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  Keanne took my hand and gripped it tight. “It sounds like they did a great job, Becca. Really. I can’t imagine how hard it was in Compton. I never had to really struggle. My parents have sort of taken care of everything. I didn’t have any risks recording my album, no problems booking shows or the tours, and the necessity of success has always been an afterthought. If I’d failed at music, I always could have done something else. Maybe fashion, maybe acting, maybe underwater basket weaving, it didn’t matter. But it sounds like there was a lot of pressure on you.”

  I gave him a smile, to let him know it was okay, but I knew that I couldn’t really convey all that with just a look. “My cousins, well...a lot of them weren’t so lucky. My parents didn’t coddle me, though. I remember being just twelve and visiting one of my cousins in juvie, juvenile detention...he was only three years older than me but he’d started rolling with the wrong, or rather, “banging”.”

  “You mean...” I head the apprehension in Keanne’s voice, heard how he was scared of saying the words that we both knew applied to my cousin, because he didn’t want to offend me.

  I tried to break the ice with a laugh and rolled my eyes at how corny I sounded. “That’s right. He was in a gang. They’d tried to rob a bank, after seeing some crime movie about gangsters, and they’d failed...but they shot a few people, who died. He was put in for manslaughter, and he didn’t get parole. He kept up his violent ways even behind bars.”

  “That must have been rough for you to watch,” he said, squeezing my hand hard.

  “Yeah, it was, and – ” I started, but Keanne cut me off as he started to get up from the sofa.

  “Let me go get some paper,” he said.

  “Paper? What?”

  “To take notes. This’ll make great material for my next album,” said Keanne, sitting back down, and I tried to pull my hand away, but he held onto it.

  “What the fuck, Keanne? I open up to you, and it’s just a ploy to get rap material? What do you think I am, just some girl that exists to spill out ‘secrets of the hood’ or something? Life in Compton was not easy, I’ll be the first to say it, but I’m not about to let you try and exploit me, or the memories I have of people close to me, for a quick buck. What the fuck is your problem?”

  “Calm down, jeeze, you’re being such a stereotype. Don’t be ratchet,” he said, trying to soothe me as I finally managed to get his hand off of mine.

  “You’re calling me a stereotype, when you’re the one doing the stereotyping? I never thought I knew you, Keanne, but I always hoped I misunderstood you. I always hoped that maybe, just maybe, I was wrong about you, and that there was more than met the eye. But, I guess I was wrong.” I was about to get up from the sofa to leave when I saw a shadow of another person in the entranceway.

  “Who the fuck is this ho?” asked the woman in the doorway, a woman I recognized all too well. Curvaceous body? Long, pink and blue hair? Printed leggings and ridiculously high heels that cost a fortune?

  It was none other than Lana Minashian. The woman Keanne had been linked to in the tabloids, the one he’d told me was “just a friend”, the one he said he wasn’t that into, the one he said was really just a friend with benefits, but that he said was his girlfriend for publicity purposes, so American audiences would like him more.

  “Babe, I can explain,” started Keanne, but Lana shut that shit down.

  “What the fuck is your problem? You bring some bitch up into my house?”

  “This is Lana’s house? What the fuck, Keanne?” I wanted to scream, but I didn’t.

  Lana grabbed me by the shoulder. “Bitch, what the fuck did you just say to my man?”

  “I just meant –” I started, but I was stopped: with a slap to the face, by none other than Lana.

  “Who the fuck you think you are? You think you can come between me and my man? You think you can do it in my house? Bitch, you are wrong. I should beat your ass,” she threatened, and I knew I didn’t have to hear more. I started to walk out of the room and she grabbed at my shoulder again. I tried to shrug her off, but I couldn’t, as she pulled me hard and turned me around to slap me again.

  “Keanne, get her off me!” I yelled, but he just sat on the tufted bench with a smirk on his face, as if he was enjoying this show. I should have known better: he’d always tried to start this kind of shit at strip clubs, trying to get the strippers to fight over tips in the champagne room, trying to see how far he could make people go. I’d been a fool to think that I was any different.

  My mom didn’t raise any fools.

  My dad didn’t raise any pussies.

  I caught Lana’s hand midair and stopped being the victim. I knew what I had to do was risky but that I still remembered a thing or two that my dad had taught me back when I was a kid, about how to deal with people that might hassle me on the way home, and while Lana was focused on the fact I’d dare touch her hand, dare stop her from smacking me, I swept one of my feet under her calves.

  I’d never been more grateful to be wearing flats than I was that day, because with that, David slew Goliath, and Lana hit the ground. I took my opportunity and fled down the spiral staircases and past the car which had brought me to the mansion. I had no idea where I was but I didn’t stop running until I saw a green sign, and as Gatsbyian and cheesy as it sounds, I knew that it was my safe harbor, that if I could reach it, I was going to be okay. Things were always okay at Starbucks.

  I opened up the app as soon as I entered the door to Starbucks and ordered my usual, without taking a breath. “SkinnyCinnaDolceMachiatto”, I said all at once, flashing my Starbucks app barcode at the red scanner as I took a seat on a leather couch, new but meant to look like it was worn, and then, I opened up my contacts member to call Jason.

  I hesitated, for a second, but for what seemed like the longest second of that day. I didn’t know what I would say, but it didn’t matter. I just needed him, so I pressed the call button and he answered in seconds.

  “Hello, Becca?” he asked, as if everything was alright, but to him, it was.

  “Hey, Jason, sorry if I caught you at a bad time, I just...I need someone to talk to,” I said, biting my lower lip.

  ‘Becca, where are you?” he asked softly, as if he knew I wasn’t okay, and soon, a tear started to well in my eye, and I wiped it away before it could form.

  “I’m at a Starbucks in Beverly Hills, I just – ”

  “I just hailed a cab. Text me the location, I’ll be there in five.”

  “Jason, you don’t have to...” I started, but he’d already hung up. I looked at my receipt, texted him the address, and sure enough he was there just as my drink was ready.

  Except Jason wasn’t dropped off by a cab...

  He was dropped off by a limo.

  Chapter Twelve:

  I HAD NEVER SEEN THIS JASON BEFORE, AND HE WAS AS DIFFERENT AS KEANNE HAD BEEN THE SAME. In khaki tailored trousers, a pink dress shirt, striped red and gold tie, and a navy blazer with the sleeves rolled up, Jason didn’t look like the bartender I’d been smitten with at Club Grit. He was another man entirely, as he whipped the tortoiseshell Ray Bans off his head, stashed them in a leather messenger bag, and walked straight up to me.

  I put down my drink as he walked over and Jason wrapped his arms around me. “Becca, what happened?” he whispered, before I even had a chance to say anything. I kept my head on his shoulder and inhaled the smell of expensive brandy, of tobacco, of spices from foreign lands, before pulling away.

  “I...went to see Keanne,” I admitted, looking away, but gently, with the back of his hand, he turned my face towards his.

  “Did he hit you?” he demanded. I saw his pupils enlarge quickly.

  “What? No, his...his girlfriend did,” I said, blushing out of shame, which I knew would make the slap more prominent, but it didn’t matter. I had no secrets around Jason, not anymore.

  “His girlfriend?” asked Jason. “I thought he was going to ask you out.”

  “I had no idea he
was dating anyone, but I went to his house, and he started asking me weird questions about my life before UCBH, about my life back in Compton. Then, he said he wanted to use my stories for material on his new album. I told him off, but that’s when Lana appeared...Lana Minashian,” I said, pressing against my cheek.

  “And she slapped you. Hard, it looks like,” he said. “I’m going to get you some ice, really quickly.” He got up from the sofa and walked to the cashier, where he paid with cash and left all his change as a tip, so the barista would push his order to the top of the queue. He picked it up within seconds, bringing over what looked like an old bag used for fruit slices that had been filled with ice and knotted off at the top, held inside a plastic cup. He pressed the bag against my cheek and I winced. It felt so cold, but it was a relief from the stinging red pain that had turned into a dull but steady reminder of what had happened in Keanne’s – or rather, Lana’s – mansion.

  “Did he try to sexually harass you again?” he asked gently, but I could tell behind his eyes he was seething with rage, although he looked calm on the outside.

  “N-no, not since I said no to him on the plane,” I assured him.

  “You’re not going to work for him this summer, are you?” he asked.

  “Of course not, not after this.”

  “That might be the only good thing to have come out of all of this. I dread to think of what would have happened if you were away with him on tour and something like this happened. I won’t always be a cab ride away,” he said, but I pressed my hand against his hand, the one cradling a bag of ice on my cheek, and looked him in the eyes.

  “Except you didn’t take a cab,” I said. That was the elephant in the room: the secret of why Jason had come looking different than usual, why he’d come in a limo.

  “Yeah, I was at lunch with my parents when you called me,” he said sheepishly.

  “And your parents have a limo?” I asked, incredulous. It’d be easier to believe that Jason moonlighted as a stripper or worked for a limo service.

  “Well, they have a driver, and I told them it was an emergency, that I had to go, so I borrowed it. Commandeered it, I guess.” Driver? Commandeered? Jason not only looked like he belonged on a yacht, he was starting to sound like it.

  “Are they going to be mad at you?” I asked. I hadn’t even been formally dating Jason for more than a week and already, I’d possibly managed to leave a poor impression on his parents, on parents I hadn’t actually met.

  Jason gave me a genuine but small smile. “No, of course not. My parents...they trust me to do what’s right. They’ve raised me well, just as your parents did,” he said, shifting the bag of ice, although my hand followed with it. Jason remembered what I’d told him of my parents, months ago, unlike Keanne, who’d only thought to ask this afternoon. He’d remembered how important my mom and dad had been in my life, and how, in a place like Compton, where a lot of families are broken before kids are even old enough to know what a family is, that having parents in one’s life isn’t a given, how I’d really and truly been blessed to have them care so much about me, and be able to give me a life better than the ones they’d had.

  “Is that why you’re dressed up today?” I asked, distracting myself from thoughts of Keanne and what had happened by talking about Jason, the one who’d been there for me when Keanne had left and the one who was now here for me now that Keanne had ruined everything.

  “Sorry about the monkey suit,” he said. “My usual clothes wouldn’t exactly fly where my parents like to eat.”

  “What do your parents do?” I asked.

  “They work in television,” he said plainly, but that’s when my eyes widened.

  “Wait, are your parents...Aaron and Eileen Darryl?” Everyone in southern California knew about them: the married newscasters who had worked as reporters all their lives, doing everything from gonzo style journalism to taking assignments in war zones. Their lives had been exciting and glamorous, in an era before people cared more about taking pictures of their reflections than about self-reflection, in a time before everyone carried a phone and a miniature computer in their pocket, in a world where important things had been changing.

  “Yeah. Remember when I told you everyone calls me Jason Frank, using my middle name as my last name? That’s why I go by that, so people don’t meet me and assume just because my parents are famous, I’m some spoiled rich kid.”

  “But you’re not,” I said quietly. “That’s not who you are.”

  “It’s who I was,” he said, candidly. “We haven’t really talked about who I was before you met me. I went to private schools, and then, I went to Harvard, for a degree in finance. I was supposed to get my MBA, but I decided I wanted to do the whole “bohemian” thing and “slum it”, as they say. I know, I sound like a douchebag right now.”

  “Definitely,” I said, honestly. If I had parents that could bankroll my life as a professional student, I would have taken it. He’d had so much offered to him that he had chosen not to take, that he could afford not to take.

  “I know. Well, I started to run out of trust fund money, pretty quickly,” he said, and I rolled my eyes. Of course he’d had a trust fund. Of course. “I was in India when I realized that maybe I needed to come back to the states and get a real job. I got a job at Club Grit as a bouncer and started putting myself through mixology school, so in about half a year, I started being a bartender. I kept taking classes and worked my way up.”

  “And that makes enough for the fancy clothes and apartment?”

  “Not exactly. My parents heard about me turning my life around, about me getting more responsible, so they told me that they’d match me, dollar for dollar, for my master’s program. The apartment is actually a condo that my parents are keeping for investment purposes, so it’s not mine exactly, and I don’t pay rent on it, I just make sure not to abuse it. I don’t hold parties in it or anything.”

  “Except with me,” I joked.

  “Actually, that is true. You’re the only person I bring over, socially, on a regular basis.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well...you’re not just my girlfriend...you’re my best friend, Becca.”

  “R-really?” I stuttered. “What about your friends from college?

  “Trust me, there’s some great people that go to Harvard, but when I was there, they weren’t the ones I was meeting. I was associating with the wrong kind of crowd, the worst of rich kids, the kind that spend hundreds of thousands on bottle service and drugs without batting an eye. I should have taken my studies more seriously, worked the connections, and got my degree. I would have had a job lined up after graduation, and I’d be juggling stocks instead of bottles at Club Grit. Instead, I ended up around other kids like me.”

  “Kids like Keanne,” I said quietly. I had never thought I’d associate Jason with Keanne’s world, because Club Grit was nice, but it wasn’t the sort of place Keanne went, the sort of club where caviar was complimentary. If it wasn’t for Jason’s last name and the clothes he was wearing today, I would have never believed that he was from the same stock as Keanne, with rich parents that had paid for a decadent lifestyle, but Jason wasn’t a liar...unlike Keanne.

  “Kids that make Keanne look like a chump,” he said with a chuckle. “You really wouldn’t have liked me before, Becca. It’s good we met later on in my life. I’m twenty four and only now am getting my shit together. You’re twenty one and already have it down. You’re really too good for me.” Jason took his hands in mine and looked up at me. “How about...we go somewhere? Somewhere far away from Beverly Hills?”

  “I thought you put your crazy days behind you, Jason.”

  “That doesn’t mean we can’t run away for a day...when was the last time you went to Santa Monica?”

  “The boulevard?” I asked, confused.

  “No, like, the pier, the one that boulevard leads to,” he said with a laugh. “Do you have anything else you absolutely have to do today?”


  “No, I expected the meeting with Keanne to take longer.” Hearing Jason stay calm and able to laugh at the situation made everything seem okay. So much had changed today in terms of the ways I’d thought about the two men that I thought my heart was torn between. Keanne was now out of the picture and Jason was now the one whose arms I was running into.

  Unlike Keanne, he not only could catch me, but wanted to.

  Jason pulled me close before tilting my head up and giving me a kiss. My face burned, for an entirely different reason. Jason wasn’t slapping me the way Lana had, but the way he was making me feel...it was like I was on fire. It was a kiss different than any other we’d had, and I had a feeling that it’s what a kiss was supposed to feel like.

  Jason led me out to the bus stop and we got on the 704 bus, down Santa Monica Boulevard, chatting like we were just a normal couple, and for those forty five minutes, we were.

  Chapter Thirteen:

  IT WAS THE STEREOTYPICAL FIRST DATE: although Jason and I had already slept together and spent countless hours together, actually going out as a couple, and not just for coffee or for a movie, but formally as a pair of people that were dating, felt weird and alien to me. It was a good weird, the kind of discomfort that came with something like breaking in a pair of shoes, the kind of different that meant something was working. That didn’t make it any less awkward.