“Oh, yeah? How’d it go?” Maritza asks, pretending like Melrose didn’t just walk in on us about to fuck.
My cock is still hard, though it’s beginning to diminish thanks to the sheer fucking awkwardness of this situation.
“Fine,” she says. “I read for some part in some Ryan Gosling movie. I’d be playing his snarky younger sister. It’s got about twenty lines, so that’s something.”
“No kidding. Better than ‘victim number two’ on Law and Order,” Maritza says with a wink.
“That role put me on the map.” Melrose points. “I landed two other parts because of that role.”
“I’m not knocking it,” Maritza says, palms up.
“Anyway, I’m going to go for a run,” her roommate says. I don’t know this chick from Adam, but she seems a bit down. I imagine it gets exhausting auditioning and getting your hopes up and dealing with disappointment after disappointment. “If you two feel the need to continue to get your freak on, kindly do it in the privacy of your boudoir.”
Maritza rolls her eyes and Melrose disappears down a hallway.
“She’s always in a mood after her auditions,” she tells me. “She wants so badly to be the Gloria Claiborne of our generation. Her words, not mine.”
“Nothing wrong with setting goals.”
“Right. I have no room to talk. At least she knows what she wants to do with her life and she’s taking the necessary steps to get there.” Maritza reaches for her water bottle on the coffee table, lifting it to her swollen lips, the very same ones I was claiming a few minutes ago.
But now the moment is lost.
And maybe it’s for the best.
“I should go.” I rise, grabbing my phone and trying not to acknowledge the disappointed look in her eyes that has no business being there. She should be fine with me staying and equally fine with me going. “See you tomorrow. I’ll text you the info in the morning.”
Showing myself out, I walk toward the front gate and wait for my ride.
Half of me wants to stay.
The other half of me knows it’s best that I go.
Nine
Maritza
* * *
Saturday #5
* * *
“Okay, let me just apologize quick.” I hobble up to Isaiah the second he enters the main doors of the La Brea Tar Pits, maneuvering through groups of families, mothers with small children, and preschoolers on field trips. “I had no idea this was, like, a children’s science center type place.”
His eyes scan the lobby before dragging the length of a realistic-looking woolly mammoth.
A little curly-haired boy in a red polo plows into him, shouting sorry as he runs off. His mother chases after him, and just outside a yellow bus full of elementary schoolers pulls into the drop off lane.
This place has been open all of twenty minutes and already it’s filled to the brim with tiny humans, their loud voices echoing off the high ceilings and expansive wall space.
“We can go somewhere else,” I tell him, apologizing with my eyes and my voice and the placement of my hands on his broad chest.
Raking his teeth across his lower lip, he pulls in a deep breath, like he’s mulling it over, and then he shrugs.
“It’s fine. We’re here,” he says.
“You sure?” I lift a brow. “I’ve got some other ideas, more places we can go.”
Isaiah shakes his head and hooks his arm over my shoulder, which catches me off guard for a moment. We walk to the ticket desk, the warmth of his body permeating through my cotton tee and his spicy cologne filling my lungs.
“How’s the ankle?” He asks when we reach the line.
“Better. Sore but better.”
Ten minutes later, tickets in hand, we begin a self-guided tour, beginning at their Titans of the Ice Age exhibit and moving on to the Fossil Lab, which seems to be popular with the preschoolers surrounding us.
We stop at Pit 91, where they’re conducting a live excavation, unearthing saber tooth tiger and dire wolf fossils, and Isaiah stops to watch.
“You know, I read once that if you placed the entire timeline of the universe into a single calendar year, humans would show up on December 31st at 11 PM,” I say. “I’m paraphrasing, but you get the picture.”
His lips flatten. He’s engrossed by the architects digging in the dirt with all of their fancy tools and brushes.
“Isn’t it crazy when you think about how inconsequential we are? As a species, we’re still so new and all these living, breathing creatures existed millions and millions of years ago. It blows my mind, really. Kind of makes me awestruck and depressed at the same time,” I say.
“Depressed?” He turns to me.
“Well, not clinically depressed, but almost kind of sad … because it makes me feel like someday maybe millions of years from now, we’re all probably going to be extinct. Just a bunch of fossils in the ground, no legacies to leave behind, no one to tell our stories.”
“I still don’t see how that’s a sad thing. Being extinct. If we’re dead, we’re not going to be around to care,” he says. “And these dinosaurs and whatnot have left a legacy of fossil fuels, if you want to put it that way. They didn’t live and die for nothing.”
“I guess, but I just think people are always so fixated on their problems all the time, but if they could just look at the big picture—that someday they’re just going to be a pile of bones in a mound of dirt—maybe they’d worry a little less? Live a little more? Try to contribute to society or leave the world a little bit better than they found it?”
“You’re such an idealist.” He hooks his arm around me, which marks the second time today, and my heart does the tiniest flutter without so much as asking for permission.
We spend the next couple of hours touring the garden and a few more dig sites before stopping at the lake pit.
Hot bubbling asphalt glugs behind us as we stand next to a bunch of fake animals pretending to play in the pit.
“What do you think it’d be like if we went extinct and some future species found our bones and turned us into robotic models and placed us on display?” I ask as we watch the bubbles float to the surface and pop.
“Probably about how you’d expect.” He clears his throat, glancing down at me, and I’d love to know what he’s thinking about.
“You know, my grandma in the sixties, all she wanted was to have a legacy, to be remembered forever. People were always comparing her to Marilyn Monroe, especially after Marilyn died, and my grandma would get so upset because unless you die young and your beauty is immortalized, you’ve got nothing to leave behind but your good deeds. But if you’re simply known for your beauty, no one really cares if you’re feeding orphans and adopting shelter dogs or paying for vaccines in third world nations. She wants to be remembered for her philanthropy, but anytime someone hears the name Gloria Claiborne, all they associate her with is old Hollywood glamour or that white bikini.”
“Sounds like she needs a good PR team.”
I roll my eyes. “Does it really count if you have to publicize it? It’s like those people who donate money to places so they can get their names on a plaque on the wall as a “Gold Star Donor” or whatever the stupid name is.”