IN THE NEXT 3 HOURS OR SO, Nixon finds herself behind the wheel with a cheesy roll-up from Taco Bell in hand. The car is filled with the soft hum of Ed Sheeran songs, and Christopher is fast asleep beside her.
She can't help but savor the quiet companionship and the warmth of the Californian sun across her skin. When she was younger, she and her parents would sometimes go on roadtrips to Los Angeles over long weekends. She vaguely remembers an old pie shop that her dad loved in Los Feliz, which sat opposite to her mom's favorite bookshop. They'd spend hours along that little street, with her parents showing her record shops and teaching her to love music. The thought of going back without her parents terrifies her, because it makes everything so real.
As she stares out ahead, she realizes - this is her life now. No mom, no dad, no friends, no one in the world looking for her unless they're people who want her money or head. She feels as if something's sinking in her stomach, and a stray tear escapes her eye at the thought.
The loneliness hits her all at once, with the adrenaline from the past two days leaving her body and the quiet engulfing her like an old friend. She stares ahead, right into the beautiful, terrible Californian wasteland, and she wonders if she'll even make it out alive.
🍃
"Hey, hey," Nixon says, tugging at Christopher's sleeve. "Wake up."
Christopher stirs groggily, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "Are we in L.A.?" he asks.
"Yeah," Nixon exhales, staring outside. She's parked them at the carpark near the pie shop, and the sights and sounds that were once so distant have come back to life. Los Feliz is almost exactly the same - just as vibrant, if not more so. "There's a really good pie place here."
"Here?"
"Los Feliz," she clarifies.
Christopher nods, obviously still sleepy, as he drinks in the Los Angeles air. "So you have been here."
"A lifetime ago, yeah," she says. "You down to try some pie?"
With Christopher's sleepy nod, the two stumble out of the car. They order a banana cream pie and a pecan pie at the counter, as per her request, before sliding into a booth. She can't help but remember her little family of three and her mom's laughing eyes and the way her dad would always put cream on her nose. Her mom loved the pecan pie, and her dad's favorite was literally anything with bananas. Nixon only realizes that she's spaced out when Christopher says, "Hey."
She looks up.
"What's going on in there?"
Nixon smiles, fiddling with a napkin on the table. "I used to go to this place with my parents," she says, surprising herself again with the honesty. "We'd drive to L.A. on the long holidays and stay at my relative's place, and we'd go to Los Feliz for the pie and the bookstore across the road. My dad loved the banana cream pie, and he'd always feed a spoonful and put a dollop of whipped cream on my nose. And I'd pretend to be irritated but I loved it."
Chris offers her a small smile. "When was the last time you were here?"
"Too long ago," she says, pressing her lips together. "Before my dad died, he said he wanted to come back here because of all the food he missed. So we ordered the food and everything because he was too weak to move and it just...it didn't make it on time." A stray tear escapes from the corner of her eye and she laughs awkwardly, brushing it away. "Okay shit, sorry."
"Don't be sorry," he says.
Nixon shrugs, looking away from his damn eyes and turning instead to look out the window. "You have this nasty ability of making me honest," she laughs.
Before Chris can reply, the pies arrive and their attention is immediately diverted. The pies look just as good as she remembers, and she can't help but think of how jealous her parents would be if they could see her now.
"I've a crazy idea," Christopher says, a small grin growing on his lips. He nudges her with his foot, earning her attention and allowing the sadness to slip from her face. "We should go to all the places your dad would've wanted you to visit. Kind of like visiting for him."
Nixon laughs, shakes her head. "Aren't you ever the hopeless romantic," she remarks.
He laughs, shrugging his shoulders as if admitting defeat. "Well, we all have our weaknesses, don't we?"
She can't help the smile that's tugging at her lips, and she looks at Chris like it's the first time she's ever looked at someone. He is positivity personified, and she doesn't think she's ever seen such a beautiful thing in a person before. She's always been lively, or at least that's what she'd been told, but not necessarily positive. If anything, her past had forced her into a spiral of cynicism that contrasted every smile and kind word that Christopher had to offer. To her, it feels like sunshine drips from his very being, and clears her rainclouds, even if just a little bit.
"What?" he asks, mouth full of pie.
"What?" she echoes, looking out at the window and scooping a generous helping of pie into her mouth.
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
Her cheeks heat up with embarrassment at being caught and she waves her fingers dismissively. "You've pie on your cheek."
He frowns and brushes his cheek. "Here?" he asks, and Nixon smiles, shaking her head. He brushes his cheek several more times, frowning. Nixon lets out a laugh and leans forward, slapping some cream onto his cheek.
Christopher looks at her like he's never felt so betrayed in his life, and Nixon can't stop the bout of laughter threatening to spill from her lips. She presses a hand over her lips, in a miserable attempt at suppressing her laughter. "You look like an idiot," she chokes, eyes watering.
"Are you actually 9?" he deadpans.
This makes her laugh even harder, and she's doubling over, half-delirious from exhaustion, when he reaches over and wipes a chunk of cream onto her cheek.
She looks into his eyes, surprised. The two of them stare right into the eyes of the other - and it's barely five seconds when Nixon breaks into bouts of laughter, tears trickling down her cheeks. "I think I'm going crazy," she confesses, once she's finally sobered up. She looks up at Chris, positively beaming and radiating happiness. In that moment, he swipes out his camera and takes a picture of her.
"Did you just - did you just take a picture of me?"
He glances down at his phone, a smile tugging at his lips. Eyes narrowed, she leans over and snatches it from his hand.
She barely recognizes herself in the photo. She looks as she always does - strands of dark brown hair escaping from her ponytail, glasses skewed crookedly on her nose, brown skin tanned a shade darker from the Californian heat. But her lips are spread in a smile so wide that she's quite sure it can't be her. She's laughing so hard that the smile even reaches her dark eyes, corners creased in happiness. Tears threaten to spill over as she looks at the picture, feelings of betrayal and guilt building up inside of her.
She shoves the phone back to Chris, saying, "I look delirious. Delete it."
He looks at the picture. "Oh, I don't know...I think the whole delirious look is a lot better than the I'm-going-to-shoot-you thing."
"If you don't delete that, I actually might kill you."
"I don't believe you."
Nixon narrows her eyes and points a finger in what she believes to be a menacing manner. "Believe it."
"I just can't take you seriously. Not without that damn toy gun."
A smile breaks out on her face, amused by his remark. When he sees that he's successful, he says, "That's more like it. You really ought to smile more, you know. You've got a beautiful smile."
The compliment takes Nixon off-guard, and she's left speechless. As if sensing the awkwardness, Christopher adds, "For a serial killer - that is."
She barks out a laugh. "You know what they say about us serial killers - it's the smile that really lures in our victims."
"Really?" he asks. "I thought it was the glasses."
Nixon throws up her hands in defeat. "Oh, so you've got something against my glasses now?"
He shrugs, leaning forward and swallowing some pie. "It just seems so off-brand, y'know. Like the first time I saw you, you had this whole mysterious bad girl look going on. And then I find out you're this crazy runaway, dark-past chick. And then, finally, I see you in glasses and a tee-shirt that's way too big on you, and you're immediately so much less intimidating. And with that stupid streak of pie across your cheek? You honestly look like a 9 year old."
Nixon stares at him, completely unamused. "Are you actually finished?"
"The whole toy gun thing didn't help either," he adds. "Now I'm done."
She rolls her eyes and scoops the last bit of pie into her mouth. "Then let's bolt. There's still so much of LA to see."
Christopher grins, tossing a $20 bill on the table and standing up. He grins, all chivalrous-like. "After you, madam."
Unamused, she shoves him and says, "Just walk, asshole."
🍃
Chris and Nixon spent the rest of the afternoon roaming around Los Feliz, talking about nothing and anything. As the heat beats down on them, she finds it strangely comforting to find a friend in this stranger. They'd only met yesterday, and yet, their growing friendship felt completely natural. Nixon tries to force herself to feel disconcerted, but in truth, she couldn't be more at ease. In that moment, it feels nice to pretend that this is her life. That she's just a girl, with a friend, lost in a beautiful city.
"God, I can't believe a place like this exists," Chris breaths.
"You've never been to LA?"
"Oh, I have. Just not this part."
Nixon looks around, taking in the mixture of the young and old, the walls full of graffiti from decades and days ago. It was a living juxtaposition, beautiful in its contrasts and alive in its vibrance. "I forget we come from such different worlds," she confesses.
Chris smiles, but it's tinged with sadness, and he nudges her. "At least they collided," he murmurs.
"What?" she asks, distracted by the sights and sounds.
"I said - "
"Oh my god, it's here," she interrupts, running across the road and receiving several angry honks.
"Nixon!"
She pauses outside the storefront - full of vinyl records, a box that says "Random Free Shit" and another labelled "Leave Something to Get Something." In other words, it looks exactly the same as she remembers.
"Jesus, Nixon," Chris breathes. "You could've gotten run over."
"This place," she says, taken aback by the memories coursing through her veins, by the history pulsating from this small, dusty shop. "My parents met here. We'd always go back here...the owner was a family friend. I-I can't believe it."
Christopher is quiet beside her, letting her take her time to process everything. She steps inside and is immediately greeted by old hits - Across the Universe hums from the vinyl player, and random mementos stock the shelves, from homemade t-shirts and secondhand books to quirky mugs and hand-sown notebooks. She sees a snapshot of the past in that moment, snippets of two teenagers meeting, snippets of them having a little girl, snippets of long weekends and hours in a tiny shop. Tragedy and heartbreak and pure magic all at once.
She whirls around, amazed to see that even if everything seems to have fallen apart, these places still stand - these places that are living photo album and bursting with nostalgia and memories. An old man at the counter catches her eye, long grey hair pulled into a ponytail and glasses slipping down the bridge of his nose.
"Uncle Tony?" she asks, voice ringing across the shop.
He glances up from his book, eyes narrowing. She walks closer, a smile breaking out on her face. "Oh my god, it is you. Do you recognize me?"
The confusion on his face melts into recognition and he stands up, walking so that he's right in front of her. The awe is evident on his face. "I'd be damned if I didn't. You look exactly like your mother did that first day she walked in here." He opens his arms, enveloping her into a tight hug. "Oh, darlin' dear, you're all grown up. A girl turned woman, I wish time could stop," he sings as they break away, a line from a song he'd made in his hay days.
"How are you? It's been so long," she gushes, grasping his forearm. She can't help but notice how much older looks since they'd last met.
"That it has, Lil Luce," he says, shaking his head. He looks at her and takes her face in his wrinkled hands. "We have a world of catching up to do. I hope you've time to chat?"
Nixon glances behind, looking at Christopher, who nods encouragingly. "Yeah, of course. This is Christopher, by the way."
Ever the well-mannered rich boy, he walks up beside Nixon and offers his hand. "Hi sir," he says.
Tony gives him a classic up-down, eyebrow raised in hesitation. "Where'd you pick this one up? New England? I never thought you'd have such posh tastes."
She bites her lip to prevent herself from laughing. "Chris is just a friend, actually. We're heading in the same direction."
Tony shrugs. "Any friend of this sweet thing is a friend of mine," he tells Christopher. "Just don't call me 'sir', son. I don't teach you math, do I?" Before Chris can reply, Tony gestures for a college-aged student to take over the register, and gesture for us to follow him outside. He grins at Nixon. "I'll buy the drinks if you - what is it Jack always says - spill the tea?"
She laughs, falling into a familiar rhythm with Tony. She catches herself, and a wave of nostalgia washes over her, flooding her with memories of happier days. But in the place of the usual guilt she feels for being there without her parents is a small seed of hope planted in the pit of her belly - hope that maybe...
Maybe.
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