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pit but he chickened out before I could tackle him and take him under, wimp. True to his word, he made me drop him off at his place and drive his car home to my new apartment. It felt weird, because we never actually established that we were dating but what man would send some chick home with his car if he didn’t have any investment in her?

My place was ten times better than the hotel room but with less furniture. Spending money gave me panic attacks, especially since the opportunities could end for me at any moment. It drove Mason crazy and he didn’t fail to tell me. There was one thing I wanted to buy for myself but it was gone. The painting. The bleeding girl had become something of a symbol to me and I wanted to look at it every day, hanging on the wall of my small living room. My heart failed a little when I had stepped off the bus and gazed into the window. It had been full of vases and some odd sculpture.

I’d told Mason about it and he didn’t seem as concerned as I had been but he assured me I would find something else to go in the spot on my wall. The wall that was still empty.

I stripped my clothes off, pulled on my favorite t-shirt and sat down on my bed with my backpack. I didn’t carry it anymore but I couldn’t bring myself to take the things out of it. It sat in the corner of my bedroom like a reminder that life could turn on me at any time.

I unzipped the front pocket and pulled out the pile of photos I’d managed to save from my storage space before they took all my shit.

London smiled up at me from the faded photograph. Her cheeks were slightly sunken in and there were dark circles under her eyes. I don’t know why I didn’t see it then. Clearly, she was sick. In the photo, that last one of us before she overdosed, she wore her John Lennon shirt. The same shirt I was wearing at that moment.
    ***
     
    Mid-August 2009

I missed Mason. It was unexpected and he’d only been gone for two weeks but I missed the hell out of him. I’d finished work a week earlier and even drove his car down to the Target to buy myself some small appliances. I was running out of shit to keep me busy. So, when his call came in early on a Monday morning, I almost killed myself trying to make it to the living room before the cell phone stopped ringing.

“Hello…,” I wheezed pathetically.

“What the hell happened to you?” He asked.

I patted my chest, trying to calm my breathing. “Nothing, I was jogging laps around my new coffee table.”

“You bought a coffee table? I don’t believe that shit.”

“Well I did, asshole. It matches my new area rug. Suck on that.” I laughed, pleased with my comeback.

He was quiet but I could still hear his easy breathing. “Fallyn, I miss the hell out of you.”

There he was, the real Mason. “I miss you too…LA sucks dick without you around to raise hell with. I was so bored; I bought a bread maker.”

The common sense solution to our situation would have been me finding more friends and for Mason to enjoy the ones he already had. For some reason, that didn’t occur to either of us. We did what we wanted, when we wanted to and no one challenged the little bubble we lived in.

“You don’t even know how to make bread.”

“I do now. I’m practically a pro.”

“Whatever you say. Listen, I called to get your work schedule.”

I sighed. “There’s nothing going on right now. I’m not set for anything until next month. Why?”

He chuckled nervously which made me nervous. “That’s good, because I bought you a plane ticket to Vancouver. You do know where your passport is don’t you?”

Of course I knew where my passport was. It was one of the first huge things Mason did for me, even though he claimed it was necessary as an actor to have such a thing. “Yeah, it’s in my drawer. Mason, I can’t believe you bought me a ticket without even asking me.”

“It’s not a big deal. You can see what it’s like on a movie set before