“Maybe not,” Daniel said, “but if she’s happy, does it matter whether or not she’s frumpy?”
She beamed at Fizzy in triumph. “See? Daniel is sort of on Team Jess.”
“You know,” Daniel said to her now, balling the wash rag in his hands, smug with insider knowledge, “Americano is a romantic, too.”
“Let me guess,” Jess said, grinning. “He’s the host of an LA-based sex dungeon?”
Only Fizzy laughed. Daniel gave a coy shrug. “He’s about to launch some cutting-edge matchmaking company.”
Both women went silent. A what now?
“Matchmaking?” Jess asked. “The same Americano who comes in here every day and never smiles at anyone?” She pointed behind her to the door he’d exited only a minute ago. “That guy? With his intense hotness marred by the moody, antisocial filter?”
“That’s the one,” Daniel said, nodding. “You could be right that he needs to get laid, but I’m guessing he does just fine for himself.”
At least this particular Fizzy tangent happened on a Monday—Pops picked up Juno from school on Monday afternoons and took her to the library. Jess was able to get a proposal together for Genentech, set up a meeting with Whole Foods for next week, and bash through a few spreadsheets before she had to walk home and start dinner.
Her car, ten years old with barely thirty thousand miles logged on it, was so rarely used that Jess couldn’t remember the last time she’d had to fill the tank. Everything in her world, Jess thought contentedly on her walk home, was within arm’s reach. University Heights was the perfect of blend of apartments and mismatched houses nestled between tiny restaurants and independent businesses. Frankly, the sole benefit of last night’s date was that Travis had agreed to meet at El Zarape just two doors down; the only thing worse than having the world’s most boring dinner conversation would have been driving to the Gaslamp to do it.
With about two hours until sunset, the sky had gone a heavily bruised gray-blue, threatening rain that’d send any Southern Californian driver into a confused turmoil. A sparse crowd was getting Monday-levels of rowdy on the deck of the new Kiwi-run brewery down the street, and the ubiquitous line at Bahn Thai was quickly turning into a tangle of hungry bodies; three butts were attached to humans currently ignoring the sign for customers not to sit on the private stoop next door to the restaurant. Nana and Pops’s tenant, Mr. Brooks, had installed a doorbell camera for the front units, and almost every morning he gave Jess a detailed accounting of how many millennials vaped on his front step while waiting for a table.
Home came into view. Juno had named their apartment complex “Harley Hall” when she was four, and although it didn’t have nearly the pretentious vibe required to be a capital-H Hall, the name stuck. Harley Hall was bright green and stood out like an emerald against the earth-tone stucco of the adjacent buildings. The street-facing side was decorated with a horizontal strip of pink and purple tiles forming a harlequin pattern; electric-pink window boxes spilled exuberant flowers year-round. Jess’s grandparents Ronald and Joanne Davis had bought the property the year Pops retired from the navy, which was around the same time that Jess’s long-term boyfriend decided he wasn’t father material and wanted to retain the option to put his penis in other ladies. Jess had packed up two-month-old Juno and moved into the ground-floor two-bedroom unit that faced Nana and Pops’s bungalow at the back end of the property. Given that they’d raised Jess down the road in Mission Hills until she’d gone to college at UCLA, the transition was basically zero. And now, her small and perfect village helped her raise her child.
The side gate opened with a tiny squeak, then locked closed behind her. Down a narrow path, Jess stepped into the courtyard that separated her apartment from Nana Jo and Pops’s bungalow. The space looked like a lush garden somewhere in Bali or Indonesia. A handful of stone fountains gurgled quietly, and the primary sensation was bright: honest to God, the most dramatic magenta, coral, and brassy purple bougainvillea dominated the walls and fences.
Immediately, a small, neatly French-braided child tackled Jess. “Mom, I got a book about snakes from the library, did you know that snakes don’t have eyelids?”
“I—”
“Also, they eat their food whole, and their ears are only inside their heads. Guess where you can’t find snakes?” Juno stared up at her, blue eyes unblinking. “Guess.”
“Canada!”
“No! Antarctica!”
Jess led them inside, calling “No way!” over her shoulder.
“Way. And remember that cobra in The Black Stallion? Well, cobras are the only kind of snakes that build nests and they can live to be twenty.”
That one actually shocked Jessica. “Wait, seriously?” She dropped her bag on the couch just inside the door and moved to the pantry to dig around for dinner options. “That’s insane.”
“Yes. Seriously.”
Juno went quiet behind her, and understanding dropped like a weight in Jess’s chest. She turned to find her kid wearing the enormous-eyed expression of preemptive begging. “Juno, baby, no.”
“Please, Mom?”
“No.”
“Pops said maybe a corn snake. The book says they’re ‘very docile.’ Or a ball python?”
“A python?” Jess set a pot of water on the stove to boil. “Are you out of your mind, child?” She pointed to the cat, Pigeon, asleep in the dying stretch of daylight streaming through the window. “A python would eat that creature.”
“A ball python, and I wouldn’t let it.”
“If Pops is encouraging you to get a snake,” Jess said, “Pops can keep it over at his house.”
“Nana Jo already said no.”
“I bet she did.”
Juno growled, collapsing onto the couch. Jess walked over and sat down, drawing her in for a cuddle. She was seven but small; she still had baby hands with dimples on the knuckles and smelled like baby shampoo and the woody fiber of books. When Juno wrapped her little arms around Jess’s neck, she breathed the little girl in. Juno had her own room now, but she’d slept with her mom until she was five, and sometimes Jess would still wake up in the middle of the night and experience a sharp stab of longing for the warm weight of her baby in her arms. Jess’s own mother used to say she needed to break Juno of the habit, but parenting advice was the last thing Jamie Davis should be giving to anyone. Besides, it wasn’t like anyone else ever occupied that side of the mattress.
And Juno was a master cuddler, a gold-medal Olympian in the snuggle. She pressed her face to Jess’s neck and breathed in, wiggling closer. “Mama. You went on a date last night,” she whispered.
“Mm-hmm.”
Juno was excited for the date, not only because she adored her great-grandparents and got Nana Jo’s cooking when Jess was out, but because they’d recently watched Adventures in Babysitting, and Fizzy had told her it was a pretty accurate depiction of what dating was like. In Juno’s mind, Jess might end up marrying Thor.
“Did you go downtown? Did he bring you flowers?” She pulled back. “Did you kiss him?”
Jess laughed. “No, I did not. We had dinner, and I walked home.”