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Los Angeles is a hellscape. It’s smoggy, loud, and too hot. There are too many people, and not enough water. There are earthquakes and there are scorpions, and every other person Lexa meets wants to be a celebrity, or is a tourist looking for directions to the nearest celebrity. It sucks. It all sucks. But nothing, in all of Los Angeles, sucks as badly as the traffic.
The drive home from the office takes just under an hour on a good day, if traffic is relatively tame, but today is not a good day. Lexa is caught on the 405, not for the first time, and, based on the line of cars ahead of her, this might be her final resting place.
She only relocated two months ago, and she’s already seriously considering quitting the fancy Executive Assistant to the Editor in Chief position that her dad keeps bragging to his friends about and booking a one-way ticket back to Seattle. It drives her crazy, the way this city makes her wish away the best thing that’s ever happened to her.
The job is wonderful. It’s challenging and fast-paced, collaborative and exciting. It’s almost everything she busted her ass working toward in undergrad, and it’s only one step away from a goal she’s had since she was thirteen. She was even lucky enough to land the gig right after graduation, so she didn’t get any of the side-eye or prodding about potential careers that some of her classmates are still suffering through. By all accounts, Lexa has just about made it.
If only she could’ve made it somewhere else.
The air is on full blast, cold and dry against her skin. It’s stupid, she knows, because she only had a quarter tank of gas this morning, and she’s never sure how much is left since half the meters on the dashboard of her worn, old car are useless and she's several paychecks away from being able to afford a new one. She knows there’s no way it’ll last for as long she needs it to without forcing her to stop for more before she gets home. She’s still deciding whether that might be preferable to sweating through her professionally pressed suit. She has a gym bag in the backseat, but she’s tired, and she’s surrounded by strangers who would almost definitely notice if she started stripping in the front seat.
She cranks the air from full blast to half blast and eases out of her suit jacket. It’s a small compromise.
Lexa sighs and switches through radio stations until she can catch the end of the traffic report.
“Again,” a man’s voice drones on, “if you don’t have to take the 405 South, folks, avoid it at all costs. Authorities are reporting a 20-car pileup after a semi-truck careened into a guard rail, flipped over, and leaked gallons of diesel fuel into the roadway. No major injuries, but expect at least an hour’s delay on any plans, probably more.”
She cuts off the radio and sighs again. That’s when she hears the music. There’s a frenetic beat coming from the red Jeep Wrangler to her left, filtering in faintly despite Lexa’s closed windows.
There’s a woman in the driver’s seat. She’s all wavy blonde hair and exposed tan skin. Very Los Angeles, Lexa notes. She even has a surfboard resting on the rack above her head. On top of all that, she’s dancing her heart out. Rolling her shoulders, snapping her fingers, and shaking her hair like she doesn’t care who can see her.
She doesn’t look particularly graceful. Her movements are sort of jerky, but she’s so obviously into the song, that Lexa can’t fault her. She’s making the most of this dreadful situation. It’s smoggy and it’s hot, and they’re stuck for at least an hour, but probably more, and the blonde has found a way to enjoy it. Lexa wishes the woman’s enthusiasm was contagious.
She must be staring a little too hard, because, the next time the blonde is shaking her hair to the beat, her eyes catch Lexa’s and she startles, then stops dead in her tracks. The woman’s eyes are wide as saucers when she shoots Lexa an embarrassed smile and a shrug. There’s a stretch of awkward eye contact between the them, and Lexa’s face heats up, but not because of the temperature. She can’t help but notice how hot the other woman is.
She’s a California Ten, no doubt, and the whole deer in headlights look is far from unpleasant to look at. The embarrassment must not overwhelm the blonde, though, because she picks her dancing back up again, this time looking pointedly at Lexa before losing herself to the music.
Somewhere, beneath the hum of the air conditioning, Lexa can feel the beat.
The song changes, still something upbeat, and the blonde adjusts her moves a little, gets a little bolder, and even gaudier. She throws in the old sprinkler, and does the running man from her seat, stealing a few glances at Lexa to gauge her reaction. Lexa recognizes the song as one of those catchy 80s songs that she never remembers the words to, but still gets stuck in her head every time she hears it. She has half a mind to look at all the other drivers, to base her reaction to the blonde on theirs.
Lexa wants to keep a straight face. She wants to be resigned to suffering through this hot, boring standstill, but a bright, pretty California girl is cabbage patching at her. She smiles, but begrudgingly, without showing teeth.
The blonde dances on.
In her rearview mirror, Lexa can see a group of kids and their mom kicking around a soccer ball next to a Suburban. Two pairs of bare feet hanging casually out of the windows of the little yellow car beside them. There’s a guy spreading a blanket on the ground beside a station wagon up ahead. The guy in the car on Lexa’s other side is wearing a suit not all that different from Lexa’s and shouting into his phone.
All around, some cars are still honking their horns. Long bursts, short bursts, but not a single car is moving. Plenty of people must be losing their wits, probably plotting ways to inch ahead by driving on the shoulders or asking themselves whether Buicks were made to cross over medians, but the blonde in the Wrangler is still dancing.
Lexa checks her phone. She has a few emails, a voicemail from her boss’ secretary warning her not to try the 405, a few texts from friends back home, and a low battery.
The half blast level of air conditioning is woefully inadequate, and heat starts slowly seeping its way into the car, settling in her skin and seeping back out in a thin layer of sweat. She tugs at the collar of her shirt, undoes a couple buttons.
When she looks over at the blonde again, the woman’s eyes are glued to Lexa and she looks as sheepish as Lexa felt to be caught staring earlier. She raises her hand and cranks it in a circular direction, and Lexa wracks her brain for a few seconds trying to figure out what sort of dance move she’s trying out now before it dawns on her that she wants her to roll down her window.
Lexa does.
The blonde turns her music down and says, “It’s probably hotter in your car than it is out here.”
Her voice carries clearly between their cars, a little raspy, maybe, and not at all the Valley Girl accent Lexa’s ashamed to have expected.
“You’re underestimating my air conditioner,” Lexa says back, even though her car is almost certainly going to lose this battle against the elements.
“I think your air conditioner is underestimating how long we’re going to be stuck here,” the blonde says back, and Lexa fights off an eye roll, since it isn’t this woman’s fault that she hasn’t gotten gas in a few days.
“I appreciate the concern, but you should consider worrying about how your car battery’s going to die if you keep your music running.”
The blonde just smirks and lifts something rectangular and orange into Lexa’s line of sight.
“Beach radio,” she says, when she sees Lexa’s furrowed brow.
“How quintessentially Californian,” Lexa says, and the blonde laughs.
“Born and raised,” she says, “but you must not be.”
“What gave it away,” Lexa asks, resting her arm on the window to lean toward the blonde and jerking it away as casually as she can when the heat of the metal catches her skin. The blonde is polite enough not to laugh, and smirks at her again.
Then she squints, tilts her head, and says, “Just a vibe you’re giving off.”
Lexa doesn’t know whether to take offense to that or not, since the blonde seems to be sizing her up. She surprises Lexa by shuffling around a few things and then climbing from her driver’s seat to the passenger’s seat, only a few feet from Lexa.
“That’s better,” she says, “Less projecting, you know? So, let me guess, you’re a…” she trails off, sits up a little straighter in her seat to look at Lexa, who tries not to shrink in her seat, and then finishes, “lawyer from Colorado?”
“No and no,” Lexa laughs.
“Am I warm at least?”
“This whole state is warm,” Lexa deadpans. The heat is pooling under her arms, and Lexa would at least take off her collared shirt if the blonde wasn’t right there, even if she’s still a little wary of changing out in the open.
“Okay, an unemployed comedian, then? From Indiana?”
“I don’t know if whatever vibes you’re sensing are throwing you off or not, but no.”
“I have a t-shirt in my car somewhere, if you want to borrow it,” the blonde offers. It catches Lexa off-guard.
“We don’t even know each other,” she says, wondering whether this is just another Cali thing, chatting up strangers and offering them your clothes.
“I’m Clarke,” she says, reaching her right hand out to the space between their cars. It seems like a flippant gesture, her fingers spread apart, palm facing upward, but Lexa grips on just the same. She feels small callouses on Clarke’s palm, in the space between her thumb and forefinger.
Snippets of songs from other cars catch Lexa’s ear. The honking has all but died down. Kids are playing. Adults are lounging. Lexa is hanging onto a California girl’s hand for entirely too long, contemplating the ways in which it defies her expectations of how California girls’ hands might feel.
“Lexa,” she tells the blonde, finally dropping her hand and carefully avoiding the hot metal of her car door, “and I actually have a tank top and shorts in my trunk, and nowhere to change.”
“School teacher from Utah, then? I hear there’s a lot more modesty there than here,” Clarke says, and then she’s up and moving again, this time reaching over her seat to rummage in the back. She looks over her shoulder, while Lexa tries to squash the desire to check the other girl out, and asks “did I get it?”
“Not even close,” Lexa laughs, “and it’s not so much modesty as me trying not to get some public indecency charges filed against me.”
Clarke finds whatever it is she’s looking for and tugs it up into the front with her. Lexa can make out a colorful bundle. Clarke tosses it into Lexa’s open window.
“Beach towel,” Clarke tells her, “for changing.”
“You’re awfully accommodating, Clarke,” Lexa tells her, not necessarily because she doesn’t expect anyone from this state to be accommodating, but because she hasn’t seen it yet.
“It's the least I can do for a politician from Florida."
Lexa snorts and shakes her head.
“Watching you sweat is making me hot,” Clarke shrugs, and it takes about two seconds for embarrassment to balloon back up between the two of them. Clarke’s tan cheeks go pink, and she throws up her hands and says, “That came out wrong. I mean, I'm hot and you're hot, but, like, sweating, you know?”
Lexa doesn’t trust herself to say anything, so she just nods dumbly and reaches for her bag. Clarke averts her eyes when Lexa drapes the towel over her body, and, Lexa makes quick work of slipping into her tank top and workout shorts. She rolls the towel back up and tosses it at Clarke, who’s fiddling with her radio.
“Much better,” the blonde says, “you’re a much cooler…stock broker from Nevada, now.”
Lexa’s about to tell her how far off she is when her car starts letting out a sputtering sound. All of the lights flash on and off a few times, and Lexa’s ready to enter panic mode until all the lights shut off except for one. The gas light.
Lexa glares, betrayed by her old, but usually faithful car, as the gas light fades, too.
She did know it was stupid.
But, in Lexa’s defense, Clarke is effortlessly distracting with her questions and her guesses and her vibes.
“Hey, Clarke,” she starts, but when she looks up the blonde is fighting off a smile, and probably an I told you so.
Of course, the moment Lexa’s car decides to give up, the 405 starts showing mercy in the form of a chorus of engines roaring to life.
“Shit,” Lexa says, mostly to herself, and then to Clarke, “do you think you could take me to get some gas?”
“As long as you’re not an axe murderer from Ohio,” Clarke says, moving back into her driver’s seat.
Lexa jogs back to warn the car behind her and the driver laughs and says, “Welcome to California traffic,” but offers to stay behind her car with their hazards on until she and Clarke can get gas.
Lexa wonders if he’s getting the same inexplicable vibe as Clarke but then realizes her can see her Washington plates. She wonders if meeting these two abnormally nice people means she has to re-evaluate her whole take on Californians.
Clarke plays 80s music and guesses about five more job and state combinations on the way to the station before she breaks down and asks.
On the way back, somehow, she gets Lexa dancing and singing along to “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” and Lexa starts wonder if, maybe, the blonde’s enthusiasm is contagious.
It takes a while for them to get back to Lexa’s car, but the time seems to fly with Clarke, so much so that when the blonde says, “I guess I’d better let you get back to your air conditioning,” Lexa asks her if she’d like to grab dinner, because Lexa could definitely stand to know someone in California who can make a traffic jam feel like a party.
“It’s a date,” Clarke declares, no question, no hesitation.
“It’s a date,” Lexa agrees.
Lexa still hates the traffic and the smog, and the heat and the earthquakes, but she can’t quite bring herself to hate the place in the same way. Los Angeles has Clarke, and Lexa just might like her more than she hates everything else.