Track [31] “Everything Has Changed”/Taylor Swift
January
Sun glinted off the recycling truck as it trundled down the street, spilling dead pine branches. Nothing sadder than seeing a spent Christmas tree being hauled away in January.
“Guess the holidays in Burbank are truly over,” I told Frida wistfully as she panted on the sidewalk in her jingle bell harness. Not that we hadn’t milked them for all we could. Even though Dad calls this part of L.A. “the other side of the moon,” the San Fernando Valley was less than an hour from Bel Air, and I saw Dad pretty much every week in December. He took us down Candy Cane Lane to see the lights, and Norma invited me to the Bel Air mansion for Christmas Eve dinner, at which I got to see Starla, Exie, and even Velvet, who’d flown into L.A. briefly between her months-long trips to Spain and Greece with tons of stories—and was still sober.
It was a good night.
Mad Dog still wasn’t speaking to me much. Ever since our conversation about my mother at the lake, he’d been distant, but my quitting service seemed to hurt him personally. That was just a guess—he’d never outright tell me, I supposed. For Christmas, though, he gave me an envelope containing two things: (1) a printed slip of paper that showed my name added to a list of people who were approved to fly on his private plane, and (2) the credit card I’d turned in to Norma when I left the lake back in July.
He said it was to help with school. If I ever needed it. Just in case.
Funny that something as unemotional as a credit card could say so much. To me, it said that he wasn’t willing to dive into the deep end of the pool with me—that was where my dad belonged—but he had invited me to sit in a lounge chair alongside him. And considering how complicated our history might be, that was enough for me.
Anyway, I hadn’t used either of his Christmas gifts yet. But I might.
Now that the holidays were over, it was also the last weekend before my community college classes started back up for winter semester. Frida and I were making the trek down to an enclave of shops. They were on a busy road, at an address that was technically no longer Burbank. And I’d become a devotee of the local bakery there.
Levon’s Donuts and Desserts of Glendale.
It didn’t look like much. Bars on the windows, a sad palm tree surrounded by an iron fence outside. Inside wasn’t much better, a long, narrow shop with 1970s glass display counters on one side and diner tables on the other. The walls were filled with children’s doughnut artwork; kids have some vivid imaginations about doughnut monsters, let me just say.
Normally there were only a couple people lined up at the counter on a Saturday morning, but today, the narrow shop was packed. I got a little panicky that they’d be out of what I wanted, so I quickly jumped into the back of the line with Frida, who panted after a much bigger dog who was standing with its owner two people ahead.
The bakery smelled of fresh spices and sugar, and they hadn’t taken down their Christmas lights. I liked them for that, even though the line moved slowly, and the stack of pink pastry boxes was diminishing as the workers behind the counter filled them, which made me anxious.
I stood on tiptoes, restlessly trying to spy over the line ahead of me. I had to have one of those pastry boxes. Every weekend, I posted a picture of one of those boxes online. It had become like the yearly tree photo with Dad and me—I couldn’t not take a dessert photo.
Also, I was seriously addicted to the cake. It was my reward for finishing a week. And I needed one, because that’s how I had to take things, week by week. School wasn’t easy. Living in a new place wasn’t easy—alone, outside of Mad Dog’s household for the first time in my life. Managing a speech disorder throughout all of it wasn’t easy.
I was juggling a lot. I knew that.
“Why is it so crowded today?” I mumbled in frustration, craning my neck to see the cake display as Frida tried to tug me toward something that captured her attention. She was fidgety, but all I wanted was a slice of caramel Mikado cake. Or maybe the nutmeg, which wasn’t as good as Ms. Makruhi’s, but it was close. “You’d think the world was ending.”
“Armenian Orthodox churches hold holiday services tomorrow and Monday for Christmas and Epiphany,” someone said behind me, where Frida was tugging, her leash wrapped around my jeans.
“Oh?” I turned around to unwind the leash. The person behind me was crouched and petting Frida. Petting? Well. More like they were all up in each other’s business. “Frida,” I complained, and started to chide her for being too familiar, especially with someone who was dressed nice. Expensive shoes. Watch. Funny what you can tell about a person in the flick of a gaze. But then the person looked up.
Fen Sarafian.
Sweet holy night, I hardly recognized him. His usually wild hair was a little tamed, dramatic swoops and swirls, not so much a bird’s nest but a bird penthouse in a hipster neighborhood.
“You’re alive,” he said, pushing a backpack farther up on one shoulder as he stood up to his full height, which was still impressive, compared to mine.
“I am.” Yes, I was alive. Heart pumping. Every part of me was alert. I felt as if I was either going to collapse from weak knees or bolt out of the bakery in fear.
“And you are, uh, too—alive,” I said, recovering. “I’ve been watching your videos online.”
“Oh, yeah. That.” He scratched the side of his neck and scrunched one eye closed. “You’ve seen them?”
“All of them.”
Not sure why he was acting modest. He’d accumulated a sizeable following in no time, posting videos of himself playing short but compelling piano pieces that he’d filmed in the barn on his baby grand. The first time I saw one, I thought I was dying. It felt like he was sharing our private space with the world.
Then I realized it was his space, not ours. That hurt worse.
“You have a legion of fans online,” I said.
“I went viral because of my family name.”
“And because you’re…” Stunning. Beautiful. Dark. Sexy. “Talented.”
He gestured to tell me that the line had moved up. I awkwardly stepped sideways to fill the gap, shifting Frida along, who didn’t want to leave Fen’s brown leather oxfords. Hard to blame her, honestly.
“Why are you here?” I asked.
He blinked and pointed at the counter. “Mikado cake.”
“Me too,” I said, smiling a little. Then I shook my head. “I meant, what are you doing here. In L.A.?”
“Oh. Staying with my grandparents for the holidays,” he said. “I’m driving back after the weekend. Grandma Mina talked me into staying for Sunday service tomorrow. Second Christmas dinner is hard to turn down.”
“Holiday food.”
“You love Christmas.”
“You remembered.”
“I remember everything,” he said in low voice.
My ears warmed, and I was having trouble looking up at his face.
He cleared his throat and asked, “Why are you here? At Levon’s, I mean.”
“Oh,” I said, smiling and looking back to check the line. Shuffling up a little. “Um, I actually have an apartment that’s not too far. It’s Burbank, but that’s just, like, I don’t know, three blocks away?”
“Sure, sure,” he said, gaze wandering over me.
“It’s not my apartment. Velvet arranged it. I’m staying in her friend Hayden’s studio apartment in Burbank while the two of them are touring Europe. They went to Spain this fall, and now they’re in Greece. Anyway, it’s only a fifteen-minute drive from my community college in Glendale—funnily enough. Small world, right?”
“Smaller than anyone realizes. What are you studying?”
“Just general courses, some psych.” I was a little embarrassed to tell him now. “I actually want to transfer to a four-year university and get a music therapy degree. It’s a curriculum that’s part music major, part psychology, and you have to get board certified.”
“Huh, okay.”
“I’d probably be working in a clinical setting and use it to help patients with dementia, children with autism… people who have Parkinson’s? It can help to improve motor function.”
“Maybe people with aphasia?” he said.
I nodded. “Exactly.”
“I’m astounded, truly,” he said, nodding vigorously. “I knew you were in school, but I didn’t know what you were studying. That’s kind of genius, Jane. It’s perfect.”
I felt a little breathless. I didn’t need his approval, but it felt good to have. “Your mom was the one who gave me the idea, actually. She didn’t have a name for it, but she mentioned that she knew someone at her church who had a relative who was studying it. Turns out there are only three colleges in the state that offer the degree. So that’s why I’m starting at community college. Until I can get in next fall.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
He didn’t smile at me—not quite. But when he nodded, it felt like respect. I looked away for a moment, feeling proud and a little happy, but a little embarrassed, too. When I glanced back up at his dark eyes, he was still watching me.
There it was. That spark. The deep feeling in my gut telling me to pay attention. This one. This guy right here. He’s important.
The person behind him accidently bumped into him, and Fen turned around while they apologized, his hand knocking against mine briefly.
A spark. A flame. A bonfire.
“Sorry,” he mumbled.
“Mrm,” I mumbled back, wishing I could reach out and hold his hand. Oh, they were still the same graceful, oddly long fingers. Piano hands.
I looked away.
We moved up in the line.
“How are things at the lake?” I asked, trying to manage the riot of feelings that was flaring up inside me. Everything is fine. Nothing to see here.
He nodded. “Good. Better. My father’s adjusting to the restructuring of the festival biz. Mama’s helping him. The twins are good. They’re all here for the holidays.” He glanced at my eyes. “Eddie’s not, in case you were wondering. He’s with my other grandparents—the Sarafians—at their new house in Vancouver. He spent six weeks at rehab at Wings, then they took him up there to live with them.”
“Permanently?”
He shrugged. “Doubt it, but he likes it there for right now. He’s doing okay, I think. We’re trying to give him some space.”
Something shifted inside my chest and relaxed. That honestly made me happy. Eddie had fallen off of social media, and we’d had no contact whatsoever since I left the lake. But I wanted him to get better.
A striking girl with long brown hair and long lashes entered the bakery and walked up to Fen, threading her arm through his elbow. “There you are. I thought you’d abandoned me. Next time tell me where you’re going before you just take off, please?”
Oh.
All the feelings that had been rioting inside me suddenly went quiet. He looked at her arm and then his eyes flicked to mine.
“Oh, hello,” the girl said. “Did I interrupt something?”
Unexpectedly, tears welled. I tried very hard to control them. My throat constricted, and the room felt as if it were spinning around me.
I mumbled something. At least I tried to, then I took Frida and walked as fast as I could, straight through the shop, to the tiny unoccupied ladies’ room. And once I’d made it inside, I tried to get control of myself.
I’d waited too long.
Too late.
He’d moved on.
What did I expect? We hadn’t seen each other for months. People say they’re going to stay together, but feelings change.
A knock on the door made me jump. Frida barked.
“Jane Marlow? I’m coming in,” Fen said as he cracked the restroom door open. “Everyone best be decent in there. You too, Frida. Calm down—it’s me. Here.”
He handed Frida something that she immediately snatched up and took around to the other side of me as I struggled to get up and fell on my ass.
Lovely.
“Ugh,” I moaned, trying to stop crying. “Go away. You’re not supposed to be in here.”
“It’s an emergency. I’m not a peeper.”
I calmed down a little and wiped my eyes, looking down at Frida. “What did you give her?”
“Cheesy dog biscuit,” he said, leaning back against the door. “They give them away at the counter if you ask for them.”
I made a face. “I’ve been coming here every weekend for two months and no one told me.”
“How did you know Grandma Mina’s favorite bakery?”
His grandmother had told me about it when I met her at the villa, while his father was recovering from surgery. But I didn’t want to tell him that. So I just sloppily pushed myself up to my feet, swatting away his hand when he tried to help me, and then busied myself washing my hands in the sink. “I think the girl matters more.”
“Frida?”
“The girl! Your new girl,” I said, soaping up my hands frantically. “Just go on and tell me who she is so we can get it over with, and I can go back to my life. Because I was fine until you walked in here.”
He snorted. “Oh, you were?”
I splashed water from the sink at him, and he moved to the side.
“You were never mean,” I said. “I mean, fine—I get it. You’ve moved on. But you were never mean.” I turned off the water and pulled too many paper towels from the holder on the wall.
“I can’t take it anymore,” he shouted, throwing up his hands.
“Me either!” I shouted back. “Just go!”
He got in my face. “That’s Emily.”
“I don’t care. Move.”
“My cousin,” he enunciated.
I stopped. Looked up at him. And, oh, I felt the burn coming. Neck. Ears. Cheeks. The works. “Your cousin?”
“You met each other in the villa the same night you met Grandma Mina, but neither of you seems to remember.”
“Your cousin,” I repeated, wishing I could erase the last few minutes of my life.
“More like a buffer, in case things went fubar.”
I didn’t know what he was talking about, but I was so embarrassed, I was afraid to ask.
He tilted his head sideways until he hooked my gaze. “I used her as a buffer because I came here today to find you. I knew from your extravagant dessert photos online that you came here every Saturday morning, but I’ve been sitting at the coffee shop across the street for the last hour and a half, waiting for you to show up.”
I blinked at him.
“If you want me to go, I’ll leave,” he said. “I just felt like if you didn’t want me to know where you were, you wouldn’t have posted those photos.”
“I didn’t know you were following me!”
“You aren’t following me.”
No. I was anonymously stalking him, like a healthy person. But tiny, blissful heart-shaped bubbles were filling up my chest now that I knew he’d been doing the same.
Fen leaned back against the restroom door, studying me. “I absolutely understand why you left the lake now. I didn’t before. But I do now. Triangulation.”
“Tri…”
“It’s when one person pits another against a third person. Like an alliance? I learned about it in therapy. It’s part of what happened to me, Eddie, and my dad. My father ended up playing the role of a mastermind who tried to manipulate both me and Eddie. But basically, I wanted you to be in my alliance, and Eddie did too. That left you being pulled in two directions. Triangulation.”
“Huh.” I tapped my finger on my leg. “How do you fix it?”
“We conspire to murder Eddie. Problem solved,” he deadpanned.
“Right. Any non-murderous fixes?”
He feigned a heavy sigh. “I suppose we could forgive Eddie for his mistakes, ask him to do the same, and try the messy business of getting along. But that’s so much harder, when one deadly road trip to Vancouver would solve all our problems—bonus, we’d get that Bonnie-and-Clyde race from the police that we’ve dreamed about.”
I chuckled a little, then wiped at my eyes. “I start school soon. I think an outstanding murder on my record would interfere with my studies. Maybe that other thing you mentioned?”
“I mean, if you can handle that kind of commitment,” he said lightly. Teasingly. “Sounds like a lot of work to me.”
He was joking, but every move he made was sending wild feelings through me—the way he pushed his curls out of his eye. The way his thumb nervously rubbed against his index finger. Those piano hands… why were they my downfall?
“I didn’t expect you to be here today,” I told him. “I hoped you’d see my posts, but in my reunion fantasy, you just texted or called. This is very overwhelming and unexpected.”
“Do you want me to leave?”
I shook my head vigorously.
“I’ve been in Glendale for a week, and I tried to come here last Saturday, but I chickened out. My grandmother convinced me to give it another shot. And, uh, I had something for you.”
“For me?”
He lowered his shoulder and dropped his backpack to unzip it, then dug around inside. He pulled something out and set the backpack on the floor next to Frida. “Here…”
I accepted what he was offering with a racing heart. And as I inspected it, I could feel his gaze on my face.
It was a plastic sleeve with a single piece of black vinyl inside.
Black Flag. My War. Side 2. I flipped it over. Side 2.
It was the legendary Double Deuce.
I couldn’t even say anything. I tried. I held up a hand to gesticulate my feelings, but all I could do was wave and point at the record.
“You found…” I started. I was going to cry over a record? “You found it.”
“I told you I would,” he said patiently. Proudly.
“The Holy Grail. I can’t believe it. I never thought I’d see it. My dad will bawl like a baby.”
“I’m glad.” He smiled, satisfied, and then scratched his neck and gestured toward the record. “I looked for it every single night online. I emailed. I texted. I bid. I made so many phone calls to the weirdest people. I even talked to a guy long-distance in France. Funny enough, it was my dad who ended up helping me find it. Someone who lives at the lake made me a trade.”
Oh wow. I couldn’t process it. Such a plain, simple object. “Weird to think that if I hadn’t come inside the record store, we might have never…”
“Yeah,” he agreed lightly. “Maybe. But I choose to believe we would’ve found our way to each other.”
We stood there together for a moment, watching each other.
“Is it still here?” I asked. “What’s between us?”
“Do you think it is?”
“I want it to be,” I admitted in a whisper, clutching the record.
We blinked at each other, both holding our breath.
“Let’s find out,” he whispered, and put his hands on my cheeks. As warm as my skin was, his was warmer. He bent low to capture my mouth with his and kissed me. Softly, trembling. It was unsure and a little desperate, but when I kissed him back, everything inside me lit up and caught fire.
It was warm and good, and he was good, and yes.
Oh, yes.
It was still there.
“I’m sorry for leaving you at the lake,” I whispered against his lips. “I had to go.”
“I understand,” he murmured, curling a hand around the back of my neck. “But I still love you, Jane. Just tell me that you still love me.”
“I didn’t realize how much until right this second,” I said. “I don’t think I can wait until next summer to be together.”
He kissed my head over and over, sweet and divine kisses, pulling me closer. “Thank the saints. That was a fucking terrible idea.”
“Can we try to figure out a new plan?”
“I told you I’d wait for you,” he said in a low voice. “All you had to do was tell me you were ready by posting photos of bakery desserts, and I’d come runnin’. Let’s make a new plan.”
“Okay, but I have… reading. Studying. Classes.” Ugh. Word-pixie!
“School.”
“School,” I said, relieved to be in possession of the word again. “I’m on a path with school. I’ve got everything mapped out.”
He let his forehead drop against mine as I held the record against his chest. “Understood. Why don’t we compare notes for future plans and see if we can’t make it work? My grandmother’s couch in Glendale is always free on the weekends if that would help.”
Suddenly, the world looked a little brighter.
“It’s never going to be easy, you know,” he said. “Eddie is my brother, and he’s always going to be there. We’re all connected and share a past, so we have to deal with that.”
A bit of fear flashed through me. I knew what he was saying was right, but it was still scary. I remembered how I felt those weeks after Serj’s surgery, stuck between the two brothers, and I didn’t want to feel like that again. But I knew that wasn’t up to me alone.
“I get it,” I told him. “And I’m willing to put in the work if you are.”
He nodded, and for a moment, jittery excitement stilled my tongue.
“What would you say to some Second Christmas festivities?” he asked. “It’s with my obnoxious family, but we’re a little more behaved now than we were when you last saw us, thanks to a lot of therapy. My father and I can actually stand to be in the same room as each other for up to two whole hours at a stretch. Besides that, I think you’re already used to our brand of kooky.”
Yes, I was. Bring on the kook.
“Oh!” he said, moving back from me to shrug off his jacket as Frida pawed at his leg. “I almost forgot. Your request…”
After some awkward struggling—and some embarrassment on my part—he managed to unbutton the top few buttons of his shirt and tug down the cotton to show me his bare shoulder.
Ophelia was still there.
But her ink had been touched up.
Her eyes were now wide open.