Crush du Jour (13 page)

In fact, he said it so quietly that I had to strain to be sure that he’d answered me at all. He still wasn’t looking at me. I don’t think anyone, in my life, had ever not-looked at me as aggressively as Seth was right now.

I gave the class one last once-over to be
sure that everyone was busy at some non-sharp, nonburn-y, nontoxic task, and, satisfied, headed off in search of corn bread mix.

The pantry was nothing like the enormous silo found at Hype; instead, it was more of a glorified closet. Quarters were a bit tight for two people who were working so hard not to look at each other that they were going to set the floor on fire with the strength of their averted gazes.

I stood on my tiptoes and pulled down two boxes of mix, a box of powdered eggs (gross, but they keep for much longer than fresh ones), and a huge vat of economy-sized vegetable oil. Seth was there to help me, of course, but seeing as how we weren’t really speaking to each other—more like around each other—I was kind of wary of loading him up like my personal bellhop.

Unfortunately, there was no way I was getting all that stuff back into the kitchen myself. I struggled, but it wasn’t happening. As I moved away from the shelves, I reeled backward, dropping all three corn bread mix boxes on Seth’s foot in rapid succession.

“Ow, ow, ow,” he said robotically, as each one smashed his toes.

“Sorry.” I cringed and reached down to pick them up.

However, Seth had already crouched down to pick up the boxes. My own leaning down had the unfortunate effect of depositing the remainder of the packages directly onto his head.

The vegetable oil was the worst. The plastic made a twanging sound as it bent in and back out again. The vat bounced off the top of Seth’s head and rolled noisily away. It banged against the wall of the closet and stopped, mercifully.

“I swear, I’m not trying to kill you,” I gushed. “I just have, um, butterfingers. Or, uh, vegetable oil fingers.”

It was a horrible joke, the kind my pun-loving grandfather would make. And also, I had given the boy of my dreams a baking supply concussion. Joking was perhaps not as useful right now as, say, running for the first aid kit would be.

Still, for a moment I saw the corners of Seth’s mouth turn up as though they were headed in the general direction of a smile. But just as quickly as the expression bloomed, his face went stony and impassive again.

“I’m fine,” he said.

“Good,” I replied hastily. “But … is something else bothering you?”

Something other than the fact that I kept from you my mother’s high-profile job and basically sabotaged her visit to your father’s new restaurant? Oh, and that I also just brained you with three tons of unsaturated fat?

“I’m fine,” he repeated, which didn’t feel like the complete and honest truth. But what could I do?

“Okay,” I said shortly, gathering together half of the supplies and wisely letting Seth carry his own load this time.

The door to the closet was ajar, but only slightly. I had reached with my free hand to push it farther open when I heard Seth clear his throat nervously behind me.

“So, ah, what’d you do last week, Laine?” he asked. “After I saw you, I mean.”

Right,
after
I made a total ass of myself at Hype.

“Um, not much,” I said, my face coloring. Just the memory of last Saturday night was excruciating.

It was true; after my ill-fated shift, the week had been relatively uneventful. Seth didn’t want to hear about my Spanish translation
tapes or my research into the local animal rescue organization. Or that Anna and I had tried Crest Whitestrips and decided we didn’t like the way they made our teeth tingle. So that was a bust. And I’d reacquainted myself with my favorite books about girls sharing jeans and learning, growing, and etc-ing over the summer (their lives were
much
more eventful than mine).

And then there was the date with Damien. But I sure wasn’t going to mention
that
.

“Huh,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “That’s funny; I heard you went on a date with Damien.”

I stopped in my tracks. How would he know that I’d gone on a date with Damien? My mind raced; had Damien told him? And if so,
what
had Damien told him? That I looked cute without my apron on? That I preferred to drink coffee when it was disguised as hot chocolate? That I was too immature to even kiss a cute guy (albeit one I wasn’t that into) on the lips? What did boys talk about when they discussed these sorts of things?

More important, if Seth knew that I had
been on a date with Damien, did that make him want me more? Or less? Inquiring minds
needed
to know.

“Callie was saying. I guess Damien said something to her,” Seth said finally, apparently choosing to ignore my sudden inability to communicate verbally.

So Damien said something to Callie? And Callie said something to Seth? This little chain of gossip (was it gossip if it was actually true?) had taken a different path than I would have anticipated. That probably meant something.

It’s just, I had no idea what.

“Come on,” Seth said, juggling his packages and making his way back to the kitchen tables. “Corn bread.”

Right, of course. Corn bread.

Yum.

Fourteen

I had kind of thought that having things so weird and hopeless with Seth, with no sign of any other crush-y prospects on the horizon, and an incredibly tenuous grip on my own employment (not to mention my sanity) was sort of rock bottom. I’d thought that, short of learning I’d developed a late-blooming deathly allergy to mint chocolate chip ice cream, things couldn’t possibly get any worse.

Alas, I thought wrong.

I was up bright and early Monday morning. This in itself was annoying; I didn’t have to be at Hype until six o’clock, and there was no earthly reason to be awake before noon.

I tossed and turned in bed for almost an hour, trying unsuccessfully to fall back asleep. Nothing doing. Every time I closed my eyes, all I saw was Seth: Seth lying flat on his back at Hype, covered in the contents of his tray after I’d sent him sprawling; Seth saving my mother from a coughing fit and in the process learning more about me than I’d ever wanted him to know; Seth dodging rogue dry goods in the rec center pantry with me.

Seth knowing all about my date with Damien, and not seeming to care one way or the other about it.

When the summer began, all I’d wanted was to raise some money for college and boost my transcript. If I got lucky, something else would happen, too—a new adventure, a chance to try my hand at a new hobby, or an opportunity to meet people I didn’t already know from high school. Maybe even all three at the same time.

I’d succeeded at that, of course: I started cooking, started teaching, and even started dating. I was okay—even pretty good—at cooking, and the truth was, I knew I was a decent teacher, too. When the kids weren’t pelting me with various foodstuffs, I was
pretty fond of them. So I had my whole roster set up. It was only my love life that seemed to be back-burnered. If my experience with Damien was anything to go on, I was kind of a lousy date. Or maybe I was just a one-guy kind of girl.

Even if that guy and I weren’t dating, flirting, or really even talking to each other. Even if that one guy wouldn’t look me in the eye.

Meanwhile, we won’t discuss Misadventures in Waitressing.

But lying in bed was not improving my mood. I needed to motivate. Maybe some sugar cereal would help. I was a big believer in the healing powers of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

I hoisted myself out of bed, shrugged a short terry-cloth robe over my tank top and shorts, and padded my way downstairs and into the kitchen. On autopilot, I shuffled to the fancy-schmancy coffeemaker my mom had been given as a congratulatory gift from her boss when she’d been promoted. I poured in the requisite ingredients and hit the button for a latte. So what if I liked my coffee dressed up a little bit? I was a woman—er, a teen—of complicated appetites, darn it.

While the machine went through its
elaborate hissing and sputtering process (I really had no idea why the creation of a latte involved more noise pollution than a demolition derby, but whatever), I settled myself casually against the kitchen counter by the morning papers. We had them all delivered, since my mom is predictably obsessed with her competition. The
Inquirer
had already been dissected and thumbed through, since my mother is
also
predictably insane and wakes up in the sixes—the sixes!—to get herself to work for a nice, eleven-hour day.

Normally I don’t read the paper; as I may have mentioned, I’m more
People
magazine than politics. The closest I really come to issues of the day is when I watch
The Daily Show
with Anna, but that’s maybe because I have a secret (or possibly not so secret) crush on Jon Stewart.

But, as usual, I digress. I took special notice of the paper this morning, once I realized that the Lifestyles section had been pulled, folded, and otherwise man—or Mom—handled.

Remember that I’d been hoping things couldn’t possibly get any worse for me?

Yeah, that dream was dead.

WHY ALL THE HYPE?

The words screamed up at me in two-inch-high, boldface type. They couldn’t have been more glaring if they’d been printed in neon green and glittered like a disco ball.

She’d done it. She’d visited Hype for the third time. Lord knows what costume she’d used this time, seeing as how the staff was kind of on to her these days, but she’d made it in on a night when I wasn’t there, the one advantage to my shifts being cut back last week. And she’d written and run a review.

A really, really bad review.

No wonder she hadn’t told me. She knew I’d freak out, and she didn’t want to put me in a difficult position. Or a more difficult position that I’d already be in, seeing as how her cover—and therefore
my
cover—was already pretty well blown.

How
could she not have told me?

A rush of dizziness engulfed me. This was bad.

Breathe
, I commanded myself. I inhaled, but my breath came in quick bursts that only made me more lightheaded.

Okay, strike breathing
, I decided, pulling
out a chair and settling shakily into it.
Let’s think damage control
.

Option 1: The article wasn’t really as bad as I was imagining.

I glanced at it again.

On a given night, the new, loudly hyped (and appropriately named) fusion restaurant downtown is packed to the rafters with Philadelphia’s high-earning, well-heeled recent grads. One can hardly blame them for this lapse in discerning taste. They’re too young to know any better. …

Oh no, it wasn’t as bad as I was imagining. It was way, way worse. The article went on to pick apart the restaurant in excruciatingly thorough detail. The food was mediocre, the menu was schizophrenic, the service was inattentive (thanks, Mom!).

Oh, it was all true.

And it was totally going to ruin if not my life, then at least my immediate future.

Option 2: Seth’s father hadn’t seen the article.

Unlikely. Even if he hadn’t seen it yet,
there was no way he’d miss it completely. Like every other would-be restaurant mogul in the city, he read the papers religiously. They, too, are predictably obsessed with their competition.

(Note to self: Being a professional adult is competitive. And also?
Hard.)

Option 3: Seth’s father had seen the review, but Seth didn’t care, because he was madly in love with me.

Beyond
unlikely. This verged on
Lord of the Rings—level
fantasy. Of course Seth would care about the review. It was a massive trashing of his father. If Seth weren’t the kind of guy to care about that, then he wouldn’t be the kind of guy I’d be crushing on.

And as we know, I was still, however ill—advisedly, crushing on him, big-time.

If Seth read the review and didn’t care that it had been written by my mother, well, then that only served to prove that he didn’t care …

… well, that he didn’t care about
me
.

I had to face facts: No matter how you sliced it, it looked like romance was off the menu. For good.

My bad mood, a kicky blend of grumpiness mixed with bona fide anxiety, intensified throughout the day. Anna wasn’t available for a BFF consult, and talking to my mother wasn’t an option. She was off in Deadlineland, but even if she’d been around, she was The Enemy. There would be no solace in talking to her.

The worst part was, she was only doing her job. Even though doing her job equaled crushing my social and professional life, I understood why she’d had to print the article.

Sometimes, being patient, understanding, and mature really sucked. Like nowtimes, for example. Now-times, all I wanted to do was curl up into a ball and watch reruns of
The Naked Chef on
an endless loop. For once in my life. I wanted to veg out—to
be
instead of to
do
. Jamie Oliver was frenetic and chatty; I was a useless blob of tapioca pudding.