How to Meet Boys (13 page)

“What? We’re relaxed,” Mikayla said.

“Sure. I was just watching a movie. Totally chilling,” I added.

Ava looked at me. “I still say you’re not acting like yourselves.”

“You haven’t seen us in two weeks. We’ve changed. Totally changed,” I joked.

“Riiiiiiiight. So do you know of anyone who’s hiring?” she asked.

Mikayla grabbed a couple of muffins from the box on the counter and brought them over on a plate. “I don’t think we’re hiring at the Club, but I’ll ask. With so many shops around there has to be something.” She set the plate on the table. “Thanks for the breakfast, Ava.”

“No problem,” Ava said. “I felt like I had to buy something since I was asking for directions. And you know what? They’re actually pretty good. Try one.”

“Thanks.” I took a mini chocolate-chip muffin. “The problem is that you’re getting here a couple weeks late.” I drummed my fingers on the arm of the folding chair. “But who knows? Maybe someone’s busier than they thought. It’s been a little slow for us so far, but my nana keeps saying it’s totally normal. It’s the first week of July when the place goes nuts.”

“Then I say I got here just in time,” Ava said, pulling the top off a banana muffin.

“Where do you
want
to work?” Mikayla asked her. “And what about your mom? Does she think it’s okay if you stay here instead of Chicago?”

“She’s totally fine with it. She was worried about me being on my own anyway. So now that I’m here . . . she knows I’ll be safe. As for what kind of job I get? I really don’t care,” Ava said. “I can wait tables, fold T-shirts, make lattes—I have all kinds of experience.”

Mikayla laughed. “Yeah, because you quit every place after a month!”

Ava smiled. “Maybe, but that means I have tons of different skills. So it’s actually a good thing. I’m experienced.”

“I wouldn’t go around saying that. Might give people the wrong idea,” I said.

“Or the right idea,” Mikayla teased her.

“Shut up!” Ava tossed a pillow at her then, turning to me, she asked, “How’s your job going? I got your messages about working with Jackson. Remind me again who he is? You guys made out a couple of years ago or what?”

“No!” I practically yelled. “We kissed once. Look, it’s no big deal.” I shook my head. I did
not
want to talk about that now. It made me feel so dumb, so juvenile. “Let’s move on.”

“Well, you know the old saying. Kiss me once, shame on you, kiss me twice . . . you know, good for me,” Ava said.

I squirmed uncomfortably on the sofa. I didn’t want to talk about this right now. I might say something I’d regret. This whole situation was so dramatic all of a sudden. I didn’t want it to be, not this way.

“I think it’s ‘
Fool
me once, shame on you,’” Mikayla said, laughing.

“Whatever,” Ava said. “I have my sayings, you have yours. So what’s the deal with him, anyway?”

“It’s not—look, things have changed.” I glanced at Mikayla. Who exactly was supposed to be sharing this news, anyway?
Me?
“Why don’t you tell her?”

“Tell her?” she repeated, as if she were completely not part of the conversation.

“You guys are acting weird. This is like the time you refused to tell me I had spinach in my teeth after I auditioned for the spring play. Tell me already.”

“Mikayla’s got a boyfriend,” I blurted out.

“Hold on a second. Hold on. This is monumental news. I’m—I’m shocked. No, I’m making mimosas.” Ava jumped out of the chair.

“We don’t have champagne. What do you think this is, a hotel?”

Ava peered inside the fridge. “You’ve got orange juice and Sprite. Close enough. So who’s the guy?” She pulled three glasses—our only three glasses—out of the cupboard and started pouring.

Mikayla slowly untied her running shoes. She took her time. She was stalling, waiting for me to jump in, but it was her news. She could feel bad about sharing it—I know I would. It was like she’d deliberately chosen Jackson, which was so strange. There were lots of guys here, but she’d ended up with the one I had been avoiding for years.

“It’s Jackson,” Mikayla finally said.

Ava looked at Mikayla, then at me, then at Mikayla. “Are you making this up?”

We both shook our heads.

“Um, guys. This is not the way to start the summer.” Ava stirred our fake mimosas with a spoon. She looked over at me. “I mean, how do you feel about it?”

Good question
, I thought, just as my phone rang. I glanced at it and saw my mom’s number. “Hold that thought,” I said to Ava. “I have to get this.” Truth be told, I kind of needed my mom right then. I grabbed the mimosa and ducked into my bedroom, closing the door behind me.

“The wedding’s off,” she said, when I answered. “It’s completely and totally off.”

“What? You’re not getting married? Why not?”

“Oh, we’re getting married all right,” she said. “Just
not
at the Hiawatha Country Club. Don’t get me started.”

“I didn’t,” I said quietly. But I had a feeling it wouldn’t matter.

“They double-booked us, Luce. Double-booked
us
,” she complained, as if I hadn’t heard her the first time. “What a bunch of amateurs! Have you ever heard of something so unbelievably incompetent?”

“Um . . ”

“Well, have you?” she asked.

“I’m not sure. I guess—”

“Now how am I going to find a decent place to have a wedding in August? The date is less than two months away and the absolute height of wedding season,” she went on.

I thought June was the height—June brides and all that—but I decided not to bring that up at the moment.

“We won’t be able to get it in the paper—well, thank goodness the invitations didn’t go out yet, but they’re already printed. I have to rethink
everything
.”

Funny how Mom could make it sound as if she was trying to negotiate a truce in the Middle East, when all she was talking about was switching a location. With two months’ notice to do so, and it was her second marriage, not her first, and she was supposed to be a grown-up. Sometimes she seemed like the youngest grown-up I’d ever met.

“Mom, there’s another way to approach this,” I said. She wouldn’t take my advice, but I was going to plow ahead and give it anyway. “Why not just have a, um, more simple wedding? That would mean you could find a smaller place and—”

“What? Lucy, come on. I don’t do things on a small scale. You know me. This is one of the most important days of my life! Gary has already revoked his country club membership, which is really too bad because the club is a good source for realtors, but we had to take a stand. I have to scramble to find a halfway decent place with a large outdoor patio. Are you
sure
you can’t come home for a week or so and help me straighten this mess out?”

As much as I didn’t want to get roped into the wedding plans, I was almost tempted for a second. It wouldn’t be fun, exactly, but it might be better than trying to deal with the current weird situation in this little house. “I can’t, Mom. Nana and Grandpa need me here,” I said.

“I suppose they do need you.” She let out a deep sigh. “So what’s new there?” she finally asked.

I wanted to tell her everything: about Ava showing up, about having to work with Jackson after he’d humiliated me three years ago, about discovering Jackson and Mikayla together the night before. It was going to take a few days to stop feeling so blindsided. “Mom,” I said. “Have you ever had a friendship get really weird all of a sudden?”

“Well . . . sure,” she said. “I guess, over time. Friendships can change when people grow and change. But you make it sound like more of an emergency than that. What’s the issue? I assume you’re talking about Mikayla.”

“It’s just . . . I really trusted her. With everything,” I said. “And now, I’m not sure that I can.”

“What happened?”

“You know what, never mind,” I said. “I bet it will blow over and I’ll feel stupid for even asking the question.”

“Lucyloo. Whenever you don’t want to talk . . . it usually means there’s something to talk about,” Mom said.

She was right. When she and my dad told me they were getting separated, I didn’t tell them how I felt for weeks. I was so shocked and so angry with them for not saying anything until the day Dad was moving out—they’d never told me this was even being discussed. And then,
wham
. Guess what? Dad’s moving out.

I was starting to get mad at Mikayla just for reminding me of all these awful feelings. This was the last thing I wanted to think about on my summer vacation. This was the time I could get away from it all.

But, funny thing. You couldn’t actually get away from things like that, not when your best friend had kind of broken your trust too. She didn’t tell me she knew him until she had to. The fact they were making out a couple of hours later meant they’d had time enough together to get close. Without telling me.

“Honey, don’t worry. You’ll work things out. You’ve been close friends too long to let something come between you,” Mom said. “Oops—Gary’s on the other line, talk to you later!”

After I hung up, I glanced into the living room, where Ava was sitting. I didn’t see Mikayla anywhere, so I tentatively walked back out. As I passed the bathroom, I heard the shower running and figured she must have ducked in. I hoped she hadn’t heard me talking about her.

“Mikayla had to get ready for work,” Ava told me as I sat down opposite her. “Which is good, because you and I will have a chance to talk.”

“I have to leave pretty soon too,” I said, then sipped the orange juice and Sprite.

“Yes. But not right this second. Because I gotta ask you—is this going to be weird or what?”

“What?” I brushed at a muffin crumb on the table beside me.

“What? Like you don’t know? Give me a break. Luce, I saw your face earlier. The Mikayla and Jackson hookup! Is that okay with you? For real?” Ava demanded.

I didn’t know what to say. I’d never lie to Ava, but she’d just gotten here. I didn’t want her to land right in the middle of a controversy. “It’s weird. But it’s okay with me. I mean, I don’t like him anymore.”

“Not at all?”

“Not like that,” I said. “It’s been years. It was super awkward at first, but we’re starting to act like normal people around each other, so, I mean, that’s an improvement. I never wanted to see him . . .
see
him.”

“Yeah, but still. It has to be strange,” Ava said.

“It will be, when I see him at work next time,” I said. “She didn’t know who he was . . . at least, that’s what she said. I mean, she didn’t know he was the same Jackson. I’m guessing he didn’t know she was my roommate and friend, either, or he would have said something.” I tried to imagine the timeline, and how they’d managed to spend time hanging out without me having a clue. I guess I’d been busy too. We were sort of doing our own things, in some ways, this summer—that had its upsides and its downsides. “I know it’s not the end of the world or anything, but it’s just kind of . . . ew. You know?”

I looked over at Ava. She was asleep.

Great. Now I had no one to talk to about it—except Mikayla, who had just opened the bathroom door after her shower. I waited for her to go down the hall and close her bedroom door. Then I hurried to my room, grabbed my bathrobe, and slipped into the bathroom for a hot shower. I could stay in here awhile, until she either left for work or gave up on me. Sure, that was ignoring the problem. But for this morning, I’d had more honest conversations than I could take. I needed a break.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

Tuesday afternoon, my phone
chimed with a new text and I pulled it out of my pocket to glance at it.

Can’t stop thinking about you.

Same here
, I wrote back.

Jackson and I hadn’t gotten together the night before because it was Ava’s first night in town and the three of us had gone out. As happy as I was to spend time with Ava, I was dying to see Jackson again. The past thirty-six hours had felt like an eternity.

We’d talked a lot on the phone and I’d found out a lot more about him, from his favorite foods (chips, salsa, and guac) to his college ideas (West Coast, East Coast, something with a coast) to his first concert, his hangouts back home, his best vacation, and on and on. We had a lot in common when it came to music and sports—we didn’t play the same exact ones, but we were competitive and we both started on varsity. We talked about what we’d do with athletic scholarships and how we balanced team responsibilities with homework. At home, he worked at Lunds, but not at the location where my family usually went. Still, it was weird to think that we’d probably walked by each other before without noticing.

Talking and texting was nice, but it wasn’t the same as being with him. I needed that. As hard as it was to admit to Lucy, and Ava, and even myself—I had already fallen for Jackson, to the point where there was no going back. I really hoped that Lucy wouldn’t ask me to.

When can I see you?
Jackson wrote.

After 5?
I texted back.

Can’t wait that long. Just quit your job already.

Ha ha
, I wrote back.
You first!

If it meant I could be with you all day, I would.

“Miss Mikayla, you promised me you’d show me how to stop getting ten-offs.”

I looked up from my phone screen. Jeremy, one of the campers I was supposed to be looking after, was standing in front of me. I slid my phone into my pocket, blushing. “Sorry about that. Just a small emergency.” A boyfriend emergency. Was there such a thing? How would I know? “Boyfriend.” It had never felt right to put that word together with me before.

“Do you have to leave?” Jeremy asked.

“Oh, no. It’s fine,” I said.

“’Cause if you have to, that’s fine. My mom’s a surgeon and she’s constantly leaving when she gets those kinds of texts that make her look like she’s kind of freaking out,” he said.

“Trust me,” I said. “It wasn’t that serious, even if I did look freaked out.” I laughed, feeling embarrassed. “I have a long way to go to be as important as your mom. What kind of medicine is she in?”