Page 16 of What's in a Kiss?

“This isn’t happening,” I say under my breath. I was not supposed to see this man until I was ready. Until I was dressed to kill and professionally blown out andnotdriving a Lyft and had spent at least half an hour pretending to meditate this afternoon.

“Maybe it’s a dream.” I hear the smile in his voice, the click of his seat belt. “Though it feels fairly real. I thought I heard you were back in LA.”

Backin LA? Does Glasswell still think I everleftLA? That I went to Juilliard after graduation, like the yearbook said I would? Oh God, he thinks I went to Juilliard andstillended up driving other people for a living in my piece of crap car? That’s even worse than the truth.

“All these years, I kept waiting to see your name in lights in Times Square,” he says.

“Nope,” I say, tight-lipped. “That’d be you.”

“Ah yes, you’re right. It is me, isn’t it—”

“Stop talking,” I say, waking up my phone and using cheetah speed to kill YouTube and open my Lyft app. When I see his destination—a residential street in Silver Lake—and Glasswell’s name—terrifyingly surreal—I’m certain my life has ended.Murdered by humiliation.

I tug down my trucker cap, because what’s going on with my hair isn’t fit even for a corpse. I’m trying to drive and wondering about the state of my back seat and praying for an earthquake when he leans forward, his face between the seats, and says in that fucking voice:

“You used to have a sense of humor.”

“Noël Coward is funny,” I argue. “Dogs dressed as people, playing poker, are funny.”

Gram Parsons growls Glasswell back into the back seat.

“What’s your dog’s name?” Glasswell asks.

“Gram Parsons.”

Glasswell laughs under his breath. “That’ssoOlivia. Let me guess. You stayed in the motel room in the desert where the real Gram Parsons died?”

“Maybe.”

“I knew it!” he says. “Did you sense his stylistic presence? Did youfeelrock and country becoming one?”

“Look, pal—”

“I always wanted to stay there,” he says.

“Don’t do that. Don’t mock me.”

“I’m not...” he says, before seeming to concede. “What’d you think of my blooper reel?”

“Yourwhat?” I say in my best liar voice. Which is pretty bad.

“It rolls into Oprah,” he says, like he knows I was deep-dive googling him.

“I wasn’t—”

“It’s fine,” he says. “I get it.”

This humblebrag is infuriating enough that I accidentally take the on-ramp for the 405 when I very clearly should havegotten on the 105. I’d like to say I haven’t made this mistake before. Some of us are born rideshare drivers, and some of us probably shouldn’t have a license.

The highway is a hellscape straight from central casting: ten jammed lanes of parked cars, fanning out for miles. As I realize we’re completely trapped on the endless curving on-ramp, my phone says this slowdown will add twenty-five minutes to the trip. Suddenly the half hour it should have taken to get Glasswell out of my car doubles.

I’m supposed to meet my mom in fifty minutes to record the podcast. There’s no way I’ll make it all the way to the east side and then back to Santa Monica in time.

If I exit now...

If I take surface streets...

If I kick Glasswell out of my car...