The Comeback(52)



After I showed him the clip on YouTube, Dylan went out and bought me the camera. He said I could use it to tell whatever story I wanted, and he never even said anything when it sat untouched in our spare room after that.

“That’s cool. I can’t wait to hear about it,” Dylan says, pausing at the bottom of the stairs. I don’t give him any more information, and he walks off to find it.

I’m waiting by the front door for him, feeling like a stranger in a home that never really felt like my own, when Wren walks out from the kitchen, wearing yoga pants and a loose tank top with the word NamaSLAY printed across it. She is holding a bag of carrot sticks, and I figure she’s just finished working out.

“Hi, sweetie!” she says, kissing me on the cheek. She smells of carrots and hummus, and for just a second it makes my chest hurt because Dylan probably deserves to be with someone who smells of carrots and hummus and does yoga every weekend.

“I was thinking, we should go out soon. Do you want to go out together?” she asks, squinting as she holds up the bag of carrots, reading something.

I stare at her, unsure of what she means. “Like to a club?”

“I’d love that, Grace. Maybe next week?” Wren says as Dylan appears at the top of the stairs. He’s holding a box and wearing an old gray baseball cap with a faded O, for Ohio State, where his brothers all played football.

“You going anywhere good?” I say, a smile breaking across my face because this used to be Dylan’s lucky flying hat. He wouldn’t get on a plane without it even though I used to tease him mercilessly about it. He had hundreds of these little superstitions, things he half believed in as if he didn’t already believe in enough.

He stands at the top of the stairs, smiling down at me, his face half-hidden under the shadow of the brim. Wren is still reading the carrot packaging next to me, and I feel inexplicably irritated by this. I don’t understand what she can be searching for when surely the only ingredient is fucking carrots. She catches me watching her and smiles, offering the bag to me. I take a stick mainly because I can’t be bothered to decline.

“So, Friday?” she says brightly, and I must appear confused because she shakes her head, laughing. “You and me going out.”

Dylan walks down the stairs and stands at the bottom, next to Wren. I wait expectantly but nobody says anything. In the end I reach out and take the box from his hands.

“Grace?” Wren says eventually.

“Great, yeah. Friday,” I say, turning the box over in my hands.



* * *



? ? ?

I practice using the camera at home, filming in the dark living room. The room is even bleaker on a flat screen. I flip the screen so that it’s facing me, and then I talk into it like I’ve seen the kids on Abbot Kinney do on their phones.

“Hiiiiii, guys, it’s me. I just wanted to tell you about the calorie content of carrots today. Like, everyone thinks carrots are good for you, but in actual fact, do you know how much water is in each carrot you eat? Have you even ever heard of water retention? Because it makes you fat. That’s what water does. Carrots are disgusting,” I say, feeling mean only once I’ve finished.

I walk out onto the porch and hold the camera up to film the ocean. The sunlight flares on the screen like a shot in a Sofia Coppola movie. I wish I knew how to send the clip straight to Dylan, because I think he’d like it.

I hold the camera up, filming a pelican as it plunges into the ocean for fish, when a car door slams behind me. I flip the camera shut because the sound has already ruined the audio of my shot, even though I don’t know what it’s for.

“What are you up to?” Emilia asks, climbing up the porch to me. She is impossibly perfect, her hair the exact color of the sand when the sun hits it.

“Just messing around,” I say, holding the camera by my side protectively. “What’s up?”

“Well . . . my colorist was over and I saw that your car was down here, and I just thought, you know what, I’ll see if Grace wants her roots done too,” Emilia says, smiling innocently at me. I automatically reach for my hair. She must have seen the tabloid photos of me looking like a serial killer.

“Is that your way of telling me I need to get my roots done?”

“Oh, honey, of course not. I’m sure you mentioned your hair last time, and Margot is absolutely the best person in LA to do blondes, and she’s at a loss because she had a last-minute cancellation, which does not happen often, trust me. If I had any inclination to believe in fate, then I think this would be it. She does everyone and she’s an absolute sweetheart. She’s also a healer and will want to talk to you about all her past lives, which obviously I do not believe in, either, but occasionally I do let her read my energy just because it freaks Able out when I tell him. I swear he’s the last person in this city who still semi-believes in God.”

“Where is she?” I ask, the irony of her last statement not escaping me.

“She’s waiting in the car. Can I tell her to come out?” Emilia says, smiling sheepishly, and, of course, she does it all in a way that makes me think it was all my idea and that I’m actually doing them both a huge favor, because everything she does is seamless, designed to make you feel as special as she is. I realize then what an unusual opponent Emilia would be, the type who could slip under your skin when you least expect it.

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