Fuck, I need to get laid.
Maybe I should go for a run on the beach.
Fuck that—as soon as I get home, I’m going to call every parent I know to ask for a nanny reference, and if Margo doesn’t like it, she can kiss my exhausted ass.
I can’t take care of our kids if my basic needs aren’t being met.
Shit, did I eat?
I need to eat.
I need to sleep.
I need to buy more groceries.
I need to clean up the mess in the kitchen because Consuelo doesn’t come until tomorrow.
I need to call my agent back and tell him to stop sending me scripts unless the projects start at least four months from now.
I need to find out why bananas get brown spots.
I need to hear my name screamed out loud when I’m balls deep in a beautiful woman, but my Dad Dick has been deprioritized, so that goes to the bottom of an ever-growing list.
I feel like the oldest twenty-eight-year-old guy in LA and I just graduated from playing college students.
Fuck you, insomnia.
WILLA TODD SCENT DIARY – Monday morning
It’s almost spring, and Los Angeles smells like jasmine, skunk, dry shampoo, and the unspoken need for attention and approval.
Downtown has the vague scent of urine every now and then in certain parts, but it’s nothing compared to Paris. However, it also does not hold quite the same illustrious history. I mean, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway probably peed on the sidewalks of Paris. Although, I think Fitzgerald lived in LA for a while. He may have relieved himself all over Hollywood too.
But enough about pee.
My brother’s apartment smells of Nag Champa incense, burnt toast, the lemon oil of his guitar polish, testosterone, a leather jacket that has been clung to and removed by more girls than I’d care to imagine, and a weeks’ worth of sibling tension that has now been heightened by his inability to bring skanks home whenever he wants to.
This morning, I am missing nothing in particular about France and everything in general.
That’s wrong.
I miss the scent of every boulangerie I ever walked into or past. Every part of me aches for a freshly baked baguette and a pain au chocolat. Los Angeles is the most gluten-free city I’ve ever been in, and I hate it.
To transport myself, I’ve spritzed Frederic Malle En Passant onto this page. If I close my eyes, I’m walking past a lilac bush alongside of a wet sidewalk, moments after the rain has stopped but the storm clouds are still overhead. The wheat note hints at a nearby boulangerie, and the cucumber note keeps it clean and airy. If I could create one fragrance that is as delicate, evocative, and mysterious as this, I would just shit myself. Or something a little more professional and ladylike, hopefully.
To ground myself here to this new reality and cheer myself up, I’m going to burn a simple essential oil blend of lavender, lemon, and Virginia cedarwood and wait for my lazy ass brother to drag himself out of bed so I can make breakfast.
* Note: should have used Texas cedarwood. That blend smelled horrible and made me want to puke.
2
Willa
It’s almost ten.
After a week, I’m pretty much over my jet lag, and I appreciate that Nico was so considerate when I was sleeping at odd hours while he was at home, but now that I’m on LA time, I cannot believe this guy’s schedule.
I mean, he got home at two, so I guess it’s not crazy for him to sleep until ten, but he’s twenty-eight years old. I haven’t stayed out past midnight since I was twenty-one. My grandmother has always told people how similar we are. He’s an actor-turned singer-songwriter, and I’m a fledgling perfumer. He interpreted characters and became other people as an actor. Now he creates moods and moves people with his voice and lyrics and musical notes. As a perfumer, I help people feel like the person they want to be, creating moods and moving people with layers of fragrance notes. It’s a pretty theory, Grammie, but my brother and I couldn’t be more different, and just because he has online fan clubs and I don’t—my approach to everything is better than his.
That’s not sibling rivalry; it’s a fact.
Okay, it’s a little bit sibling rivalry.
But I’m winning.
Just because he’s been making money off his talents since he was a teenager and has this awesome loft in downtown Los Angeles and a bunch of famous friends, while I’m currently unemployed and homeless and have one friend in this part of the country, that doesn’t mean my seven years of post-secondary education and life experience in Europe are useless. They just feel useless right now. My carefully measured blending of science and art will prevail. Until then, I’ll remind my brother of my infinite sophistication by brewing a way better pot of coffee than his ridiculous pod thing could ever piss out.
I add cinnamon, a touch of cardamom, nutmeg, and a couple of cloves to the freshly ground medium roast coffee, pour hot, not-quite boiled water into my French press pot, and gently stir it with a spoon. The aroma is heavenly. I’ve already had two cups of Earl Grey tea, but this is the bomb.
Do people still say “the bomb” here? Whatever. That’s the other thing about staying with my brother—after four years at college and three years in France, I just feel like a dorky little pipsqueak all over again.
The slumbering beast has finally awoken. Still in his wifebeater and pajama bottoms, rubbing his eyes, he shuffles straight from his bed, which is surrounded by heavy canvas privacy curtains, to the bathroom, to the turntable in the living room area where I have taken over the futon. He puts on some acoustic song that I don’t recognize but I’d bet a hundred Euros that the singer has a beard. Nico Todd is exactly as bearish first thing in the morning now as he was when he was a teenager.
“Morning, Sunshine!”
His endless yawn becomes a growl, even as he puts me in a somewhat gentle brotherly headlock and gives me a noogie. “You makin’ breakfast?”
“No, I’m cooking eggs and turkey bacon for a new eau de toilette. It’s called Duh, Obvi.”
“Sarcasm only makes you dorkier. Pour the coffee.”
“It’s not ready yet.”
He grabs a mug from the open shelf and slams it down on the counter. “Pour it now or suffer the consequences.”
“You’re an uncultured ass.”
“You’re an overcultured dork. That smells amazing.”
“It’ll taste better in two minutes.”
“Fine.” He plops down on the bench at the enormous table and yawns again. “I was thinking about it, and I don’t want you working at a perfume store or a perfume counter.”
“That is unfortunate, because that’s the only kind of business I’ve been sending my resume to.”
“Yeah. I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“I just got a master’s degree in Scent Design and Creation. What job do you think would be more appropriate for me while I’m setting up my Etsy store?”
“Anything that doesn’t require you to speak to or be exposed to men in any way.”
I roll my eyes. Here we go again. “The customers at perfumeries and perfume counters are ninety-five percent female.”
“Exactly. Find a job that’s a hundred percent female consumer-oriented and do that.”
“So I should be a former TV star turned singer-songwriter and sometime bartender?”
“Hey, I have guy fans too. I mean, my friends are fans. But how about this—you can wait tables at The Hotel Café when I’m tending bar or doing a show there.” Nico was a bartender for about a year when he was transitioning from acting to his music career, but he still does it sometimes for fun.
“But you only tend bar when you feel like it. That’s a ridiculous idea—I’d have to work way more hours than that.”
“Well, I’ll tell my friends there to watch out for you when I’m not around.”
“Brother, dear. I am twenty-four years old. I hate to tell you this, but—"
He covers his
ears. “La-la-la-la-nooooooo! Don’t say it. You’re the baby. Guys in LA are super horny.”
“More horny than European men? I doubt it.”
“Okay I really don’t want to hear about horny European men.”
I press the plunger of my French press down slowly then pour my brother a cup.
He still thinks I’m so inexperienced. The little sister in me wants him to keep thinking that because it’s cute how protective he is. The twenty-four-year-old woman in me is like, Dude. I’ve had sex with two men who were older than you. Not at the same time. Separately. One was English and one was Italian. Neither were anything to write home about. But still. I’ve engaged in soixante-neuf. In France. With a Frenchman. It was awkward as fuck and I’d rate it about a cinque out of dix for execution, but I did it. I can handle myself just fine. I’ve just yet to meet a man who can handle me.
I wrinkle my nose at him. “Maybe I should just stay with Harley until I can afford my own place.”
“Absolutely not, young lady. That girl is trouble.”
“She isn’t trouble.”
She totally is trouble. Harley is my friend from Cornell. We lived in the same residence hall, and while I was getting my chemistry degree, she was studying Computing in the Arts. Now she does computer graphic stuff for films and stalks male models at gyms, I think. She invited me to stay at her place, but she has a one bedroom and a roommate and there would be no room for me to set up all of my fragrance supplies. Plus, her roommate sprays Febreze everywhere, and it would completely mess up my nose.
And besides, the main reason I chose to move to LA for now is to be with family. I passed up a job as a lab assistant at a major perfume house in Paris so I could be back in the US and start doing my own thing. I can’t start my career in our hometown suburb of Detroit, so my brother’s futon will have to do. He’s just being crabby because he thinks he can’t bring a girl home while I’m here. I mean, I don’t want him to bring a girl home while I’m here either, but does he not have carnal relations with women who have their own homes?
“This is good,” he says, staring down at his mug of coffee and nodding. “This is good. You make good coffee.”
“Thank you.” I serve him a plate of eggs and turkey bacon. Let’s change the subject. “What are you going to do today?”
“I’m supposed to meet up with Shane later. You want to come?”
And there it is. The unmentioned name that has hovered around the edges of every sentence we’ve spoken ever since I arrived here. Now it fills the loft and steals the oxygen, and I am sucked into the black hole of it. Shane Miller. Do I want to come?
“Who? I mean, where? What are you doing? Going to do? With him? Today, you said?”
Yeah, I played that totally cool—I’m sure he won’t wonder what’s wrong with me.
I concentrate on shoveling scrambled eggs into my mouth and do not meet my brother’s inquisitive gaze.
“What is wrong with you?”
“Nothing. I just haven’t heard you mention him in ages. I wasn’t sure if you were still friends.”
“Course we’re still friends. Why wouldn’t we be?” He sounds defensive. He probably thinks I meant that they wouldn’t be friends anymore because Shane went on to be a much bigger star than him. But I didn’t.
What I meant was—I’ve been dying for you to bring up Shane Miller because I used to be obsessed with him, but I never wanted you to know that, so I’ve never asked you about him. Ever.
Shane Miller.
My brother’s best friend.
My brother’s former costar.
My first non–Disney prince crush.
The only guy I’ve ever tried to forget and the one I couldn’t help but judge every other guy against.
Our first and only encounter may have gone something or exactly like this…
* * *
I was a gawky, gangly twelve-year-old girl from a small town in Michigan, and he was the sixteen-year-old star of a new hit Disney Channel comedy about a wizard from a wizarding family who’s just trying to be a normal guy in high school. His character’s name was Greyson Manning, and he was dreamy. My brother played his best friend on the show and quickly become his bestie in real life too. Our grandmother was Nico’s guardian while he was living in Burbank, and I came out to visit them during spring break. We went to Disneyland because my brother had a VIP pass, and that was fun and all, but I was most excited about going to see Nico on set at a studio lot in Hollywood. I wore an all fuchsia-pink outfit, spritzed myself with sweet pea-scented Bath and Bodyworks spray, brought my copy of Tiger Beat magazine that featured an article on the cast for the stars to sign with a silver Sharpie pen, and carried with me an incredible secret: when I did the Tiger Beat quiz “Which Disney Channel character should be your boyfriend?” the answer was Greyson Manning.
Nico made Grammie and me wait in his trailer for an hour while he was in hair and makeup and running lines with the acting coach. Then finally he came back and told me to hurry up and come with him to meet the cast before they all had to do a big scene together. Most of the stars of That’s So Wizard were hanging out around a big snack table, but Shane Miller was nowhere to be found. I got everyone to sign the cover and back of my magazine, saving the article pages for Shane. I made Nico take a picture of me standing behind the empty director’s chair that had Shane Miller’s name embroidered on the fabric. When I asked him where Shane was, he just shrugged and said he was “probably flirting with some girl somewhere or taking a dump; who knows.” And that was that. I had to go with Grammie to her foot doctor appointment soon, so it didn’t look like I’d even get to meet the boy who Tiger Beat had confirmed should be my boyfriend.
Fighting back tears, I let my jerk of a brother lead me back to his trailer, when I heard someone say, “Hey, is this your sister?”
From the dark recesses of the sound stage, Shane Miller emerged in his character’s trademark blazer, white button-down shirt, loose tie, black jeans, and high tops. He was even cuter in real life than on TV, and he was smiling and walking straight toward me. I could no longer move. My hands began shaking. My right eye started twitching.
“Yeah, this is her,” Nico said. “This is Willa. Willa-Shane. Shane-Willa.” I felt my brother’s hands on my shoulders as he tried to move me forward, but I wouldn’t budge.
Shane slid the script that he was holding under his left arm and held out his right hand for me to shake. “Hey, Willa. It’s good to finally meet you,” he said. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
I didn’t say anything, I just thrust the magazine and pen into his chest.
“What is wrong with you?” Nico muttered.
“Tiger Beat!” Shane exclaimed. “Hey, you got everyone to sign it, That’s so cool.”
I grabbed the magazine back from him and opened it to the page with his picture on it.
“You want me to sign this?” he said, laughing. “They totally misquoted me in this article, by the way. I did not say that blue is my favorite color. I said I like the color of faded blue jeans. Guess they ran out of space.”
I tried to giggle at that, but it got caught in my very dry throat.
“It’s tough being a misunderstood star,” Nico said as he nudged my arm. “You gotta get going, Will.”
That’s when a guy with a headset came over and told my brother that the director needed to talk to him, so he got dragged off and left me alone with the cutest, most famous boy I had ever met.
“When do you need me on set?” Shane called out to the guy.
“Five minutes!” the guy with the headset yelled back.
There were probably at least seventy other people in that soundstage, but it really felt like just the two of us all of a sudden in this empty space between the snack table and the black curtains that hid the exits to where the trailers were parked on the lot outside. Shane smiled down at me. I swear, he was so friendly, even his hair was smiling at me.
“You having fun in LA?”
&
nbsp; “Yeah.” I had found my voice, now that my brother was gone. My hands were no longer shaking either, and my eye had stopped twitching. It was like I was meant to be alone with this guy. “It’s sunny. It smells like skunks, but people seem happy here.”
He looked amused. “Yeah. They do seem happy, don’t they? Are you happy in Michigan?”
“I guess so. But I won’t be there forever.”
“No? You coming out here to be an actor too?”
“Hah! No way. I’m going to live in Paris and make perfume.”
“Perfume in Paris, huh? You do smell nice.”
“Thank you. It’s sweet pea. The flower. P-e-a. Not pee like urine.” Phew. Good thing I cleared that up.
He grinned. “Got it. I’ve never met anyone who wanted to make perfume before. How do you do that, exactly?”
“Oh, well, I haven’t learned all the different ways yet. I have to study chemistry in college and stuff, but you can use essential oils too. It’s just mixing things together until you get the smell you want.”
“That makes sense. Where do you learn that stuff? Potions class at Hogwarts?”
“I wish. My parents won’t let me spend money on all the stuff I need yet. But I want to have my own company.”
“Good for you. I bet you will…” His brow was furrowed, like he was really thinking about this. “How did you—why did you decide to be a perfume maker?”
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