French Vanilla & Felonies Read online

  My parents loved the idea of Lilly being raised by a straight mother and gay father, and before I knew it, my mother started marching in parades, and my father started donating to LGBT charities. The lie took on a life of its own, and three years later, my life would be a whole lot easier if Tom would do me a favor and be gay for real. Lying is exhausting.

  The saddest part of that story, aside from the fact that my fake relationship with Tom was the last relationship I'd had, was that Smiling Girl #4 was edited out of the commercial. Poor Amy. Those veneers were expensive.

  I opened my laptop. A reflection of my puffy eyes and freckled face stared back at me from the dark computer screen. I'd never considered myself a beauty like Amy. I was attractive enough. My deep blue eyes were a nice contrast to my nearly black mane.

  "God gave you those striking eyes to take the attention away from your hair," Grandma Ruthie used to say. She was right. I definitely had something to work with. However, glaring back at me was a pale twenty-eight-year-old with a massive zit on her nose to match the one on her forehead. It was anything but cute. If I were to have sprung for the seventeen-inch model, the screen would've been able to fit Einstein in as well.

  I wiggled my finger on the mouse pad to erase the image and clicked over to my email.

  Thirteen new messages. Most from clothing stores taunting me with fall sales. Two were from my dad—one informing me of his success with a particular sexual enhancement drug. Gross. Another apologizing that he had been hacked again. Nothing from Patrick, and no replies from the batch of résumés I'd sent out.

  I felt queasy, miserable, and lost. Melting into the couch, I hugged the brown fake leather while yielding to another sickening wave of anxiety. Why is adulting so hard?

  The front door flung open and crashed against the wall. The entire apartment shook as if a 4.2 had just rolled through. I jumped off the couch, ready to attack my insolent intruder. You wake my kid, I kill you.

  Tom stood in the doorjamb wide-eyed and stock-still. I dropped my arms. Lilly is asleep. What is wrong with you? I mouthed.

  Sorry. Pie is lure door docked, he mouthed back.

  "What?" I whispered.

  He traversed the threshold in one long step, stopping inches from where I stood, and bent his six-foot-five frame in half, his face close. Too close. I hadn't brushed my teeth all day. Oops.

  "Why is your door unlocked?" he whispered.

  "Shhh." I sprayed the inside of my hand with my Funyuns breath. "If she hears you she'll never go back down."

  We paused and waited for the high-pitched shriek of a toddler abruptly woken. The only noise came from Mr. and Mrs. Nguyen, my sweet next-door neighbors who were both hard of hearing. Through the paper-thin walls, I was privy to every conversation they shouted and every show they blasted. They were watching Jurassic Park with Vietnamese voice-over.

  Screeching dinosaurs. No screaming Lilly. Disaster averted. I swiveled my attention back to Tom. "Why don't you knock?"

  "Sorry." He held up a bag from Ben & Jerry's and flashed his bleached smile. "I brought ice cream."

  "Forgiven." I snatched the bag out of his hand and padded back to my spot on the couch. Inside was a Salted Caramel Core waffle taco. Chewy brownie bits and salty sweetness churned together and piled in a buttery-crisp wafer. Mmmmmm. Ice cream taco is my favorite kind of taco.

  Tom dumped himself down on the couch and used Lilly's Barbie castle as a footrest, throwing his hands behind his head and stretching his long body out. "How long has Lil been asleep?"

  "It's Lil-eee." I pushed his feet off the toy with my leg and unwrapped my taco.

  "You're in a good mood."

  "Sorry. I'm in the midst of a meltdown," I professed in between bites.

  "No news on the job?"

  I shook my head.

  "I'm sure something will work out," he said casually. Stress was not in his vocabulary. No matter the situation, he assumed everything would "work out in the end" without worrying one step of the way. It was a completely foreign concept to me.

  "I'm sure it will," I humored, wiping caramel off my mouth with the back of my hand. "What's with the ice cream anyway?"

  "I was in the area and thought you and Lilly might want to split it." He leaned over and eyed the nearly empty package once containing my treat. "Or just you."

  "Aw, that's sweeeeet."

  He laughed. "I'm sorta seeing a girl who works there, and she hooked me up."

  Curse you, Alcatraz friend zone.

  "I've got something else to cheer you up." He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a coupon for a free burrito from a restaurant I'd never heard of. "I helped the guy who owns this place, and he gave me a couple of these. Looks good." Tom's clients showed their appreciation for his law abilities with free car washes, oil changes, haircuts, and even landscaping (which was of no use to him. He has a two-bedroom apartment in Mar Vista. He took a houseplant instead, which he killed. We're better parents than gardeners, I swear.) Cash would be a nicer form of gratitude, except Tom was a criminal defense attorney at a small firm with low-income clientele. He also had this thing about only representing innocent people, which, in my opinion, was just lazy lawyering. He should challenge himself and take on rich criminals, perhaps a money-laundering CEO who'd throw money at Tom to keep himself out of jail. Of course, Tom wanted no part of that. He had a moral agenda to uphold, and it paid peanuts. Or in this case, burritos.

  All that schooling and all that student debt, and in the end, he was as poor as me (before the no-job situation). If only I'd gotten knocked up by a lawyer with a desire to make money, then maybe my child support check would cover the electric bill.

  I shoved the remaining bits of ice cream into my mouth, letting the salty caramel dissolve on my tongue before swallowing. The taco hit my intestines like a brick. I may have overdone it. I placed the bag down just as my sweatpants began to vibrate. I grabbed my phone from between my underwear and the elastic waistband of my sweats.

  An unrecognizable number flashed across the screen. My stomach flipped. I raced to the bathroom and shut the door. "Hello," I answered with a smile.

  "You have a chance to lower your debt," a recording announced.

  Smile gone.

  I hit End and shoved the phone into my pocket. It began to vibrate again. I knew it was the same recording. During my employment drought, I had entered every online sweepstakes I could find and didn't win anything except nightly solicitors wanting to lower my debt or refinance my nonexistent mortgage.

  I placed the phone back up to my ear. In my most annoyed voice, I said, "Hellooo?"

  "Hello?" a man's deep voice replied.

  I pulled the phone away from my ear and looked down at the screen. A 424 area code. My heart regurgitated into my throat. "Hello?"

  "This is Patrick from Elder Property Management."

  Palm, meet forehead. "Hello, Patrick! How are you doing this day?"

  "I'm doing fine. I'm calling because I would like to offer you the apartment manager job."

  …

  "Hello?"

  …

  "Cambria? You there?"

  …

  "Cambria? Hello?"

  "Um, yes. Sorry. Yes, I'm here. That's…wonderful!"

  "I'd like you to start Monday. That'll give you five days with Joyce before she moves. We should be able to get her apartment turned over by Sunday. I realize that doesn't give you much time to move. Due to the short notice, I'll cover a lease-breaking fee on your apartment and a little extra cash to help with the move."

  "I'm on a month-to-month, so that shouldn't be a problem." I was getting kicked out anyway. "There's one thing though." Breathe, Cambria.

  I had to calm my enthusiasm and rationalize my thoughts. I wanted this job. I needed this job. There was one issue I dare only raise now that I had the job. Patrick sighed into the phone.

  "Thank you so much for offering me the position. I would love to accept the job. However, I have a daughter—she's t
hree—and the amount of smoke is a concern. I'm hoping you'll consider changing the carpet at least."

  "Oh, the smoke." He sounded relieved. "We'll be doing the whole works on the apartment. Carpet, paint, counters. I've already discussed this with our new maintenance man, and he said he could get rid of the smell, and then we'll air out the lobby."

  "New maintenance man?" My heart sank. "What happened to Chase?"

  "He is the new maintenance man."

  Happy jig.

  "Now," Patrick continued. "I would prefer for you to train alone. Once you move in, I'm fine with your daughter being there during office hours."

  I may have peed my pants. "Patrick, I promise I'll do an exceptional job. Thank you for the opportunity." It felt like my chest had been pumped full of helium.

  "Thank you for taking it," Patrick said with an odd fluctuation of his stern voice. I was too high on excitement and relief to be bothered by the implication. "Have a good day."

  "You too." I hung up.

  Yes!

  I threw my arms up in silent victory and smacked my hand on the shower rod. Causing it to crash into the tub. Taking my shampoo, soap, and Lilly's bath toys with it. Lilly screamed. Now I had to put a frightened toddler back to bed and clean up my grubby bathroom. But who cared? Life just took a major upswing toward fabtabulousness. Which isn't a word.

  * * *

  "But totally should be," Amy conceded when she arrived early Monday morning. "I think it should be our new mantra."

  I opened the front door wider for her. All I could see was the top of her blonde and pink bun piled high on her head over the mound of clothing and shoes cradled in her arms. The girl had the figure of a ruler. Unless she had a pair of magical Spanx in there, I doubted I'd be able to squeeze into any of her doll-sized clothes.

  "I love that idea. We should bedazzle it on some shirts and start a Facebook page. The Fabtabulous Females of Los Angeles." I laughed at my wittiness. Amy did not. "Too far?"

  "You lost me at bedazzled."

  "That's the best part."

  "Let's concentrate on the task at hand before we start adding rhinestones to stuff." She emptied her load onto my bed and spread out the clothes. She had on a pair of denim shorts that looked like Lilly cut them, all frayed and stringy, and a black tank top with a pink bra strap sliding off her shoulder. She was roughly eighty-percent leg, five-percent torso, and the rest was all boob. I was the Ethel to her Lucy. The Mary Ann to her Ginger. The Patrick to her SpongeBob. I was the typically scripted shorter, less cute, rollier best friend. I provided the comic relief and the logic. It was a role I was comfortable with.

  "If I'd known you were planning to bring your closet, I would have come to your place instead." I leaned against the doorway, watching her hold up a shimmery, low-cut shirt, eyeing it with a tilt of her head. Amy had always been my go-to stylist when more than a Target Mossimo shirt and jeans were required.

  Amy and I went back a long way. We'd bonded back in third grade over Lisa Frank pencil boxes and our mutual love of the monkey bars. Sometime during that year, while hanging upside down from the bars, the tips of her blonde braids touching the sand and my Einstein hair remaining unmoved (it tends to look the same whether I'm upright or upside-down), we pinky-promised to remain best friends forever. Even in high school, when she was president of the drama club and I was on the soccer team, we remained close. Sleepovers every Friday and Saturday nights, shoving notes into each other's lockers, we even went to sophomore homecoming together. (We weren't exactly what you would call popular. We had each other, so it didn't matter—too much.)

  Some years ago, while watching a Project Runway marathon, Amy sat up, having an epiphany of sorts, and announced we were moving to Los Angeles to pursue her acting career. She didn't ask me to come along, nor had I asked if I could. Neither of us questioned it. We did everything together. I'd long since dropped out of college, and she was working as a waitress, a job she hated. "What do we have to lose?" she had asked, and I couldn't think of anything. So off we went.

  Maybe it was because we were both only children, or maybe it was because we were both the same kind of crazy. Either way, we built a lasting friendship seasoned with trials, tears, and an ocean's worth of Diet Coke—as well as the occasional makeover.

  Amy tossed the shimmery shirt back on the bed. "I brought everything because I wasn't sure what state your hair was going to be in." She turned around, and her clear blue eyes widened in exasperation.

  "What?"

  She grunted and dug through the pile again, pulling out a white shirt that looked as if it belonged to Lilly. "We need to pull attention away from what you have happening on top of your dome." She pointed to Einstein shoved into a knot on the top of my head. "Here, try this on."

  She handed me the shirt, and I held it up to half of my chest. "This is not going to fit."

  "Trust me. I'll have you looking like an apartment manager in no time."

  "Do you even know what an apartment manager is supposed to look like?" I pulled my oversized shirt over my head and shimmied my way out of a pair of yoga pants that were stained with the remnants of every meal I'd eaten since Friday.

  Amy shrugged. "Not exactly. But I have a good idea of where I'm going. Plus…yikes. Cambria, honestly." She took a step closer, shaking her head. The diamond stud in her newly carved nose caught the overhead lighting. I went cross-eyed looking at it. "When was the last time you plucked that brow? You realize there are supposed to be two, right?"

  After an hour of tweezing, blow-drying, and bobby pinning, Amy stepped back to admire her work. "Voilà!" She kissed the tips of her fingers and tossed them into the air. "Perfection. You know I'm not doing this every morning, right?"

  "I know," I whispered, barely able to squeeze the words out. The Spanx Amy talked me into were not conducive to breathing. Dots danced in my peripheral vision. "I wanted to look good on my first day. That's all."

  "Suuuuure you did." She leaned in and yanked one more hair off my face with her tweezers.

  "Ouch!"

  "OK, now you're done." She tossed the hateful instrument back into her bag. "I've gotta get going. I have an audition in"—she checked her phone—"fifteen minutes. I'll come back and grab my stuff later. Tell the cute maintenance guy I said hi. Love ya." She kissed the air and bolted out of the bathroom. "Bye, baby," I heard her say to Lilly, who was lying on the couch in a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse trance.

  I hoisted myself off the toilet seat and turned around to get a look in the mirror. I was wearing the tight white shirt, tucked into my own tight black pencil skirt—the one everyone said I looked good in. But I hated the skirt because it made my butt look three times bigger than it already was. Apparently, that's a good thing. Small gold hoops dangled from my ears, which complimented the gold chains drooping down my chest. Einstein was tamed into a tight bun at the nape of my neck, and my feet were crushed into a pair of Amy's red stilettos. My face was creatively painted on, which deviated from my usual mascara, lip gloss, and blush routine. I didn't look like an apartment manager per se. More like a librarian who moonlights as an escort. If I wasn't almost running late, I might have changed.

  As it was, I hustled out as fast as my skirt and stilettos would allow, scooting Lilly along, feeling frazzled and clumsy. Three steps out the door and I was in Mrs. Nguyen's apartment dropping Lilly off. Mrs. Nguyen worked from home as a seamstress, and Mr. Nguyen (I couldn't pronounce their first names for the life of me, so we kept it formal) worked mostly as a mason and sometimes as a pedicurist at his cousin's salon. They were both in their sixties and barely spoke English. And they were the sweetest human beings I'd ever encountered. We referred to them as Lilly's SoCal grandparents, since my parents were in Fresno and Tom's were in Tahoe. They'd been helping me with Lilly since the day she was born. Having them next door would be the only thing I'd miss about living in what I'd lovingly nicknamed Crap-o-la Apartments.

  "I love you." I kissed the top of Lilly's head and brushed a dark cu
rl behind her ear. Her heart-shaped face, sparkling hazel eyes, and pouty lips always made it hard to say good-bye. "Be good," I warned.

  "She good. Go, go." Mrs. Nguyen waved me off, drying her hands on the apron tied around her waist. "You be late. Go!"

  "Tạm biệt!" Lilly yelled after me as I ran down the stairs. She'd become quite fluent in Vietnamese thanks to her SoCal grandparents.

  As soon as I drove out of the parking garage, my car was pelted with tiny raindrops. Lucky for me, there was enough Aqua Net on my head to keep Einstein from reaching Phil Spector status.

  Unlucky for me, no one in LA can drive in the rain.

  My Civic moved along at a sluggish pace behind all the drivers going at sloth speed while they marveled at the wet stuff dripping from the sky. I even saw a news van parked near an exit. A female reporter stood in front of the camera wearing a yellow poncho, gesturing to the strange phenomenon foreigners referred to as "a light mist" and we Southern Californians called "Armageddon." Any deviation from warm and sunny turned the freeways into parking lots.

  I compiled a mental list of reasons why I dared to be late on my first day while racing toward the sad brown doors. Traffic didn't seem a suitable answer. There was always traffic.

  I was in a terrible car accident, and despite the fact there isn't a scratch on me, I almost died.

  I stopped to help another because I am a responsible samaritan.

  I was looking at the surrounding apartment buildings, you know, checking out the competition.

  Oh, that's a good one.

  I grabbed the rusty knob, using my momentum to push open the door. It was locked. I bounced off it like a rubber ball and stumbled backwards, barely missing the mud puddle.