My agent calls me on the drive to Riverside for my dad’s birthday party. Thomas is driving. And Bo is in the back seat.

I have an agent now.

My Vice article came out just a month ago, at the end of Aquarius season, not that that matters. Before the article came out, I went to a hypnotist so that I’d stop thinking and talking about astrology. It didn’t work at all, which was good because suddenly I had all these literary agents calling me and saying they wanted me to write a book about astrology.

I signed with someone from ICM, the agency I’d always wanted to represent me for acting. Maybe my literary agent can put in a good word for me in the acting department. I don’t know how it all works. I have no acting reel, no experience. My agent told me she thought she could sell the book for upper six figures based on my Instagram following. That was enough for me. All I had to do was write a twenty-five- page proposal, and I did that pretty quickly, thanks to my lilith in Virgo, or maybe it was just desperation.

I wrote it at Subtropical.

The first time I saw Bo there, we ignored each other. The second time too. But the third time, he came up to my table and asked me how I was doing. I told him the truth, that I wrote a cynical article about astrology that had gone viral and that I had an agent now and was writing a book proposal. I asked how he was doing, and he said he had a few exciting shoots coming up.

By the fifth time, there was a familiar ease between us. I didn’t care about impressing him, and I no longer saw him as sparkly or attractive. He was just a guy. A guy whose DNA I happened to share. But it seems our moms are very different. He described his mom as a “trashy party girl” and a “liar.” I told him my mom was a “conscientious teacher with a slavish reverence for the truth.”

I am talking to my dad again, but I didn’t tell Bo at first.

I finally caved when my dad called immediately after I’d hit the bong. The cannabis made me soft and forgetful, and I answered without thinking. My dad was so apologetic, and I realized I wasn’t really mad at him. None of this was his fault. It was my fault, for idolizing and stalking someone based on his birth chart.