How to Meet Boys (7 page)

I quickly checked in with Lucy to see if she wanted to come along, but she was headed to her grandparents’ house for dinner right after work. I tried to convince her to meet me a little bit later, but she had plans with Claire for
after
dinner. So I took a quick shower and changed into jeans and a couple of layering T-shirts. I spent time blow-drying my hair and dabbed some makeup on the last remaining scratch on my face.

I heard Sarah’s car pull into the gravel driveway and went out to meet her, so she’d know she was at the right address.

“Huh,” she said as she climbed out of the car and examined the house.

“That’s kind of how I felt the first time I saw it,” I admitted. “But it’s really not bad. Just slightly in the woods.”

“Woods are cool,” she said. “Woods have charm.”

The screen door nearly fell off its hinges when I opened it wide to let her into the cabin. “Don’t speak too soon,” I said, laughing.

“Wow. How old
is
this place?” she asked as we walked inside.

“I’m not sure. It needs some work—no one’s lived here for a while, and it had that abandoned look when we arrived. We’re doing extra painting to give it some color, Lucy’s grandfather has fixed a few things, and we’re gradually getting some furniture.”

“It just needs a little TLC, that’s all.” Sarah walked through the cottage to the large deck on the back side. “This is so nice and secluded. Oh, and you can kind of see the islands. Sweet!”

I nodded. “It’s one of the perks, for sure.”

“I would
not
have expected that. People are going to love hanging out here. That is, if you have a party. I seriously don’t mean to pressure you about it,” she said with a laugh.

“No, it’s exactly what we’ve been thinking too!” Wasn’t one of the whole points of the summer to have fun and meet new people—and possibly have a whirlwind romance?

Ha. Whirlwind. My previous efforts were more like slight breezes.

There was the time I ran into Brandon W., my fall crush, in the school parking lot and said, “Um . . . it smells like tar, doesn’t it?” He said nothing in reply. Shocking.

Then in the spring, I decided I’d turn over a new leaf and talk to Quinn M., my spring crush, while we were both waiting for the bus to our track meet. He asked what events I was in, and I said, “The fifteenhurdlehundredhigh.” And he said, “Good luck,” and sat somewhere else, anywhere else, far, far away from me.

“I’ll talk to Lucy about when a good day for a party might be,” I said. “But we’ll need you to help spread the word about it, since we don’t know that many people here yet. Sound good?”

“Definitely,” Sarah said. “You ready to start meeting more people?”

“Sure.” I smiled nervously as we headed outside to her car. What was the worst that could happen?

Earl Grey’s seemed especially packed when we arrived, but I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised, since it was Saturday night.

Henry and his friends had claimed a big round table in the back, but it was already filled by so many people that I wondered if there would be room for us to join them.

Then I got closer and realized that the guy I’d nearly plowed into on my bike a week ago was at the table too.
Wait a second. They know him?

My first instinct was to run and hide.
You can’t leave
, I reminded myself.
One, it’ll look dumb, and two, you don’t have a ride home.

Well, there was always jogging, but . . . I glanced down at my sandals. Not in these shoes.

So I borrowed a chair from another table and pulled it over to squeeze into a tiny space next to Sarah, who’d taken the last open chair at the table.

“It’s her.” Henry pointed at me with a straw when I sat down.

“It’s me . . . what?” I asked.

“
She
totally took your job, didn’t she?” Henry asked the boy I’d nearly crashed into on my bike.

“What? No.” He laughed. “It’s my fault I’m not working at the Club this summer. They gave up my spot because I told them to.”

“To
me
?” I said, flustered. “I’m sorry. Do you . . . want it back?” I lifted my hands in some sort of awkward gesture. Like I could actually give it back, as if it were a thing.

“Of course not. Don’t sweat it,” he said, glancing at me. If he recognized me from the day we met, he didn’t show it. Was that why he’d nearly run me down? I was a job thief? “I didn’t know I would be around here until it was too late. I was going to spend the summer in the Cities,” he said.

He lived in the Cities—like me. But which one? This was key. Don’t ask me why, it just was.
Go ahead
, I said to myself.
Ask him where he lives. At the very least get his name so you can look him up online.

“My uncle has a landscaping business and always needs help. Or he
said
he did, until he realized he didn’t,” he explained. “I was so mad. So was my mom, they’re barely speaking right now. Anyway, by then, the Club was full up, so I got a couple of different jobs. It’s fine, I’m going to make a decent amount of money either way.”

“Well, good,” I said. “I’d feel horrible if I was the reason you were out of work.”

“Don’t listen to anything Henry says. That’s the first rule of working at the Club,” he advised me.

“Yeah. I kind of figured that out on Day One when he told me about the underground bowling alley,” I said, rolling my eyes.

“I resent that,” Henry said. “And it’s the BBC, not the Club.”

“Whatever,” Sarah said. “You want to pretend you’re working in London, go right ahead. But I don’t think you’d see this many North Shore T-shirts there.”

Everyone started in with examples of how Bridgeport was nothing like London, and I decided to go get something to drink, grabbing Sarah’s order as well. I had just joined the line when Bike Crash Guy came up to stand behind me. “You might have taken my job, but I almost ran you over, so we’re probably even,” he said.

“You remember that?” I asked.

“Why would I not remember that?” he said. “It only happened a few days ago.”

“Monday,” I said. Not that I’d been keeping track or anything.

“Monday, right,” he said. “Doesn’t seem like that long since I saw you. Of course, you had a bike helmet on, and your forehead was bleeding—”

“It was not that bad,” I said, laughing. “Well, except for the gash on my leg.” I showed him the wound that still remained, a jagged scab about four inches long.
Wait a second. Did I just tell him to look at my leg?
He was definitely checking it out, which was really awkward. “Hey, I didn’t—did I really take your job?” I asked, trying to change the focus.

“No, I was just joking. I don’t mind.” He shrugged, then looked at me more carefully. “I can tell you don’t believe me. I’m being serious!”

“Okay, I believe you. I guess.” I ordered a cold press from the barista, and took a deep breath before I turned back around to face him. This was going kind of okay so far. I didn’t know whether to be stunned, or impressed with myself.

He ordered an Arnie Palmer (half lemonade, half iced tea), and while we waited for the drinks, he pointed at a tray of cookies in the bakery case behind me. “This place has the
best
snickerdoodles.” He reached around me to open the door, and we did an awkward sort of dance, where I shuffled to one side to make room, only he moved in the same direction. Then we shuffled back the other direction. Being so close to him felt embarrassing and exciting at the same time. Finally he gently grabbed my arm and said, “Stay right there.” Sort of leaning against me, he reached into the self-serve bakery case and carefully plucked out the largest snickerdoodle cookie with the tongs.

I’d never known a cookie could be so sexy.

After he paid for it, he broke it in half and handed a half to me. “You have to have some. It’s the law.”

“Snickerdoodle law? I haven’t heard of that,” I said. I took a small bite. The cookie almost melted in my mouth. “Delicious. Wow. I love cinnamon.” I laughed. “That’s funny. See, I have a cat named Cinnamon,” I said. “What about you? Any pets?”

“We have a couple of goldens,” he said. “Golden retrievers, I mean. Best dogs in the world. In fact, I wish I could bring them up here for the summer.”

“A dog summer vacation?” I asked. “That would be cool. They’d love it here, right? All this space to run around. They could swim in the lake . . . send postcards home to all their dog park friends . . ”

He laughed. “You have a dog too?” he asked.

I nodded. “Yep. And it’s my job to take him to the off-leash park. And on walks to the park. And pretty much everything. I actually really
miss
him, though.”

He looked at me. He smiled. “Yeah? Is there anyone else you miss?”

“Oh, no, well. My family, I guess,” I said. What was he asking? Was he trying to find out if I had a boyfriend or something like that? “And, of course, Cinnamon.”

“Right.” He smiled.

I think I was talking too much, which was so weird, because I’d never had that problem before with a boy. Never ever.

As we turned to walk back to the table with our drinks, we brushed against each other and I felt the same nervous energy I’d felt the first time we made contact, by the cookie case.

Don’t get carried away. It’s probably just static electricity. Don’t be ridiculous. You don’t even know anything about him.

Except that you kind of really, really like him . . 

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

“When did you get so bad at
tennis?” I asked Claire as we walked into the cabin. After dinner with my grandparents, we’d met up for tennis at the high school courts.

“What? I was fine,” Claire said. “You were the one who hit every ball into the court next to ours.”

“Me? What about you?” I cried. “You served halfway to Canada! If I had to say ‘Little help?’ to that couple on the court next to us one more time, I was going to die of shame.” I set my racket next to the coat closet inside the front door.

“So, nice shack you got here,” Claire observed as she wandered around the living room and peered down the hall toward the bedrooms. “You know, when I first heard about this place from your grandmother, I wished I could live here with you, but now? Not so much.”

“What are you talking about? This place is great,” I said. “Okay, it still needs some work, but I think in another week or two it could be okay. So how’s your job going?” I asked Claire. She worked at a soup-and-sandwich spot, one of the places that stayed open year-round.

“It’s pretty good. Same as the winter but ten times busier, so I have to get faster. And how’s the Apple Store?” she asked.

“It’s okay. It’s weird, actually,” I confessed.

“Well, after three years of dreading running into Jackson, now you’re working with him. So how could it not be weird?” Claire asked.

“Three years.” I thought about the Windex he sprayed in my eyes, the melting candles, the awkward silences. But there were a few times we’d laughed, too, so maybe we were getting a little more comfortable around each other. Not that it was saying much.

“It’s not as bad as you’d think,” I said. “As long as I don’t remember how stupid I felt about making a move on him when I was thirteen.” I’d never told Claire the long version of the story—the one where I ended up feeling really angry at Jackson. I’d always tried to brush it off as no big deal, just an awkward kiss. The only ones who knew the whole story were Ava and Mikayla.

“He probably doesn’t think about it. Not anymore. He probably forgot,” Claire said. “Look at it this way. He’s kissed a hundred girls since then.”

“Seriously? A hundred?” I couldn’t believe that. “What kind of guy is he?”

“So maybe not a hundred, okay? But I saw him last summer with at least a couple different girls—he was working at the Beach Club and they’d come into the deli all the time after work for sandwiches and drinks and stuff. Not that they ever talked to me that much, but the guy is
really
handsome, Luce. The fact you even kissed him once is a major coup. I mean, I’m impressed.”

“Don’t be. I don’t think it’s something to brag about if the guy says, ‘Yeah, um,
don’t
.’”

Claire laughed. “Yeah, but it
counts
.”

“Are we counting now?” I asked.

“We’re only counting the good ones,” Claire said. “Not my prom date a few weeks ago. He reminded me of our Saint Bernard.”

“Big and furry?” I asked.

“Slobbery.” She shook her head, and I laughed. “I couldn’t get inside the house fast enough. I needed a towel.”

I tossed the dish towel at her and we both cracked up. “At least you had a date. I mean, a guy. I went with Mikayla and a bunch of other girls.”

“Sounds like a way better plan,” Claire said. “I bet you had a blast.”

I thought about the manicures, the dress shopping, the limo ride, and how Mikayla and I stole Ava away not only from her slightly pushy senior date but also from her ex, Dean, who kept trying to get her alone “just to talk.” After dancing nonstop at prom we’d all gotten a ride home from my dad, who took us out for a midnight breakfast before letting us crash at his house in a pile of sleeping bags on the living room floor. Ava called the night “epic” so many times that we couldn’t stop naming all the things that had been epic about it, like: the awkward way her date danced, the fact three girls were wearing the same exact dress, the pancakes and bacon. All of it was epic, which didn’t leave much room for improvement for our senior prom.

“Yeah, we did have a great time—still, it would have been nice to go with a guy, too. I mean, how can it be that my parents, who should be too old for stuff like this, can totally find people to fall in love with and get married to, when I can’t even have one decent prom date? Is that fair?” I asked Claire.

“It’s messed up is what it is,” she said. “I can’t believe your parents are both getting married.”

“Neither can I,” I said. “If only my mom didn’t talk about her wedding all the time, maybe I could not think about it for a day or two.” Earlier that afternoon she’d called to make sure she had my shoe size right because she was going to get a pair of satin pumps dyed for my maid of honor duties—which was crazy, because I didn’t even have a
dress
yet that she could match them to. At least, not that I knew of.