“Joy? Hello?”
The voice is female. But Valerian could have accomplices.
“Who is it?”
“Oh my god. It’s me! Open up. I forgot to bring my key.”
Lila.
I sigh with relief, unlock the door, and let her in. She left for work after the movie ended last night, bartending at the local nightclub.
“What’s up with you this morning?” Lila narrows her eyes, regarding me from outside. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Yeah, I’m low on iron,” I lie. “I really need to fix that.”
“Here.” She waltzes into the kitchen and hands me a bottle of liquid iron. “Take this. You’ll feel better.”
“Do you have a natural remedy foreverything?”
“Pretty much, yeah.” She shrugs. “Anyway,” she shouts from her bedroom. “I can’t stay long. I’m heading out on a date with the club’s manager.”
“Oh? At this time? It’s almost—” I glance at the time on my phone and freeze.
Fuck.
Lila stomps back into the kitchen, mirroring my grimace. “I know, right?” She takes the bottle of iron from my grasp even though I haven’t tried it yet. “Not the nicest thing to drink. But you’ll thank me for it later.”
“Where are you going ateight a.m.?”
“For coffee. I’ll be back by noon.” Lila fluffs my hair. “You should get yourself to the beach on a day like today. Do something other than sit on your laptop and write about fashion all day, yeah? Those people don’t deserve your hard work. Not when they’re paying you cents.”
That’s true.
“Okay.” I blow her a kiss goodbye. “Enjoy the coffee. And the date.”
I do exactly what Lila tells menotto do and plonk on the couch, reaching for my laptop. But first, I make sure all the doors and windows are closed. And locked.
‘Eight a.m. sharp. I don’t like to be kept waiting.’
Nerves build in my stomach as I sit and write. Fashion’s always been a release for me. It’s my way of expressing myself. Writing about it brings me joy.
But I can’t even string a sentence together.
Valerian’s ice-cold blue eyes interrupt my train of thought every time I think I’m getting somewhere with this article.
Getting nowhere, I shut my laptop and grab my phone.
8:30 a.m.
I’m safe here. Valerian doesn’t know where I live. There’s over five hundred neighborhoods in LA. The odds of him catching me are pretty low.
And same as last night, I refuse to let men be the reason I stop living.
I saw the way Mom used to curl up on the couch when my father came back late. She stopped asking him where he’d been because she knew he was lying. He wasn’t at work. Even if he was, he was still having an affair with the female colleagues.
Mom couldn’t leave the relationship. She didn’t want to. Plus, she didn’t have any money.
Which is why I left home at eighteen to give us both some. Once we had enough, we got her out of the marriage.