Crush du Jour (12 page)

Anna
: So you were outed?

Me
: I am Outtie McOutterson, Queen of Outterdonia.
Everyone
at Hype knows who my mom is now.

Anna
: Hmm. That can’t be such a good thing.

Me
: On a scale of one to ten? It rates about a negative thirty. When my mom shook hands with Seth’s dad, that was, like, the worst moment of my life. Anna: Worse than when you served your mom allergy pudding? Me: The second worst moment of my life.

Anna
: What did Seth say?

Me
:
(long pause)
It wasn’t so much a sentence, as an astonished stare, followed by unintelligible mumbling. Then he ran away.

Anna
: (longer pause) Ouch. Awkward.

Me
: Yeah, and after my mom left, Seth’s dad had a little talk with me.

Anna
: About your mom?

Me
: More about the fact that I almost
killed her. And tackled Seth earlier that night. Um, he seemed a little bit bothered by those things.

Anna
: Do you still have a job?

Me
: Barely. I promised to shape up. What I
don’t
have is any chance with Seth, ever.

Anna
: (
taking a deep breath)
Well—

Me
: Now would
not
be the time to remind me that I never had a huge chance to begin with. Or that I recently swore off love in the first place.

Anna
: Check. What about backup boy, then? You should go for Damien. You deserve a fun night out, at least. Get your flirt back on, even temporarily.

Me
: About that …

Anna
:
What did you do?

Me
: (
defensive)
Nothing. I literally did nothing. After my mother left and I talked to Seth’s father, I ran to the drygoods pantry and hid. After his shift, Damien found me slumped against an economy-sized sack of steel-cut oats.

Anna
: Which always says “romance” to me.

Me
: Yeah, well … shows what you know. We’re going for coffee tomorrow. The catch of the day has been reeled in.

Anna
:
(unironically)
Yay!

Me
: What can I say? He caught me when I was weak. I had no powers of resistance.

Anna
: Resistance, schmesistance. Have fun. Only … Me: What?

Anna
: Stay away from the espresso and the hazelnut, babe. Just, you know, until you get your mojo back.

Thirteen

With Seth out of the picture, I was free to crush away on Damien with my typical flightiness. In all honesty the fling thing had lost some of its allure, but a girl can only spend so much time with a notebook and a highlighter pen. So when the time came for our date, I tried to psych myself up.

When Damien said that we were going for coffee, I sort of thought he meant we’d have some casual, froufy, bazillion-calorie concoction at a local Fourbucks franchise or something like that. But when he called me Sunday afternoon to finalize the plans, he explained that what he’d really had in mind was a dim, darkened, beatnik-y coffeehouse called Uncommon Grounds that he and his
college friends frequented. I’d heard about it, but seeing as I was still in high school, I’d never been inside.

I was up for it, though. The last few adventures I’d embarked on—teaching cooking class, waiting tables, crushing on Seth—had yielded mixed results. I wasn’t exactly hungry for adventure—I was way too depressed for that. But, you know, I was sort of … peckish.

I wasn’t sure what to wear for a date with a college guy, so I decided on a fail-safe black tank top and jeans. It was the closest I had to poetry-slam clothing, and it seemed like this coffeehouse was poetry-slam territory. A little sheer lipstick, some hair wax, and I was possibly even looking a full six months older.

Damien had insisted on picking me up at my house. I figured it couldn’t hurt. I wasn’t hiding anything anymore, that was for sure. Not that my mother was even home. She was off terrorizing some other waitress with her bottomless bag of alter egos.

He said he’d come by at 7:00 p.m., and at precisely 7:02 our doorbell rang. Points for punctuality. I grabbed my most adorable,
date-y bag and headed out the door to meet him.

“Hey,” he said, smiling when he saw me. “You look great.”

It’s amazing what a little sheer lipstick can do for a girl.

“Thanks,” I said. “You look … different when you’re not behind a bar.”

It was true. As we walked down my steps and then down the street, I realized that there actually wasn’t any awkwardness to seeing him outside of work. It was like some small cocoon had burst open. Maybe I looked weird without an apron tied around my waist or a huge sauce stain creeping down my shirt. But we were more than just coworkers—we were obviously both practiced in the art of flirtation. After all the weeks of denying my feelings for Seth, it was kind of a relief to let my inner sex kitten out of her cage for an evening.

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Damien decided.

College guys. They’re so mature.

The coffeehouse was on the other side of town, near the university, but since it was a nice night and not too sticky, we had decided to walk. I was slightly out of practice when it
came to witty banter, so I let him lead the conversation. The more he talked, the more I realized how little I actually knew about him.

Damien was from South Jersey and had spent his whole life there; it was a foregone conclusion that he’d stick around for college. He was following in his older brother’s footsteps in where he went to school and even by tending bar to help support himself. I decided there was a certain comfort in that sort of easygoing, steady-Eddie approach to life. Probably. I mean, if my mom had been more steady Eddie and less career monster, maybe my dad would have stuck around, right?

He stopped in front of the entrance to the coffeehouse and pulled the door open for me.

“Ladies first,” he insisted, eyes twinkling.

Once inside, it took my eyes a moment to adjust to the light. Or rather, the total lack thereof. It was about seven-thirty on a summer Sunday in Philadelphia—light was not in short supply outside. This place was obviously working hard to cultivate a bohemian vibe. Everywhere I looked, I saw worn, knotted wood, rickety chairs, and
unadorned tables. An abandoned stool and a microphone stand stood pushed along the far wall.

Oh, I was
so
right about the poetry slams.

“Have a seat. I’ll get us coffee.” He patted me on the shoulder and pulled a chair out for me at one of the empty tables.

I settled myself in and surveyed the crowd. There were a few people huddled at tables by themselves, clearly students, tapping away at laptops and exuding a vibe of low-level pressure. One or two couples looked like they could be on dates—girls and guys leaning toward each other and speaking in hushed, intense tones. Then again, who knew if that meant a date? Everything about this place sort of screamed “intense.” Maybe that was just a prerequisite for patronage.

“Here we are.” Damien handed me a mug of steaming black coffee and tiny packets of creamer and sugar before easing himself into the seat across from me.

I emptied three creamer packets into the mug and stirred.

“I guess this place doesn’t do mochas?” I smiled, trying to be a good sport, but the truth was that full-blown coffee coffee kind of makes me want to yak.

“Oh, uh, yeah,” Damien said, still grinning. “Only one thing on the menu. A real coffeehouse, true to its name. You don’t find many of those these days.”

“So you’re a purist?” I probed.

“I really am,” he admitted. “What can I say? I believe that coffee should be made of coffee, that food should pick a cuisine and stick to it, and that smoothies are not meals. I guess I’m kind of old-school about stuff like that.”

I pinched my thumb and index finger together in front of him. “Little bit.”

My mother would have a field day with a guy like this, I realized. She was all for authentic, rustic flavor, but that was no reason to turn your nose up at everything new and experimental.

Damien was a guy, I suspected, who would never want to find any pesto in his lasagna. Or hazelnut espresso in his mousse.

“What are you doing working at a place like Hype?” I asked, frankly curious.

“Are you kidding?” He arched an eyebrow. “That bar is the best racket it town. New restaurant, downtown address, fusion cuisine … You’ve seen how busy we get.”

I nodded. That was certainly true. Luke
warm reviews and my own iffy service be darned.

“Anyway, my brother always told me to go where the money is,” he finished.

I could relate to that, obviously.

He leaned back in his seat and surveyed me quizzically.

“The question is, what are
you
doing working at a place like Hype?” he asked. “I mean, no offense, but since—”

“—since I’m the worst waitress in, like, ever?” I filled in for him.

He bit his lip. “Maybe not
ever”

“But maybe,” I agreed. I owned up to my sheer mediocrity when it came to waiting tables. I hardly had any other choice, by now. It wasn’t exactly a secret, my suckiness.

I sighed. “I guess I was never really cut out to be a waitress. There are too many components to the job that are out of your control. But when Seth told me about the opening, I couldn’t pass it up.”

“For the money,” Damien supplied, nodding.

Well, sure, for money, of course. Those lavender suede sneakers I’d seen at Target the other day weren’t going to come marching to
my house all on their own, after all. And, of course, I had visions of Ivy dancing in my head, and as we’ve discussed, Ivy doesn’t come cheap. But it was definitely more than the money, and I knew it.

It was also Seth.

In some ways, Seth was pretty similar to Damien, I realized. I mean, he liked to follow recipes to a
T
, and he wasn’t big on random experimentation. Unlike Damien, however, he was demonstrably impervious to my questionable feminine wiles. Both were totally hot, totally friendly and adorable guys. And Damien was exactly the sort of summer crush I would have lusted over this time last year.

But Seth—rigid, rustic, black-coffee-drinking Seth—was still the tastier choice to me.

Damien was charming with a capital “ch,” but there was no denying it: Tiny little tasting menus just didn’t appeal to me anymore. I was ready for a more substantial meal. If love was some kind of master menu, I decided, then Seth and I were decidedly different entrées. Seth was a roast chicken while I was wild game. Seth was cheeseburgers while I was teriyaki beef wraps.

Seth was chocolate and I was peanut butter.

We were different, but meant to be together. Of this I was sure. I’d swear on my
Joy of Cooking
.

I didn’t share any of my culinary revelation with Damien—that would have been a flagrant violation of the rules of flirting. But I think that somehow, he could probably see it on my face.

Damien walked me home at the end of the night, and I worried for a moment whether or not he would try to kiss me. For all my mad crushing throughout the years, the last time I’d been kissed full on the lips was in a summer camp spin-the-bottle fiasco that had made me sort of phobic about repeat performances. At my front door, he leaned forward.

And I swiftly turned, pecked him on the cheek, and darted inside.

Coffee was fine—strong and bitter, sure, but I could deal. But honestly? My appetite was starting to perk up.

I was getting hungry again.

“Okay, so if the garlic is beginning to brown, then we turn down the heat and add
the carrots,” I said, using the royal “we” in a vain effort to convince Cameron and Marci that they had as much control over the oven as I did (they didn’t). Cameron dutifully stepped forward and tilted a bowl of cleanly diced carrots into the massive pot of gumbo we were cooking today. It wasn’t exactly summer food, no, but it was pretty easy, with slightly less potential to cause a big squicky mess.

“Hey, Seth,” I called out, “if you guys are done rinsing the beans, I think we’re about ready for them over here.”

I shot a quick sidelong glance in his direction; our shifts hadn’t overlapped at Hype this week, so this was my first time seeing him since last Saturday night. Personally, I was trying to forget that last Saturday night had ever happened, and I was sort of hoping Seth would do the same. Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell what Seth was doing, seeing as how, since class had begun, he’d been studiously avoiding my gaze.

Maybe
that’s
what he was doing: avoiding me. Studiously.

Fab.

“Uh, sure,” he mumbled, passing a colander filled with rinsed beans to Barrie
and gesturing for her to take them over to me.

I coaxed all the various ingredients into the main pots and gave the three more responsible students spoons. “Stir occasionally,” I instructed. They nodded solemnly and stood at an appropriate distance from the range tops.

For the rest of us, corn bread beckoned. I mean, it beckoned from a mix, but hey, it was Seth’s idea, and I’d decided to take one for the team.

The impermeable sheet of awkwardness and tension between Seth and me was starting to suffocate me. I had to do something. I had to grab the gumbo pot by its burn-proof handle, so to speak.

“Um, Seth,” I called, going for broke, “do you want to help me grab the corn bread stuff from the pantry?”

“Sure,” he said quietly.