Luckily, the place was dirty enough to keep me distracted for hours.
And when I made my way outside, I found that the cement around the pool was covered in blood, so I got my ass to work on that, then pool maintenance, and, finally, back to my laundry.
By the time the place was shining, Vas was back after his talk with Fallon, declaring that instead of being pissed, he was now officially a prospect. Not long after that, it was clear that the grapevine was doing its thing, because our old man flew in to check on Vas. And not far behind him, our mom.
It all should have been enough to distract me.
But my mind kept wandering back to a little duplex.
And the woman inside it who had started to mean more to me than she should have so quickly.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Carmen
Things worked at warp speed in daytime television.
Within four days of her audition, Sofia needed to fly out to California for table reads and rehearsal.
While she was there, obviously, her plan in her free time was to lock down a place to live with, of course, Hammy. She became depressed immediately after Sofia didn’t come home the first night. There was no way I could have Hamster stay with me when she missed Sofia so much.
As for me, well, I got a taste of what it would be like if she was gone.
It was… quiet.
I didn’t realize how much liveliness Sofia brought into the house, how much her chatter filled the air—talking to me, talking to Hammy, singing to herself.
I filled the free time I used to spend with her by carefully packing up and labeling everything I knew she would want to bring with her: clothes, toiletries, some favorite books, blankets, and sentimental items.
She wanted me to keep most of the other things around for when she came back. But I knew deep down in my bones thatshe wasn’t going to be coming back. She was a woman meant for California. For never-ending summers, fellow actors, and people who would appreciate her sunshine.
I knew it.
She probably knew it too.
She just didn’t want to admit it to me yet.
Knowing Sof, she was feeling guilty enough about a temporary relocation. She wouldn’t let herself consider a permanent one. Not until she was there and settled, at least.
As for me, well, I was sad.
About my sister leaving, sure. And Hammy. But it was more than that. It was the lack of a hyperfocus to distract myself from the bottomless well of grief inside me. And, yes, it was also the loss of Rune.
That last one was so absurd that I did everything in my power to tamp them down whenever those thoughts surfaced. Because how the hell could I feel thelossof someone I’d only spent a few days around? How was it possible that I was suddenly thinking about him more than my best friend? More than my sister? More than my mom? And all the losses that linked me to them?
I tried to convince myself it was simply the sexual attraction, that while we got to explore a little, we hadn’t gotten a chance to have sex and work through the lingering attraction between us. Hormones and biology made for a much more compelling case than any kind of actual connection.
Even if I found myself fantasizing more about being curled up with him watching movies than I did about us actually hooking up. I even found myself occasionally imagining him doing random little life tasks: scrubbing the baseboards, taking out the trash, ordering dinner so I didn’t even have to think about what I wanted.
“I don’t know what to say,” Sofia said, teary-eyed on the porch after we’d already said goodbye no fewer than three times.
She had a trunk and passenger seat full of her belongings and a blanket and pillow paradise on the backseat for Hamster.
She’d only come home for one night. With the shooting schedule, and refusing to put Hammy in the cargo hold on a plane, it meant that she was going to need to road trip it. And it was a forty-something hour drive to the other coast. That put her on the road, on the low end, for seven days. If she decided to stop at some attractions, maybe ten. She started shooting in twelve.
It left her just enough time to move into her new place, get it somewhat set up, and work out a plan to have someone walk Hamster while she was shooting.
It meant I got next to no time with her.