Just Flirt (3 page)

One … two … three.

“Mind if I join you?” he asks.

Gotcha.

Sorry, Red Sox, you lose. We make plans to meet in the rec room later, but before I can skip to RULE #7:
Know when to walk away
, a look of recognition crosses his face. “Wait. Dee Barton. Oh, man, are you the chick who wrote that letter?”

My smile fades.

He’s from my school. And he knows about the letter.

A crushing ache swells in my stomach and I suddenly feel like I’m back in class with girls snickering and guys saying, “Take me back, Blaine, I’ll do anything,
ANYTHING
.” Why did I do it? Why did I send Blaine all those pathetic texts after we broke up? And when they went unanswered, why did I pour all of my heartbreak into a desperate two-page
please don’t say it’s over
letter? Blaine never even bothered to respond. Instead, on my seventeenth birthday a week later, I saw him kissing Sabrina Owens by his Mercedes after school. On my birthday! And
Sabrina Owens
of all people
,
one of the nastiest girls in all of Riverside, Maryland, who
did
respond to my letter.

By making copies for nearly everyone.

Devastation. Humiliation. Mortification. There simply aren’t enough “ation” words to fully convey my embarrassment. I wanted to die. And to be honest, I might have even briefly considered the option had it not been for Natalie.

Thank God for Natalie.

We first met in ninth grade, after we were the only freshmen to make varsity softball—me because I was the fastest runner and she because her parents are the coach’s accountants. Unlike the others on our team, I never held this against her, and she never held it against me when I quit playing after my father died, but we didn’t become close until after the letter disaster. She understood what I was going through, seeing as how Sabrina once took a picture of her picking dead skin off her nose that had everyone calling her Nose-Pick Natalie for weeks. She listened to stories about my dad without ever saying “That sucks,” like when I talked about his love for Simon & Garfunkel songs and how he’d never pull his truck over to the side of the road if a bad rainstorm came along. Instead, he’d crank up “Bridge over Troubled Water” and say, “Life’s full of storms, Dee, so when one hits, just hold the wheel tight and keep driving.” It was a policy Natalie and I had decided to adopt, and last Halloween, when she dared me to flirt with an exceptionally cute football player, a new Dee was born.

Her name is Superflirt.

And Superflirt knows how to handle this guy.

I shift to a more flattering position and shoo an imaginary fly from my leg. “Oh, please, you didn’t think that letter was real, now, did you?”

It works. Sort of. After staring at my legs, the guy hooks a thumb into the waist of his board shorts and says, “Yeah, I guess no one would be stupid enough to write like that.”

Ouch. Despite my efforts to hold the wheel tight, my throat feels as though I inhaled an inner tube. I can’t think of anything clever or flirty to say, so I just sit there like a dumb lump until Natalie comes to my rescue. “Dude, some woman is waving at you from the putt-putt course. Is she your mother?”

Thankfully, it is. The guy excuses himself with one of those
catch you later
salutes. Oh, yay, I’m so looking forward to that. Natalie rolls her head toward me once he’s gone and says, “Want a Skinny Cow?”

“No, I
need
a Skinny Cow.”

We stand, wrapping towels around our waists before heading toward the lodge. The feel of water from my wet hair trickling down my back in the most delightful way instantly lifts my spirits as Natalie links her arm in mine. “Well, that last part was a smidge unexpected, but all in all the pool trick was
very
successful today!”

Someone snorts behind us.

I turn to see Jake frowning at me while digging in his pockets for a set of keys. “Yeah, real slick trick, Dee,” he says. “Just like the one you pulled last weekend—and the weekend before that—and what else? Oh, yeah, the weekend before that.”

My face flushes with shame as Jake unlocks the storage shed door and steps inside. But seriously, why do I always feel like a total sleaze whenever Jake talks like that? I didn’t do anything bad. I mean, what’s wrong with flirting? It’s harmless. It makes people feel good. And why should I care about his opinion, anyway?

Natalie’s right.

I worry too much, over stuff like whether or not I was good enough for Blaine, who brought out the worst in me both during and after our relationship. Over my grandmother, Madeline, who I will
never
be good enough for. Over Chuck Lambert, who’d love to put us out of business. Screw it. It’s summer. For the next three months, I’m only going to worry about Mom, the campground, and Natalie. Forget about Madeline. Forget about Blaine, who’s better suited to a jerk like Sabrina Owens, anyway, and forget about Roxanne with all her whitehead-popping glares.

As for Jake—

“Hey, let me use your cell,” I say to Nat as we step onto the porch that is scratched and worn by an endless stream of guests. She shakes her head at my perpetual habit of forgetting to charge my phone as I scroll through her contacts and hit his name with an angry jab.

“Hello?”

“By the way, Jake? Up yours.”

“Took you long enough,” he replies before hanging up.

Natalie tosses the phone back in her tote and asks, “Feel better?”

“Getting there.”

“Wait here, then.” She ducks into the store. I sit on a porch swing and watch two boys sword fighting with tree branches. As the sweet smell of hickory burning in a campfire drifts by on a gentle breeze and one of the boys suffers an agonizing death with a branch tucked under his armpit, Natalie returns and hands me not one, but
two
Skinny Cows.

Yes, now I feel better.

2
Sabrina

“Sabrina!
Sabrina
! Have you seen my Spanx?”

Oh my God. I do not understand why that woman finds it so necessary to bellow about her stupid Spanx loud enough for all our neighbors to hear, as though they don’t think she’s demented enough as it is. I press a hand against my cell and yell back, “Honestly, Mother, I’m on the phone!”

The wood floors echo as Mom pounds out of her bedroom with her hair up in a massive array of hot rollers and a red Chinese silk robe billowing at her knees. “Who are you talking to, that handsome boy Blaine?”

I stare daggers at her. No, as a matter of fact, I am not talking to Blaine.

Not after what he did to me yesterday.

“It’s Torrance.”

“Oh,” Mom says as though she’s disappointed. “Well then, tell Miss Torrance I said hello and get off the phone, sweetie, it’s six-thirty already! I’m supposed to be at Chuck’s in
thirty minutes
and Lord knows I ain’t going anywhere without my Spanx!”

She swats my legs off the coffee table and then flings aside the tabloids strewn on the sofa so she can search underneath the faded plaid cushions. I have no choice but to lift a butt cheek as she searches under my cushion, only to find the enormous bra she took off while we watched our Tivo’d soaps last night so her “girls” could breathe. Mom fans her face with it and says, “Mercy, that doggone busted air conditioner is killing me! I’m sweating like a pig in this dump.”

“Is that your mother?” Torrance asks, not bothering to hide her amusement over the flamboyant Mona Owens. I ignore her by covering my cell tighter and saying, “Well, we could afford to get it fixed if you didn’t buy all that silver jewelry on QVC. And pigs don’t sweat, Mother.”

Besides, if this house is such a dump, then why did you have your lawyers fight for it?

My father grew up here. He loves it. Mom doesn’t. She complains about everything from the split-foyer layout to how our neighbor’s huskies always take their daily dumps by our mailbox. But when my parents divorced two years ago, she fought for it purely out of spite, even though Dad offered to buy her out. So because of her, he now lives forty minutes away in Harpers Ferry.

Thanks a ton, Mom
.

She presses a hand against her ample hip that refuses to slim due to her ice cream addiction, and says, “I had a moment of weakness, okay? And if you’re so clever about pigs and stuff, Miss Smarty Pants, then
you
go find my Spanx.” Mom tightens her robe and claps her hands. “Come on, off the phone, chop-chop-chop! And stop calling me Mother!”

“Yes, Mother,” I mumble as she whirls back to her bedroom. Knowing there will be no peace until she gets her way, I start to say goodbye to Torrance.

“Oh, no you don’t. You’re not hanging up until you tell me why you’re skipping Prescott’s party tomorrow night. And don’t give me that
I’m spending the weekend with my father
excuse. You could totally bail if you wanted to.”

The sound of scraping hangers tells me Torrance is shopping, probably for yet another forty-dollar designer T-shirt. It’s pathetic how she wouldn’t be able to survive one day without her parents’ credit card. She’d choke on her sugar-free cappuccino if she knew I buy and sell clothes and other items on craigslist and eBay, not that I’m ashamed. It’s just none of Torrance’s business how tight money has been lately for Mom and me.

I head down to the laundry room in the basement to hunt for my mother’s missing Spanx and say, “Dad would be upset if I bailed, Torr. Our last visit was ruined because of my demon stepsister’s softball tournament, and besides, Prescott has parties all the time. It’s no big deal.”

“No big deal, huh?” Torrance asks sarcastically. “Or does it have something to do with Prescott’s girlfriend? Vanessa Baker
did
beat you in the election last month after you’ve been class vice-president for the past three years. No one would blame you for being embarrassed.”

I was hardly embarrassed.

And Vanessa did not beat me—I quit before the election. Everyone knew Prescott was a shoo-in for president again, which gave her a huge advantage because of the boyfriend/girlfriend candidacy angle, so why play a game you know you can’t win?

Mom’s Spanx aren’t in the hamper or dryer. I open the washer lid and a musty stench from a load of wet towels she must have forgotten about hits me in the face.
Really, Mother?
I reach for the laundry detergent to rewash them and say, “I could have totally beaten her, but the senior student council is responsible for all our future reunions, remember? So if Prescott and Vanessa want to deal with our loser class for the rest of their lives, they can have it.”

“Oh, yeah, good point.”

“Besides. This will give me more time to spend with Blaine.”

There’s an awkward pause before Torrance says, “Uh, sure, if you two are still together.”

Pardon me?

What’s
that
all about? Yes, maybe I am furious over the way Blaine nearly drooled over that stupid girl at McDonald’s yesterday who bent over in front of him with half her rear hanging out. And he did it right in front of Torrance. But that does
not
mean we’re breaking up. After all, we
were
the junior prom’s King and Queen.

I am not about to give up my crown.

Mom’s piercing screech echoes down the steps. “Sabrina, are you still on the phone?”

For once, her timing is perfect. I use her as an excuse to say, “Sorry, Torr, gotta go. Love ya,” before hanging up.

Whether or not Torrance replied, I don’t care. She’s just jealous because Blaine and I have been together for nine months while her relationships never hit the ninety-day mark. I shut the washer lid and start the cycle before walking upstairs to my mother’s bedroom, which reeks of her musky cologne. Mom turns from her antique vanity with an eyelash curler clamped down on her lashes and says, “Look in my closet, will ya?” Sure enough, buried under miniskirts that no decent forty-two-year-old woman would be caught dead in are the notorious Spanx. I toss them to her with pinched fingers.

“Thank you, sugar. Now, sit down and talk to me while I finish putting on my face, okay? We haven’t spent any time together this week.”

Maybe that’s because of her two dates with Roger, a fry cook who first impressed her with his knowledge of butterfly-cut steak and the difference between over-medium and over-easy eggs. Yeah,
keeper.
But whatever. Quality mommy/daughter time it is. I flop on her bed and grab a
Soap Opera Digest
from her nightstand.

Mom rips it from my hands. “Ah, ah, ah! We’re gonna talk.”

I scoot back and rest against the headboard. “
Fine
, Dad’s not going to be here for another hour, anyway.” It’s torture having my car in the shop because of transmission issues. At least Dad offered to pick me up—and pay the auto bill.

Mom dunks her mascara wand into the tube five times and then brushes the excess off the tip. She puts on a heavy layer before saying, “Well, I’ve been meaning to talk with you ’bout that, sugar. I sort of called your father and said you have to work with me.”

Oh, no. She better not have. “What? You made an agreement with Dad that I would spend two weekends with him each month, remember?”

Mom tosses the mascara aside and walks into her overstuffed closet. “But, darling, that was before I started my karaoke business. You know how hard it is—working at Chuck’s on Friday nights and Sundays at the VFW. I need your help!”

Not true. She’s a big girl. She can handle things just fine, but it’s easier with me there to do the dirty work. Had I known this when she dipped into our savings two months ago to buy used karaoke equipment, I wouldn’t have been so supportive—just like I’ve been for most of her endeavors, like when she was determined to earn a pink Cadillac by selling Mary Kay cosmetics but only ended up buying more than she sold. Or when Rex Reynolds, a wealthy land developer, hired her as a receptionist only to have Mom quit one week later because working nine to five wasn’t her “thing,” despite her love for that old Dolly Parton song she would sing while making her morning coffee.