Page 24 of Best Friend Burden

“I'm opening my food truck,” she said. “I'm expanding after the success I had in Austin, you know, I'm—”

I cut her off. “No, no, no,” I said. “I gave you the truth. I want the truth back. Why not stay in Austin or go somewhere else in Texas? You want to be a movie star or something?”

“Nothing like that, no,” she said.

“Then why?”

She paused. Why did it always take so long to find the words for the truth?

“My dad,” she said. “He told me that no matter what I did, I had to stay in Texas and never leave. And the one way to get me to do something is to tell me I can't do it. And, on top of that, he told me that I'd fail without his support. I had to prove him wrong.”

“But why Los Angeles?” I asked. “Why not New York or Chicago?”

“I'm going to give you the real truth in a second, but let me give you the practical truth first: Every other big city has its own cuisine. Nobody goes out to Los Angeles for the food. And that's because the food out here is terrible.”

Terrible might have been too strong a word, but it wasn’t entirely unfair. Whenever I'd go back to visit family, I always looked forward to eating a decent meal. Everything in Los Angeles was about image. That was true about the people, and that was equally true about the food. It always looked great, but seldom lived up to its appearance.

“You're not wrong,” I said, “but what's the real reason?”

“My dadhatesLos Angeles. Every time we watch a movie or TV show supposed to be set in Texas, but filmed in LA, he blows a gasket. He hates the palm trees and what he refers to as 'sissy men' actors who spend all their time in their cars but still don't know how to drive manual. And he hates the fact that actors out here never age. He says it's partially the surgeries and partially because they'd never had an honest day's work in their life. He says everything out here is fake.”

“What about you?” I asked. “What do you think about LA?”

She shrugged. “I'm still figuring it out,” she said. “But so far, I think I kind of like it.”

“Careful,” I said, “this city has a knack for taking hold of people and not letting them go.”

“Yeah, maybe,” she said. “But it's tough to take the Texas out of a girl from Houston.”

She laughed.

“Or maybe I'm wrong, and by the time I go home for Thanksgiving, I'll have a spray tan, bleached hair, and a new set of tits.”

As an almost Pavlovian reaction, her saying the word made me look over at her tits. They were perfect just the way they were. In my view, any doctor who even gave her a consultation was guilty of malpractice.

“Nah,” I said. “I'll keep an eye on you. Los Angeles won't be changing you. Not on my watch.”

CHAPTER9

***MELODY***

The way he said he'd keep an eye on me made it sound like a joke, but I knew it wasn't entirely a joke. And it was a glint of the old Kiefer I remembered back from school. He gave just a little bit of a smile and if he wasn't driving, I could have imagined him adding a bit of a wink. But it was comforting, too. That was the thing about him. Yeah, he was the bad boy guitar player who looked good in black, but you always felt safe with him. Like he was going to take you just to the edge of the cliff and maybe even dangle you over the edge, but you knew you'd never fall off so long as he was there.

A decade and change could do a lot to someone, but it was nice to know that there was still a hint of that boy still inside the man sitting beside me.

“Your turn,” I said, as he pulled off of the freeway. “Truth or dare.”

Already he had loosened up some. And, while I could understand why Jackson was afraid of what Kiefer might do when left alone, it felt like we were past the worst of it. Sometimes it just takes a little talking to calm someone down and get them out of a horrible place.

He gave me a side-eye.

“What's that about?” I asked.

“What's what about?”

“That look you're giving me.”

“I'm thinking,” he told me. “I'm thinking that you expect me to pick Dare.”

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