Angels on Sunset Boulevard by Melissa de La Cruz Page B

doesn’t like
kapusta?”
she asked, her nose wrinkling at the thought of eating the pungent cabbage and sauerkraut slaw. She’d only mentioned it to Nick as a joke.
    â€œHow can he not like
kapusta?”
    As a concession to Taj, Mama Fay was wearing what she called her Laura Bush outfit: a trim sweater set and a necklace of fake pearls. But that was as far as she would go—the pants were form-fitting and leopard-print. And Mama Fay had styled her hair into a towering beehive and had glued on her most abundant fake eyelashes, so that it looked like two spiders were attached to her eyes.
    Taj set the rickety table in the alcove off the kitchen with three places. She didn’t know why she had decided so impulsively to invite Nick over to dinner. Okay, so he’d paid her cab fare, but did she really owe him dinner? It had just come out of her mouth—wanna have dinner at my house?—before she could process what an invitation like that meant.
    â€œWhat about the old boyfriend?” Mama Fay was asking. “The famous one. The one who went crazy and went to Africa.”
    â€œWho knows?” Taj shrugged. “I haven’t heard fromhim. Now they’re saying he went to Tibet, to be with the monks.”
    â€œMonks? Why monks? My Lord, I can’t see that boy with the monks.”
    Johnny had loved
kapusta.
He’d loved everything about Mama Fay, had even enjoyed hanging out at the cabaret. And Mama Fay and the drag queens had adored Johnny in return. So handsome! That hair—how can it be natural! Those eyes! They thought he was more beautiful than any boy they’d ever met.
    Johnny had lapped up all the affection. He’d practically been part of the family. In fact, until all that stuff started happening with TAP, when he began getting big, and playing gigs, and then the record deal happened and he was so busy dealing with music execs he didn’t have time to hang out—at least, that was his excuse; Taj knew that at that point there were other girls involved—until then, he was always hanging out at her house.
    He didn’t talk about his home life, but Taj figured there wasn’t much to say. She’d seen the bruises on his arm from the beatings his stepfather administered, and as for his mom, according to Johnny she was so tired from working two jobs she never even noticed him.
    Did they worry about him like she did? Were they proud of his album? Did they even care that he was missing? Had disappeared?
    Taj went to the bathroom to check on her appearance. Nick was arriving soon. He’d sounded distracted when he called, but he’d promised he would be there tonight.
    She was wearing a little plaid dress she’d hemmed to mini length, black stockings, and platform heels, and she had taken care to blow-dry her hair perfectly.
God, what do I care. He probably thinks I look really stupid.
But she applied a second coat of lip gloss anyway.

Nick
    NICK PULLED UP TO THE ADDRESS TAJ HAD GIVEN him. It was in a desolate area of the Hollywood flats, next door to two empty lots. He noticed a couple of junkyard dogs sniffing around. His first thought was that the neighborhood was uglier and grittier than he had assumed, and the second was that he was a snob for thinking like that. He didn’t like to think of himself as a snob.
    The patch of garden in front of the house was full of weeds and rotting plastic furniture. Did Taj really live here?
    He walked up to the door and rang the bell.
    He heard some yelling from inside—“GET THE DOOR!” “GOT IT!” “JEEZ!”—and a few minutes later Taj was standing in the doorway.
    She was wearing some kind of dress that skimmed her body and was cut short on the thigh. Nick thought she looked amazing, and he told her so.
    â€œYeah, I remember now—you’re the one who thinks I’m pretty.” Taj smiled. “Are those for me?”
    â€œThey’re for your …