’m gonna be busy with the internship. We don’t live in the same state. And he’s settling down if he hasn’t already. I’m being practical here. Logical. Sensible—”
“Okay, okay.” She shakes her head as she deposits my phone back into the cupholder. “I get it.”
I give her a curt nod, then return my attention to the road. Traffic has barely moved.
“I still think you’re making a mistake, though,” she mutters under her breath. “But what do I know?”
It takes a few minutes for my fingers to release their death grip from the steering wheel, but my chest needs twice as much time to stop feeling so tight.
“So the apartment’s a keeper?”
“Definitely.” I step into my room and shut the door behind me.
“They just need to run a credit check on us, but we can move in as early as the eleventh. I’m so excited, Ethan.
It’s an equal distance from the research center and Bell’s school.
More importantly, my room has a bay window perfect for the cat. ”
The deep chuckle he makes prickles my spine with heat. “Can’t forget about the cat.”
“Of course not,” I say. “Bell and I have to figure out how we’re breaking the news to our sister, but that’s a problem for future us.”
“You haven’t told Betty you’re moving out?” he asks incredulously.
“We will. Just not today.” Taking a seat on the edge of my bed, I lift the orange tabby from my pillow and set him on my lap.
“I know it sounds bad, but Betty’s a mother hen who shuts down at change.
If she had caught wind of our plan earlier, she would have told us repeatedly that we’re not imposing on her and Vincent, that Mom and Dad would want us to stick together, and that we could commute to Los Angeles from Malibu.
I love her, but no. I’m not enduring that morning traffic if I don’t have to. Also—” I end the call.
With my pulse thrumming against my breastbone, I video call him. He picks up instantly, and the smile overtaking my lips is just as quick the moment I see his face—featuring his dimples and laughter lines—on my screen.
“Also,” I continue, switching cameras to give him a quick tour of the office. “This room is not meant to be a bedroom for one person, let alone two.”
“I would have taken your word on it,” he says.
“But then you wouldn’t get to see yours truly,” I reply, beaming at the front-facing camera when I switch back to it. “How’s your new laptop? Oh. Wait. How’s your mom, by the way?”
“Both are good. My new work laptop runs even faster. Mom’s feeling better.
She can walk around the block without too much difficulty.
Actually, I just got back from dinner with my mom and sister,” he says.
“But I need to go take a shower. It was ninety degrees all day, and Mom still doesn’t know how to set the thermostat. ”
Thoughts about a certain hotel shower are halted when it occurs to me that the video call is about to end. “Oh. Okay.” My shoulders are practically deflating on camera. “I’ll talk to you later.”
“I’ll be right back,” he says off-handedly, and my eyes widen. “Let’s circle back to this—”
“I swear to God, Ethan,” I cut him off. “Do not finish that sentence. Work isn’t for another nine hours.”
He laughs. “Tell your cat his human is fun to mess with. I’ll be right back,” he repeats. “Don’t miss me too much.”
My mouth parts as he hangs up on me.
Ethan calls me back like he said he would. Not via video, but I don’t mind since I’m lying in bed with Pie curled in my arms.
Bell is out with her friends. Knowing her, she won’t be back until three in the morning, so I don’t feel as bad as I would have if she were here and I’m on the phone this late into the night.
It’s like the eight-hour flight to South Carolina, where we just talk about everything and anything we can think of, but somehow different. Deeper.
Maybe it’s because I’m learning things about Ethan Carter and not the hot guy on the plane.
He doesn’t like pineapple on pizza, which is okay.
It’s more for me. He doesn’t read certain email chains at work if it has nothing to do with him, but he’s convinced Kelly and Darlene from accounting hate each other.
I think it’s because Darlene’s also into Steve, who I wholeheartedly believe is still having an emotional affair with Kelly, and Ethan is starting to come around on this theory.
He goes the distance for the people he loves.
Literally. During college, he drove two hundred miles to pick Aaron up in the middle of the night.
He never hesitated to do father-daughter dances at Lara’s elementary school either, just so she wouldn’t miss out on them.
There are even pictures—which he sends me before I even ask.
All the photos of a younger, leaner, emo-phase Ethan with flat hair and a little girl with dark brown skin, kinky black curls, and a grin identical to his are sweet.