I find Maps and type in Ross’s address. “Here’s your place, and here’s mine,” I point at the two pins showing how close our houses are. “So it’ll be easy to meet and figure this whole Dominic plan out.” A thrill goes through me again thinking this might actually work. “If you want, I’ll walk you.” I pause, and I can’t help the grin that spreads across my face. It actually feels good considering the past couple weeks of frowning. “That way you’ll know when it’s safe to cross the street.”

“Ha ha,” Ross deadpans.

What should be a twenty-minute walk is pushing an hour. Ross keeps getting distracted and wandering off. First to see a street performer playing steel drums on the Third Street Promenade, then a group of kids from some daycare holding hands in a line, then screaming back when some doomsdayer screams at them with a signboard over his shoulders that reads The End Is Near. With each distraction, Ross comes to a complete stop and just stares at it with a deep scowl on their face. But I’m learning that their scowl isn’t about anger or judgment. It’s more like they’re trying to figure these things out. I guess if you’re as sheltered as it sounds like they’ve been, the whole world needs a lot of deciphering. And their deciphering look is actually so endearing that I take a few shots of them on my phone. It’s how I get a lot of inspiration for film class, catching real-life looks of people on the street and trying to capture those emotions for our shorts.

While Ross pauses to stare in awe at the ivy-covered dinosaur fountains in the middle of the Promenade, my phone rings. Kavya’s face beams at me from the screen and I swipe it open.

“I’m watching you, Nessan,” she says in a horror-movie-worthy voice.

I look in every direction trying to spot her, my lifeguard whistle bouncing against my chest with each turn. She cackles as I flail around until I finally spot her down the street on the corner, sitting at a bench outside the old movie theater turned Barnes & Noble.

Kavya has binoculars glued to her eyes. They’re a part of our work uniform that are really more for aesthetics than function. You don’t need binoculars to scan the pool that’s only six feet below our stands.

“I’ve got to admit, I’m surprised at you,” Kavya says. “I thought that bag of dicks Dominic was going to send you into a mourning period greater than when the Biebs and Baldwin got married, but you’re already moving on with the hottest redhead to wash ashore since Ariel. Does he give you driftwood?”