Crashed (Mason Brothers 2)

“Jesus, it sounds fucking awful.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that the most popular place to eat in my neighborhood was the Cheesecake Factory, and that literally nothing was gluten-free. “It’s been five days, and I’m climbing the walls,” I said, getting down to business. “I need work.”

“Honey,” Nancy said, “the lingerie business isn’t exactly centered in Butt-Fuck Michigan. You knew that when you left.”

I gave up on the thermostat. It was ten o’clock in the morning, it was already hot outside, and it wasn’t much cooler in here. Every room in this house was hot. I’d barely slept for days. “There are catalogs east of Colorado. I know there are. Someone, somewhere, must want a bra modeled. That person needs me.”

“I know, babe. You can sell bras all day every day and twice on Sunday. But work isn’t thick on the ground. You might have to get a day job.”

This had already crossed my mind. Like just about everyone else in L.A., I had done plenty of bartending and waiting tables while I waited for my big modeling break. I was a walking cliché. “I know. And I will. But I need you to find me real work.”

“The fact is, I don’t really do long distance,” Nancy said. “I told you that at our goodbye dinner before you left.”

Had she? We’d both been drunk. Or at least I had. Nancy was only a few years older than me, and she was slim and gorgeous. Why she wasn’t a model herself, I had no idea. But she was a killer agent, and I’d been happy to land her. “I don’t remember you saying anything like that.”

“I did. After the margaritas and before the gin. I love you, gorgeous, but business is business. You know how it goes.”

I stood paused in the middle of my grandma’s suburban bedroom, sweating in the heat, surrounded by dated furniture and flowery window treatments. “Are you… Are you dumping me?” I asked her.

“Not dumping,” she corrected me. “I’m staying in alignment with my goals. My goals being to have working clients who make me money. You don’t fit those goals anymore, honey, so I have to realign.”

She didn’t even sound sorry. We’d worked together for three years. I scrubbed a hand through my damp hair. “What about my goals?”

“Well, what are they?” Nancy asked me reasonably. “If your goal was a modeling career, then leaving L.A. was not in alignment. Perhaps you should re-center and reconnect with your inner self.”

“And in the meantime, don’t call you.”

“You know it isn’t personal.” As if on cue, there was a beep on the line. “That’s my new girl. She says she’s Giselle’s second cousin, but I think she’s lying. I have to go.”

I hung up and tossed the phone on the bed. Looked around.

I hadn’t known my grandmother. My mother called herself a “free spirit”—basically, she was a hippie. She’d met my father and gotten pregnant at nineteen. The two of them had packed a van and driven away from Michigan forever, on a quest to find themselves. They’d left my grandmother behind and never brought me back.

Now it was twenty-seven years later. My parents hadn’t worked out, of course. Mom was in Colorado, and Dad was in Texas of all places, where he ran an incense shop and lived with a different hippie woman—one much younger than he was. And I’d drifted to L.A., where I was hoping to make it as a model.

I wasn’t the best-looking woman in L.A. I wasn’t the sexiest, or the skinniest, or—this one hurt—the most talented. In high school in Colorado, I’d been pretty. In the sea of gorgeous people in Los Angeles, I was nothing much. I’d lived in a series of apartments not much bigger than this bedroom, with roommates who sometimes creeped me out, working occasional bar jobs and going on auditions. I’d gone to L.A. out of desperation, thinking I could be free of my shitty life in Colorado, where I had nearly crashed and burned. I’d resurrected myself and run. And it had been fun, for a while.

At least, I thought it had. But the years had ground by one after another, and my career had gone nowhere. Neither had my love life, because L.A. was full of narcissistic jerks. In a way, I was just existing, and I didn’t know what to do about it. Most of the time it didn’t feel like anything much was wrong, but that was because I was intentionally numb.

Then my grandmother died and I found out she’d left her house to me. She was still mad at Mom, so she’d cut her out of the will—everything she had skipped a generation and went to me.

And I hadn’t thought twice. I’d taken it. I’d packed my bags and left without a backward glance.

If your goal was a modeling career, then leaving L.A. was not in alignment. Perhaps you should re-center and reconnect with your inner self.

Nancy was heartless, and she was full of L.A. bullshit-speak, but part of me wondered if she had a point.

I sighed and dropped my robe. It was time to see if the Cheesecake Factory was hiring.

Four

Tessa

* * *

“Millwood isn’t so bad,” the woman from down the street said. “I mean, we’re not rich, so we’re not assholes.”

We were standing in my driveway. I’d been about to get into my car and drive to the nearest batch of big box stores and chain restaurants to apply for jobs when these two women had walked by. They were in their mid-thirties, both wearing capri-length yoga pants and tank tops, their hair tied up in ponytails. In L.A., these women would be wearing $500 yoga outfits and weigh around ninety-five pounds. In Michigan the outfits were Walmart and the number on the scale was higher, but it turned out they were both pretty cool.