1

Sometimes a moment is filled with infinite possibility: a letter opened but unread, a phone ringing but unanswered, a morning that has only just begun and is thus far splendid even though it will surely be ruined once the front door is unlocked and the customers begin to arrive. Three percolators are merrily chirping as they turn oily beans into wake-up juice, and not a single splatter of cream mars the counter. Silver pitchers sit, shiny and clean, waiting to steam milk for people who think that an extra dry cappuccino is actually good. The fridge is stocked, the rags are bleached, and the floor smells like lemons. The sun is shining—because the sun is always shining in LA. Anything could happen today.

That’s what Angelina Yves tells herself.

Anything could happen.

What will most likely happen is that she will get shouted at for not knowing a secret recipe that doesn’t exist, and she will burn a finger pouring a boiling hot drink into a Stanley cup for a woman with a hypoallergenic dog in her purse, and she will take home far fewer tips than she deserves because she’s pretty sure that Greyson is stealing from the tip jar. It’s such a cliché, the wannabe singer-songwriter working as a barista at a Hollywood café, scribbling lyrics on napkins during her timed break, praying one of her raw-voiced original songs goes viral online, but she needs the health insurance and at least they pay over minimum wage.

As it turns out, and much to her annoyance, her dad was right: the only job for people with music degrees is teaching other people how to get music degrees. If her favorite professor’s eccentric aunt didn’t have an extra room and need a part-time caretaker, there’s no way Angelina could afford to live anywhere near LA, and yet here she is, working so hard to make her dreams come true that she doesn’t really dream at night anymore.

“Zosia?” she calls, hoping she’s reading the name right: Zoe-see-a.

A red-taloned hand swipes the cup. “It’s pronounced Sasha.”

No tip there.

“No actress can go by Emily or Kate anymore. They’ve gotta stand out. I had a Kaylee yesterday who’d added two Hs and half a dozen vowels,” Lauren says, leaning in to where Angelina is now hiding behind the espresso machine. “Kuh-hay-uh-huh-luh-hee.” She sounds like she’s panting. “Almost ran out of breath trying to call her name. Don’t let it get to you.” Lauren is in her fifties and was once a C-level actor, back in the eighties when perfection couldn’t be forced with surgery. These days, she’s an unflappable battle-ax, and she’s the closest thing Angelina has to a friend in this city. “Didn’t you close last night?”

Angelina rubs her eyes, careful not to smudge her heavily smoky eye. “Yep. Rick texted me after midnight asking me to open because Greyson had to study.”

“Can’t let his nephew get sleepy now, can we? Jeez. Nepotism and Hollywood.” Lauren shakes her bleached curls, still teased to the heavens. “You’d think it only happened in the movies, but it’s everywhere.”

And yes, it’s true, but Angelina still believes that hard work and a good attitude have value. If she stopped believing that, she’d fall apart. She’d stop writing songs. She’d give up.

She makes the next drink, trying to inject it with what little artistry the job allows. This shop is so busy that there is no time for friendly chitchat with the customers, no time to draw swans in the foam. She is a machine, her only goal to avoid being yelled at. Everyone is in a hurry, everyone is angry, and it is always, always her fault.

“Beavis?” she calls, knowing the teen boys will snicker before the tall one swipes his drink, but grateful that it didn’t say Saoirse or Björn. She knows how to pronounce Beavis. The next drink, at least, is simple: a green tea for Sol. She double cups it so he won’t burn himself and, yes, come back to yell at her.

“Sol?”

She holds out the cup, and the guy who takes it is so beautiful that it’s kind of disturbing—and yet he’s also vaguely familiar. They lock eyes for a moment, and he smiles and blinks once, like an owl. He’s wearing all white, his dark skin making the contrast all the more striking. White slim-fit jeans, white loafers, white linen shirt, a silver necklace nestled in the unbuttoned V, and long, black locs loosely bound. He looks like a movie star, but if he was, she would definitely recognize him.

“Thank you, love,” he tells her with a posh British accent, and he sounds like he means it. He slides a twenty toward her and winks.

“Thank you. Have a good day,” she tells him. Her eyes flash to the camera in the corner, and as soon as he’s gone, she goes to deposit the twenty in the tip jar. There’s writing on it, and she looks more closely before abandoning it among the ones and spare change.

Oddly, the bill is stamped with a lyric from a popular song she loved when she was in high school.

There’s no such thing as never
Only now, only forever.

It’s a little trite, but it brings back fond memories of when she was a teenager, sitting in her closet, hiding from her parents, singing along to Black Idyll the summer they hit it big. She begged to go to the concert, but it was a firm no. Her dad was nearing sixty then and her mom has always been as boring and limp as a wet lasagna noodle, and they both refused to acknowledge any music that wasn’t glorifying God or America. For a time, Black Idyll was her whole world, and she was half in love with Jesper Idyll. Everyone was. Both because he played teen heartthrob Carter Dunaway on This Is How It Is and because he was the lead singer for a band of beautiful teen boys in all black who seemed to channel all the rage, weirdness, and yearning of the collective generation. What a strange thing to find on a crisp twenty that will become possibly two crumpled ones in Angelina’s pocket when they divvy up the tip jar later on.

Angelina has forgotten about the handsome man and his lovely but ultimately useless tip when her phone rings an hour later. The number is unfamiliar, but the caller ID says it’s from her college. She’s not supposed to take calls at work, but...

“Hello?”

“Angelina, it’s Doctor Bradley.”

Despite the heat of the milk steamer and the sweaty hairs straggling against her temples Angelina’s blood goes cold. Usually, Dr. Bradley is just Lisa, and usually, Lisa calls on her own cell phone to dish about office politics and complain about how no TA will ever compare to her favorite student and future Grammy-award winner.

“Hi, Li—Dr. Bradley. What’s up?”

A sigh. “Look, I’m sorry about this, but Aunt Barb says it’s not working out. She says you steal from her.”

Angelina gasps. “You know she has dementia, and I think you know me well enough to know that I would never steal from anyone.”

“I know all that. And it’s stupid—she said you stole a ceramic turtle from her collection. Which—why? Nobody wants that shit. But she’s not going to let this go. I think we’re just going to have to call a service.”

Angelina’s mind is racing, trying to find some way to stay exactly where she is, to not lose what she has. “I’ll get her a new ceramic turtle. Ten more. I’ll buy cameras and install them. Please, Lisa. You know what this means to me.”

Everything. It means everything.

This is the only way she can afford to be here. Even with free rent, even working two jobs, she can barely afford it.

And if she’s not here...

Her dream is over.

The only way to get jobs in LA is to be in LA. She can’t busk on the streets of Ellijay, Georgia and hope to get discovered.

And if she has to go home...

No.

She can’t.

Not after how she ended things with her parents.

“She called the cops, kiddo. Told ’em you’re a thief. And also, oddly enough, a robot. So they called me. She needs to be under actual medical supervision. Dementia plus Capgras syndrome? It’s only going to get worse.”

No wonder the old lady had been giving her the side-eye. Angelina had thought they were getting along just fine, had done everything in her power to be the perfect roommate/nurse. And yet. And yet.

“So... so maybe I stay with her but don’t help her out? She won’t even see me. She doesn’t leave her room.”

“Kiddo, once she thinks you’re a robot who steals turtles, you can’t un-ring that bell. We can give you two weeks to find a new situation. I’m sorry. You’re talented and you deserve better, and I know you were doing a good job, but it just isn’t going to work out.”

“I wiped her ass!” Angelina barks. “I have cleaned up her pee puddles, and I have remade her Cream of Wheat three times every morning until it’s perfectly smooth, and we both know I’m neither a robot nor a thief!” Her voice is rising, and Rick is walking toward her, with his stupid pleated khakis and tucked in Hawaiian shirt that make him look like a tropical snowman.

“I know, and I’m sorry—”

The milk she’s been steaming boils over the sides of the silver pitcher, burning her hand. She drops the piping hot metal and screams, “Fuck a duck!” The pitcher lands on her foot, and scalding milk soaks her ankle and splatters across the floor mats as the steamer continues to spurt steam into her face.

“Outside. Now!” Rick grinds out through clenched teeth.

Angelina feels the tears rising and tries to blink them back down. “I’m sorry—”

“Was that for my...