“Happy birthday,” Alexa murmured, stepping out of line and whipping off her sunglasses. Skinny hipster boys weren’t usually her thing, but there was something pulse-quickening about this guy’s strong cheekbones and his tall, graceful frame. Behind her, she could feel Holly tense up, her classic reaction whenever there was a hot guy in the vicinity.
But Hipster Boy’s response to Alexa’s flirtation was a wry smirk as he cast his gaze over Alexa’s outfit. Alexa could read his thought process plain as day: Somebody please get this Top 40-listening, makeup-wearing, magazine-reading dumb blonde as far away from me as humanly possible. She balled her hands into fists, pissed. Boys, all boys, were so obvious. And she couldn’t stand being written off like that.
“So tell me,” the boy said, his voice heavy with sarcasm. “Who is this world-renowned mother of whom you speak?” He pushed his glasses up on his nose, still smirking.
Alexa bristled, wondering how she’d ever found this guy attractive. “A buyer at Henri Bendel’s in Manhattan,” she spat, then shoved her shades back on, not wanting to maintain eye contact.
He nodded thoughtfully. “Should’ve guessed that from a mile away.”
Alexa drew herself up to her full height, preparing a comeback, when Holly stepped forward and placed a hand on Alexa’s elbow. “Uh, look,” she said, addressing Hipster Boy. “About getting to LA. Do you have legit ID?”
Glancing at Holly, the boy’s square-jawed face broke into a slow smile. Holly felt the strongest sense of recognition, of understanding, pass between the two of them, even though she’d never seen him before in her life. She tried to fight back what felt like the beginnings of a blush; why, why, did cute guys always do that to her?
“Indeed,” the boy replied, removing his wallet and holding up a New York State driver’s license. Holly felt a flush of relief. His name, according to the card, was Seamus Kerr, his address was somewhere in Brooklyn, and he was, in fact, newly twenty-one. She hadn’t thought he was a liar—there was a sincerity in his bright hazel gaze that disarmed her a little—but it was nice to see proof. “So shall we?” Seamus asked Holly. “I don’t mind driving.”
“Splitting the cost three ways would be better,” she reasoned, turning to Alexa, who looked seriously miffed. Holly wasn’t sure why she was now the one pushing them toward LA—seconds before, she’d been ready to return to New Jersey—but something about Seamus’s warm, easygoing presence made her feel like heading farther west was the best thing to do. If only Alexa would stop stubbornly shaking her head.
“To drive or not to drive—that is the question,” Seamus intoned, putting a hand to his chest and grinning at Holly again. A businessman waiting in the Hertz line regarded Seamus as if he’d lost his mind. “Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to crash in Vegas for a night, or rent a Mustang—”
“Easy there, Hamlet,” Alexa snapped; she had only so much tolerance for English-major types. “Holly, can I speak to you alone for a second?” She led Holly a few paces away from Seamus, where they positioned themselves behind a beefy guy in a cowboy hat. “Don’t be such the naïve suburban girl,” Alexa hissed the minute they were safe. “This guy’s a complete stranger. How do we know he’s not, like, a serial killer?” Alexa checked over her shoulder. Seamus was now standing at the back of the Hertz line, thumbing through a paperback copy of Crime and Punishment, his book bag at his feet. Alexa noticed what looked like a green plush toy peeking out of the top of the half-open bag. Freaking weird.
Holly groaned, putting her hands on her hips. “Alexa, give me some credit—don’t you think my parents have made me sufficiently paranoid by now?” She refrained from reminding her indignant friend that, on all her exotic travels across the globe, Alexa had full-on made out with her share of “complete strangers.” But Alexa was an expert at conveniently forgetting things. Holly glanced at Seamus to see him watching them, and then quickly return to his book. She smiled to herself. “I think he’s a good guy,” she finished with a shrug.
Alexa rolled her eyes. If Holly was developing a crush on this Seamus person, Alexa did not want to be the one to clean up the mess. But the truth was, they really had no choice; she did want get to Malibu by tonight, and Seamus was their lone ticket there.
“Fine, but I need to collect my luggage from the baggage claim,” Alexa sighed, turning away. “You figure out the car stuff with your new best friend, and I’ll meet you guys outside.”
“Holy mother of…” Seamus muttered twenty minutes later, his eyes wide behind his glasses. He and Holly were sitting outside the airport in the convertible Mustang they’d rented with Seamus’s ID, watching in disbelief as Alexa wiggled toward them in her platforms. She was trailing a blush-pink wheelie suitcase that was about the size and shape of Alaska, and in her other hand she lugged several totes, her handbag, and the satchel containing her PowerBook. The black camera bag in which she carried her big, professional Nikon swung from her free shoulder. That she was able to move at all seemed to Holly like a miracle.
“She’s like the bag lady of Rodeo Drive,” Holly murmured, observing Alexa with a mixture of amusement and sympathy. Her friend stumbled, sending one of her totes to the ground, and as she bent to retrieve it, the hot desert wind almost snatched her hat off her head.
Seamus laughed warmly, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. “That’s perfect,” he told Holly. “It sounds like a short-story title.”
This time, Holly couldn’t help but blush—she hated how her face always gave away the slightest stutter of her heart—and then fiddled with her Claddagh ring. “I’m not much of a writer,” she admitted. “Are you?” she asked, thinking of the notebook Seamus had been scribbling in.
“In a way,” Seamus replied as Alexa finally made her way into the car, flinging herself into the backseat with a dramatic moan. “I just graduated from NYU, so I’m starting as an editorial assistant at The New York Observer.”
“Alexa, did you hear?” Holly asked, turning around to her friend. “Seamus lives in New York—”
“I did, but I don’t care,” Alexa spat, sweaty and achy as she plunked her camera bag on the seat beside her. Squeezing all her other bags into the trunk had been utterly traumatic. She removed her sunglasses and hat and ran a hand through her tousled hair.
“I’m not sure you packed enough, Alexa,” Seamus commented with a smile in his voice, turning the key in the ignition. Alexa thought she saw him exchange a glance with Holly. Ugh. Why didn’t the two of them just go off to a hippie commune where nobody cared about clothes and everyone carried their earthly possessions in, like, hemp pillowcases?
“Wow, that’s hilarious,” Alexa yawned, leaning her head back and shutting her eyes; the emotional turmoil of the day had drained her. Seamus slipped a CD into the player, and a jangly guitar and a bluesy voice poured of the speaker. Whiny emo bullshit, Alexa thought derisively. Figures. As they pulled away from the airport, she felt a flash of jealousy that Seamus got to drive; she loved to steer, to control the music, to navigate through either rain or sun. And it felt wrong being relegated to the backseat. But she also wasn’t about to fight Holly for shotgun. Alexa got the distinct feeling that the dynamic duo up front had been mocking her, and was in no mood to speak to either of them.
“So you guys are friends from before?” Seamus was asking as he picked up speed. The convertible’s top was down and a dry wind whipped through the car, carrying with it the scent of cactus flowers. Holly drew a deep breath, staring out the windshield at the flat landscape; everything seemed so immense here. Out of the corner of her eye, Holly saw Seamus looking from her to Alexa and then back again. “I thought maybe you’d met in the airport,” he added, still sounding incredulous that the two girls could actually be acquainted.
Alexa cracked one eye open to monitor Holly’s response.
Holly laughed, unzipping her hoodie and settling back into her seat. “We’ve only known each other for, hmm, most of our lives.” Seamus laughed, too—the exact same way that
Holly did, Alexa noticed—a low rumbling that exploded into genuine merriment and ended in a happy sigh. Alexa found Holly’s laugh endearing, but she was inches away from forcing jolly Seamus into hitchhiking his way to LA. “We grew up together in New Jersey,” Holly added, glancing at Alexa and shooting her a wink. As if they were actually still allies, Alexa fumed, glaring back.
“Jersey girls?” Seamus echoed, meeting Alexa’s gaze in the rearview. “There’s a real shocker.” It took every ounce of self-control for Alexa not to kick the back of the driver’s seat.
Holly knew Seamus was poking fun at Alexa, and not her, but she held back her laugh anyway; she could tell Alexa was peeved, and she didn’t want to provoke her friend further. It was obvious that Ms. Thing wasn’t dealing well with Seamus’s intellectual-boy vibe. “Yup, we’re a long way from home,” she replied instead, and as she spoke, she realized how true the words were. A melancholy tumbleweed crossed the road, and she thought of Tyler, wondering how he’d react when she told him about her impromptu road trip. “I wasn’t even sure I wanted to go to LA,” Holly went on meditatively, still thinking of her boyfriend. “But—”
“We were invited to the biggest celebrity wedding of the year,” Alexa put in tartly, opening both eyes and leaning forward. “And we’re staying in Malibu, at Jonah Eklundstrom’s guesthouse.” Ha. Maybe that would shut Seamus up once and for all.
“Alexa, he doesn’t need to know…” Holly trailed off, embarrassed. The idea that she, ordinary track girl Holly Jacobson, was about to spend a week rubbing tanned elbows with people who made more money in a day than she’d have in, like, a lifetime, still awed and humbled her. Her levelheaded parents had barely believed her last night when she’d awoken them to breathlessly spill the beans, and her skeptical brother, Josh, had demanded that Holly return with autographs and photos as hard evidence. Holly hadn’t even bothered telling her friends Meghan and Jess. They were stuck in Oakridge for the week, and Holly didn’t want to make them feel bad by bragging. Better for them to assume that she was hiking up muddy trails instead of sunning herself by the Pacific.
“Celebrity wedding?” Seamus glanced in the rearview again, lifting one eyebrow. “Sounds intense.” He didn’t pursue the subject; again, his tone seemed bemused and again Alexa prickled.
“It wouldn’t interest you in the least,” she replied coolly. They were cruising down the Vegas Strip—-past the lush, extravagant MGM Grand hotel, the faux Eiffel Tower, and countless casinos—which looked pale and bland in the daylight. Suddenly Alexa was psyched that they were driving to LA; it made her feel like a cowgirl, an explorer, journeying toward the next destination. She took out her Nikon D100, and managed to get a shot of the strip right as Seamus accelerated. She was grateful that he hadn’t made some snarky remark about her snapping a picture. Alexa took her photography very personally, and things would have turned even uglier between her and Seamus had he gone there.
As Seamus turned the convertible sharply onto Interstate 15, a gust of wind blew everyone’s hair back and ruffled the giant paper map Holly was holding in her lap; the Hertz people had given it to her when Seamus had signed off on the Mustang. “Are you sure we take this to LA?” Holly asked Seamus worriedly, studying the squiggly red and blue lines. Holly had only recently gotten her driver’s license and was still figuring out how to successfully read a road map. She hated the sensation of being lost, especially when she was unfamiliar with the terrain. Oakridge, she could manage; this wild western land of cacti and wide sky was something new.
“Hol, I’m the direction guru, remember?” Alexa spoke up, reaching over the seat for the map. “I’ll figure out which route we need to follow.” After a minute of reviewing the map, Alexa glanced up and announced that Seamus was going in a fatally wrong direction and that they would arrive in Mexico by nightfall. Holly’s stomach dropped.
“I know I don’t look it,” Seamus said, ignoring Alexa’s prognosis and changing lanes. “But I’m a California boy—born and bred.” As he spoke, Holly took note of the slightly raspy tenor of his voice; the birthmark under his ear, half-hidden by a lock of blond hair; his scent of incense and soap. She wasn’t attracted to him exactly but she hadn’t sat this close to another guy, besides Tyler, in a while. “I spent a lot of high school driving all night from LA to Vegas,” Seamus added with a grin. “So not to boast or anything, but I think I can find my way.”
Ew! Alexa was too disgusted by this display of arrogance to even respond. So she handed the map back to a relieved-looking Holly, stretched her legs across the seat, rested her head on her folded hands, and announced that she was going to take a long overdue beauty nap. Drifting off proved impossible, though, because Seamus’s music—“Band of Horses, they’re gonna be huge,” she heard him pompously tell Holly—was blaring, and he and Holly kept breaking into spontaneous laughter.
When they pulled up at a roadside McDonald’s for a bathroom break, Alexa continued fake-sleeping; despite growing up in suburbia, she’d only been inside a Mickey D’s once, a horrifying experience she didn’t care to repeat. It was only after Holly and Seamus returned sipping Cokes, and Seamus drove on, the road humming beneath the wheels, that Alexa was finally able to sink into a dream about playing a slot machine while wearing a spangly black dress, a nameless, faceless boy holding her around the waist and laughing into her hair.
The dream filled her with warmth, and then she felt true, full-bodied warmth on her face, and all along her skin. The warmth of streaming sunshine.
Alexa let her eyes flutter open. She was staring up at a sky of such pure cobalt blue that it looked painted. But no, she realized, it was real. As real as the rows of tall palm trees with fat, shaggy trunks that she was riding by. Blinking, Alexa sat up, brushed her windswept hair out of her eyes, and felt a glow of pleasure as she took in her surroundings. To her left was the great sapphire swath of the ocean—waves sparkling, tiny surfers bobbing—and to her right were craggy cliffs dotted with green gardens and cream-colored houses, each one more magnificent than the next. The air blowing in through the open roof smelled of budding flowers and fresh oranges.
“Where are we?” Alexa asked, still sleepy. Seamus’s music had stopped, but she could hear that Phantom Planet song “California” playing in her head: We’ve been on the run, driving in the sun…
Holly glanced over her shoulder, her bare feet up on the dashboard. “Look who’s awake,” she singsonged, and Alexa narrowed her eyes at her. Holly knew Alexa had only been pretending to doze for most of the trip, but she’d enjoyed the quiet too much to call her friend on it. She and Seamus had chatted easily about music and college, and then fallen into a comfortable silence, Holly composing an e-mail to Tyler in her head, and Seamus smiling at the open road, likely thinking up lines of poetry or something.
“We’re on the Pacific Coast Highway,” Holly explained to Alexa, quoting what Seamus had told her when they’d arrived oceanside. Holly had been looking in vain for the Hollywood sign, but Seamus had explained that it was in a different part of the city, one Holly hoped she would see later; that, to her, would make the LA experience real. But the unimaginable beauty of the coastline had caught Holly by surprise, as did the freeing sensation of tearing down that highway, the sounds of hip-hop and the Beach Boys floating over from passing cars, the energy both relaxed and relentless. California would definitely take some getting used to.
“PCH, to us natives,” Seamus said, braking behind a silver Beamer and stretching his arms over his head. Alexa noticed he’d taken off his tweed wannabe-professor jacket somewhere during the drive, and now wore only his annoying band T-shirt. “And more specifically,” he added, turning the car off the highway, “we’re now in Malibu.”
“You gave him Jonah’s address, Hol?” Alexa asked, peering eagerly ahead; the car was inching its way up, up, up a steep, rocky path that was lined with lush green shrubbery. If she craned her neck, she could make out sprawling homes cropping out of the hills; Alexa imagined the various tenni
s courts, pampered puppies, and fur-lined slippers that were behind each gate. This was where she belonged. Alexa was still a little sore at Holly and Seamus, but she wasn’t going to let them spoil this rapturous moment.
“Just go all-out Hollywood and call me your chauffeur,” Seamus teased, and Holly felt a pang of guilt that he’d driven all this way to drop them off. He’d explained on the way that he was staying with his family in La Brea, which meant he’d have to loop back toward the city after leaving Malibu, but he’d promised Holly that he didn’t mind. As a compromise, he’d suggested that he and Holly swap cell numbers so she could treat him to an iced coffee that week.
The dusty Mustang, having finally reached the summit, came to a stop in front of a tall, trellised gate hung with red bougainvillea. Behind the gate was a house that took Alexa’s breath away. It was a pale, pale rose color, with a sloping Spanish-style red roof and a wraparound deck that faced out onto the water. It seemed like a place fit for a prince, Alexa thought, her skin tingling. A little beyond the gate, near a glittery blue infinity pool, was another house that looked like a miniature of the original. The guesthouse. Their guesthouse.
“Well, I guess this is it,” Seamus said casually, as if he pulled up in front of Malibu mansions every day. He popped the trunk, a sure sign that he was ready to say farewell and get back on the road. “Maybe I’ll see you girls again sometime—if you’ll ever want to leave here, that is.” Neither Alexa nor Holly was able to reply.
The gate opened, and out stepped an attractive, shapely young woman in her mid-twenties, with dark copper skin and black hair up in a tight bun. She was in all white, from her trim suit to the tiny cell in her hand to her razor-thin heels. As the woman made her way purposefully toward the convertible, Holly sat up straighter, clearing her throat. Had they come to the right place?