CHAPTER FIVE
Definitely the red velvet,” I say with my mouth full. I chew quickly and lick the vanilla frosting off my lips before taking a sip of the sparkling grape juice brought out just for my under-twenty-one-year-old self. I watch Sam take a sip of her champagne, swishing it around before swallowing.
“Definitely a good one,” she agrees before setting her slice aside.
“I feel like we don’t have to taste any more because this is the one,” I tell her, helping myself to another slice.
Mom laughs, covering her mouth with her napkin. “Mia, this is only the third cake.”
“And it’s delicious,” I tell her, laughing.
I was happy when Mom reminded me of Sam’s cake tasting at the Butterfly Bed & Breakfast after dinner. Both Monday and Tuesday have gone by and my friends haven’t given me a single update on their meet-cute plans. As I slip another forkful of cake into my mouth I think Here’s to tomorrow to myself. Honestly, if Sam has more wedding stuff like this that she needs help with, I will happily oblige. I don’t know why she always wants me to run around buying more Post-it notes and categorizing the stacks of papers she needs three-hole-punched for her binder, when there are tastings to be had.
The dining room of the B&B has a bit of a rustic-grandma’s-house feel to it. The vertical wood paneling ends about halfway up the wall and is met with a floral-print wallpaper that has grown on me since the first time I saw it. The dining room has small circular wood tables that each have their own floral arrangement at the center, with tealight candles and a pastel tablecloth. The fact that each tablecloth is a different color makes the place feel cozy. I could curl up on the huge floral-print couch in the library, especially when the fire is going in the winter, and read for ages.
Right now we’re the only ones in the dining room because it’s after hours. We’re at the green table, per Sam’s request. The green table is right by the bay window facing the backyard, where Sam’s wedding ceremony and reception will be taking place since the dining room inside the inn is too small for her guests. I remember her going back and forth with the owner, and Mom having to calm her down and work out a compromise where we would order a temperature-controlled tent to be set up outside so that the inn could still be responsible for catering, decorating, and hosting the wedding.
I watch Sam while I chew on more red velvet cake as she stares into the yard, remembering how she used to daydream about having her wedding here when she was my age and I was still in elementary school. I try to imagine what she might be envisioning. The arch at the end of her aisle, decorated with ivy vines and carnations? Or maybe she’s envisioning herself on our dad’s arm, thinking of what she’ll look like in her dress, thinking of what Geoffrey will look like at the end of the aisle. Will he cry?
I imagine what I might look like in my bridesmaid’s dress, a flowing wave of forest green standing just a couple of steps behind Sam, a part of one of the biggest moments in her life.
“Peach,” Mom says, wiping her mouth after trying the lemon cake with whisked blueberry frosting. I spear a piece with my fork just to make sure it’s not better than the red velvet. “I got a letter from the school talking about your National Honor Society application.”
“What about it?” I ask, noting how faint the blueberry flavor is.
“They said that you need more volunteer hours to qualify for the president or vice president position.”
“I wasn’t planning on being the president or vice president,” I tell her, even though I can almost swear I told her this before.
“Why not?” Sam asks.
“I have math team and swim practice. Plus, this is my junior year. I’m in three AP classes, so I have to make my grades count. I figure just being in NHS will be enough for college applications. That in conjunction with my extracurriculars and good grades will be fine—sans a presidential status.”
Mom considers me for a second, and I can tell that I’ve got her convinced. I use my fork to sever a huge section of my new slice of double-layer red velvet, and I cautiously guide it to my mouth without it toppling back to the plate. The rich flavor mixed with the silky frosting soothes me—mind, soul, and stomach.
“Wait,” Sam says as she finishes her taste of strawberry cake. “I was president. You were president,” she says to Mom. “Mia, it’s barely any extra work. It’s more about title, and yes, right now you would have to stomach some volunteering, but you can do it. I looked at your calendar back home, and you don’t have club or practice on Fridays. You could do volunteering once a week somewhere and get enough hours to qualify.” She looks at my mom and adds, “It would be worse for her to not try at all than to try and simply not get the position.”
I want to lie and say Abby or Grace want to be NHS president so that Mom doesn’t make me do it, but I have a mouth full of cake and no room to speak without risking spraying crumbs all over Mom.
“I suppose, if you have Fridays free,” Mom says, thinking.
I shake my head, but Mom looks at Sam and tells her, “She could volunteer at the garden! We need some extra help cleaning out the flower beds and refurbishing the greenhouse. And it means we can spend more time together!” She turns back to me as I struggle to swallow my mound of mushy cake. “I feel like I barely see you, with your clubs and swimming and your friends. This can be our thing,” she tells me, beaming.
I chug some juice to clear my mouth and stare at Mom and Sam. Before I can say anything, Sam rushes to ask, “How can you say no to that?”
Right. How could I?
I shrug my shoulders and smile to keep myself from saying something sarcastic and intentionally mean to Sam.
“Great,” Mom says, grasping my hand. “I’ll tell the group tomorrow. And don’t worry. It’s not all a bunch of old ladies like me. There’s a boy your age who volunteers most days after school.”
“Look at that, a young man.” Sam smiles at me over Mom’s shoulder. She reaches for her glass of wine and takes a sip to hide her laugh.
I grab my glass of juice and take a sip to hide the fact that I’m silently praying Mom doesn’t point out the bit of cake Sam has between her teeth.
“And that’s why I need to go to the store and waste money on my own pair of gardening gloves and knee pads,” I explain to my friends the next day in study hall. “Why would Sam want me wasting time at a garden when she also wants me looking for a date to her wedding?”
“I can go with you after school,” Grace says. “I’ll swing by your house, and then we can go into town. I know the perfect shop for you to find all your stuff.”
“You know the perfect shop? I’ve never seen you garden a day in your life,” Sloane says, staring at Grace suspiciously.
“My mom gardens,” Grace says in her own defense.
“I was thinking about going to Lowe’s,” I admit. Since none of my friends have presented me with a meet-cute and now I have the impending doom of volunteering on Friday, I’ve lost my inspiration for my history paper. I zip my pen case, ready to wallow in some self-pity.
“Lowe’s is so overpriced,” Grace tells me. “Trust me, you can get everything you need from this place.”
“Okay,” I relent, not caring about where the stuff comes from but about the fact that I need it in the first place. Mom told me that there are gloves and pads at the garden, but they’re shared by people, and since the summer just ended, some of the gloves smell like sweat and a lot of the knee pads are stained. Gross.
Sloane shakes her head before returning to her history essay. Abby is once again writing behind her secret folder fort, and I can’t tell if she has paid attention to a single word I’ve said.
I bend over the back of my chair and stare down our aisle of the library. We always pick the table in the back corner by the windows when we have study hall, because most people don’t know it’s here. You have to wander through the labyrinth of shelves to find it. The first time Sloane found it, she wasn’t able to remember how to get back to it, and none of us believed that it actually existed. But then during second semester of freshman year, I was trying to sneak away from my English class to check out a section of the library that our teacher hadn’t requested to have materials pulled from. As I was tiptoeing toward the back wall, scanning for newspaper excerpts printed from 1920, I found the spot. I made sure to remember what section of the library it was near, and ever since then we’ve always tried to get the same study period so that we could meet here.
Through an empty space on the shelf behind me, I see movement. In the silence I try to listen to the shuffling to tell whether they’re getting closer or going farther away.
“Someone’s about to infiltrate,” I whisper.
Everyone looks up, and we watch the bookshelf in silence. I startle when I see someone’s eye looking right at us.
“Victor?” Abby hisses from behind her folder.
The figure disappears as Abby stands up. She goes behind the shelf and comes back with her boyfriend, Victor—who’s on the boys’ swim team.
“Did anyone follow you?” Sloane asks, pointing her pencil at him like she’s about to launch it.
He holds his hands up in surrender. “No. I swear.”
“You may enter,” Sloane declares, looking down at her notes again.
When they both sit down on the other side of the folder, Grace says what I start to think. “Why does he get to be on the other side of the fort?”
“Because he’s helping me.”
“What exactly is he helping you with?” I ask. I originally thought she was working on meet-cute stuff and that the whole point of the folder was so that no one would see her plan and try to sabotage her chances of the Starbucks gift card. I hope she’s not showing my meet-cute to her boyfriend.
“None of your business,” she tells me, before ducking back behind her folder.
Victor huddles down close to her, which is hard for him since he’s six feet tall. Victor and I are two of the three Black people on the swim team. He and I have both heard a lot of jokes about how Black people don’t swim. There’s another girl named Shannon who joined the team last year. There was an incident in the locker room where some of the senior girls were whispering to each other and someone asked why Shannon didn’t just go run track or play basketball. She ended up telling the coach, and those girls were suspended. When I asked her about it, she said that when people say stuff like that, it only makes her want to swim faster. It pushes her to practice harder. Victor and I decided we should definitely stick together—Shannon included—and always speak up for each other in situations like that because I used to feel more intimidated about it when I first joined the team freshman year.
Now that I’m thinking about it, I wonder—if Victor is helping Abby with her meet-cute—would Abby be annoyed if I ask her to possibly set me up with someone Victor knows from the track team. Victor runs track in the spring and he knows a lot of people, so that could widen the pool of possible dates.
After school Grace insists on meeting me at my house before we head to the small, supposedly not overpriced store she refuses to tell me the name of. I’m sitting in an armchair, waiting, when Dad wanders into the den. He doesn’t notice me at first. He just walks up to one of the two hundred-gallon tropical fish tanks he has built inside the opposing walls adjacent to the TV and starts his afternoon ritual of feeding the fish. Instead of saying anything, I just watch him. When I was younger, I used to feed the fish with him to avoid doing homework. I would drag out his process by saying hi to all his fish and giving them new names. Then I would ask him about each fish. What kind were they? Why did he put them in this tank instead of the other one? Even though I was always scheming, he never tired of answering my questions and telling me as much as he could about the fish.
I don’t know when I stopped following him around for this, but now as I watch him completely engrossed in his collection, I notice the sound of water trickling through the filters. It’s relaxing.
He startles when he turns around and finds me. It makes me laugh, the way he reaches for his chest like he’s about to have a heart attack.
“Peach,” he gasps. “I didn’t even know you were home.”
He laughs a little before crossing the den to his other tank.
“I got home just a little while ago. I’m about to go out with Grace.”
“On a fun adventure?”
“Just to get gardening supplies.”
Recognition crosses his face even though he’s looking down into his container of fish food instead of at me.
“Your mother told me you’re going to join her at the community garden. It sounds like one of Sam’s ideas.” He arches his eyebrow and glances up at me.
I nod before saying, “She convinced Mom that I should follow in their footsteps of being president of the National Honor Society next year.”
“That doesn’t sound like a horrible thing,” he says in that absentminded way where I can tell he’s baiting me for my thoughts.
I figure my last chance at not having to volunteer would be convincing Dad it’s a bad idea, so I tell him about all the things I’m doing right now and how they’re more important than qualifying for a presidency I don’t even want and might not get.
“But,” he counters, “next year you might not be doing everything that you’re doing now, so maybe it’s better to take the preemptive steps so you have the option, should you change your mind.”
“I’m still going to be swimming and doing math team for extra credit. And, I don’t know, maybe I’ll put my name up for swim team captain and then I’ll have more responsibilities next year, and even now for this season. I mean, it’s not like I wasn’t going to join NHS anyways. I just don’t want to do extra work for it.”
Dad screws the cap onto his fish food and turns on the blue lights for his tanks. Then he comes over to the couch and sits down next to me. When he picks up the remote, I can already tell that our conversation isn’t going anywhere. My persuasion has failed again.
“I feel like I’ll do better this semester if I don’t have to volunteer at the garden,” I try one last time.
“Then you can tell your mother and see how she feels about it,” he says, patting my hand before turning on the TV. Sometimes I think Sam secretly brainwashes our parents against me. She’s the reason why I had to start making my own lunches when I was eleven and why I can never eat dinner up in my room or in front of the TV. And now I have to volunteer at a garden for a club I barely want to be a part of, in addition to having to spend precious time finding a date to her wedding!
Usually Mom and Dad are fine with me choosing my “own path” and setting my own standards. They were on top of Sam when she was my age, always checking her homework and making sure she was ready for tests or field hockey games. Dad would make her run drills in the backyard sometimes, which makes me glad we don’t have a pool. However, they aren’t the same anymore. I don’t think Dad would make me swim laps even if he could do it from one of the patio lounge chairs. It felt like when they retired and were able to stop working, they were also able to stop working so hard at parenting. Now it just seems like when Sam comes around, they get a jolt of how they used to be and it rubs off on me and my life.
I watch an episode of Planet Earth with Dad until the doorbell rings. I grab my wallet with the money Mom gave me, step out the front door, and begin to close it behind me.
“Wait,” Grace says, reaching past me for the door. “Wait, wait.”
“What?” I ask, nearly dropping my keys.
She takes me by the shoulders, turns me around, and pushes me back inside. She shouts hello to my dad on our way up the stairs and immediately bolts to my closet without a word.
“Hi. How are you? How have the last thirty minutes since school been? Are you ready to go to the store?” I say, cycling through how our greeting should’ve gone. “Oh no. We’re playing dress-up.”
She lays an old pair of coveralls on my bed and pulls out the only flannel I own, from a lumberjack Halloween costume I put together when I was a freshman.
She finally turns to me and says, “Boots,” like it’s supposed to make sense.
“Boots?”
“Where are your boots? Like, work boots.”
“Work boots?” I ask. “When have I ever needed work boots?”
“Okay, a pair of old sneakers.” She starts rooting around on the floor in my closet, and I step in and pull out a pair of white Converse that I used to wear until my feet grew half an inch and the shoes started blistering my pinkie toe.
“Perfect.” She puts the shoes on the floor at the foot of my bed in front of the outfit. After taking in the whole ensemble, she tells me to put it on.
“Why?” I ask as I pull off my jeans.
“Because…,” she says slowly. “This is what you should wear to the store.”
“And that makes sense, how?” I ask as I pull the coverall straps over my shoulders. I put on the flannel and realize it makes a nice light jacket.
I walk up to the mirror on the back of my door and look at myself. “I look like a farm girl.”
“Great!” Grace says. “Now we can go.”
“Go where? I’m not going out looking like this. This is how I dressed when I was five.”
“You look like someone who gardens. Now let’s go! We have to get there before—” She stops herself, her eyes wide.
“Before what?” I ask.
“Before they close.”
“When do they close?” I ask, figuring I probably have more than enough time to change.
“Soon,” she says. “Now, let’s go.”
“I look ridiculous,” I growl.
She smiles and opens my bedroom door. “After you, my lady.”
Fifteen minutes later, I’m glancing at the skyline through my car window. With the October chill comes earlier sunsets and cloudier days. I picture the Lowe’s downtown. It’s three stories inside a tall building that sits on top of an underground parking garage. Now that I’m watching the city disappear behind us as we head deeper into the suburbs, I’m a little thankful that we decided to go to Grace’s store instead. With all the thoughts buzzing around in my head the past few days, I’m not really in the mood to surround myself with the crowded busyness of the city.
We pull off the freeway in the next town over and turn down a side street that takes us to a hardware store called The Handyman Can. The building is a small two-story house that probably has an apartment above the store. It’s coated in chipping white paint, and the windows have navy-blue shutters that draw your eyes to the OPEN signs hanging in each one. The door is a stunning dark green, a color as deep as evergreen trees, and it has a rusted brass bell hanging above it. The sign over the door could use a new coat of paint, but the weathered-ness of it is definitely fitting for a hardware store.
I cringe at the hinges wailing as Grace opens the door. When she jumps too, I can tell that she’s never been to her “perfect store” before. With the door closed, we’re trapped inside with the strong aroma of WD-40 and wood finish. There’s a small fan humming behind the counter and a boy wearing a faded paint-stained apron that says HANDYMAN HELPER on the front. I note that he’s reading an actual newspaper, which my dad doesn’t even do anymore.
“Is there anything I can help you find?” he asks, pushing his reading glasses up onto his forehead.
“Yes—”
“No.” I cut Grace off, flashing her a glare. She knows I don’t like to make workers help me, especially when they’re in the middle of doing something. I don’t want to be that customer. So I say, “We’re just looking,” before taking off down the nearest aisle. I follow the signs and find knee pads and a sun hat. Mom said that they have plenty of supplies like shovels, rakes, fertilizer, and wheelbarrows. She just said that anything I wouldn’t want to share, I should get for myself. So I weave up and down the aisles with Grace tailing me silently, until I find the gloves. I pick a pair of baby-blue ones with radishes all over them. Even though they look a little ridiculous, they’re 60 percent off.
“Do you have everything?” she asks, smiling like a psychopath.
I try to think of anything else that I might need. It’s hard to focus, with the blister growing on my pinkie toe. As I move farther down the aisle, I have to take a second and stop to try to adjust my shoe. I make Grace hold my stuff while I brace myself against a shelf of seed packets.
“I think so. I can’t believe I let you make me wear these shoes. I should’ve thrown them away forever ago.”
“The shoes don’t matter. I need you to focus.”
I look at her, sure I misheard what she said. But she stares at me, smiling so wide that her mouth is almost too big for her face.
“Focus on what?”
She steps past me and peers around the end of the shelf. Then she looks at me and says, “On him. He’s your first target!”
“Who?” I ask. We both lean toward the end of the shelf, and I see the cashier boy, engrossed in his newspaper.
“His name is Kelvin,” she whispers. “He and I went to the same summer camp two summers ago—”
Before she can say more, I cut her off and confirm, “You mean, drama camp?”
She nods, and I realize that, of course she would set me up with a drama kid, the same way I’m hoping Abby and Victor will set me up with someone from track team.
“He’s not, like, that bad. He’s a really good actor, but he’s also into other stuff and he’s really nice.”
“What other stuff is he into?” I ask, leaning forward again to really take a look at him.
Grace rattles off her list of facts. He’s on the debate team at his high school. He’s also a junior. He’s into current events and wants to study politics in college. In addition to drama club he also does culinary club, so Grace figures we could talk about baking. He doesn’t play any sports, but he likes to watch basketball. He’s not too bad on the eyes either. He’s tall. I can tell by his torso. He’s sitting on a high stool behind the counter, hunched over his newspaper. He has long arms, and his hair is cut so short that you can see the waves in his fade. I try to picture us standing next to each other. He’s cute with glasses, but probably looks even better without. He’d tower over me, but in a nice kind of way, the way my dad towers over my mom. Also, I can tell he spends a lot of time outside because he has a slight tan line where his T-shirt collar dips a little low. Our skin tones are really close. He’s just a tiny bit darker than me. Sam would say we complement each other. Or she’d say I should spend time out in the sun so that I can tan and we can match for the photos in her wedding.
“What do I do?” I ask, suddenly feeling nervous. “How do I even have a meet-cute? What do I say?”
“You could’ve asked him to help you find the stuff instead of being so determined to do it on your own,” she admits, hiding a laugh.
“Thanks for telling me that when it was useful,” I say, shaking my head.
“But, really, you just walk up, and you can talk about the stuff you found, or ask him what he’s reading about in the newspaper,” Grace offers.
“Then what?”
“Mia, you have to start somewhere. I can’t draft the conversation for you.”
“I wish you could,” I tell her, even though I know she’s right.
Grace hands me back my items, and I take a deep breath. I try to think of things for us to talk about just in case the conversation falls flat. Maybe I can ask if he gardens. I quickly glance around to see if there’s anything else I could use as a conversation starter, and I decide on a packet of basil seeds. Hopefully he knows how to grow basil.
“Okay, wish me luck,” I say, looking down at my unbuttoned flannel over my washed-out coveralls. I notice the shooting star I drew years ago on the toe of my Converse, to make up for the fact that my mom wouldn’t buy me a pair of shoes I thought were cool at the time—with shooting stars and a galaxy on them—and I’m thankful he won’t be able to see my feet over the counter.
I remind myself to breathe as I come around the corner of the aisle. He doesn’t notice me, so I take the moment of privacy to brush back any of my loose tendrils. I’m thankful that I took the time to fill in my eyebrows this morning and put on mascara. Even though I look like a farm girl, at least I look like a put-together farm girl with nice eyelashes.
“Hey,” I say. My voice breaks, and when he looks up, I feel a million butterflies burst from their cocoons inside my stomach. “Hi.”
“Did you find what you were looking for?” he asks, putting down his newspaper.
“Yeah,” I say, remembering to smile. And breathe. Must not forget to breathe.
“Do you want to buy it?” he asks, looking at my arms.
“Oh,” I gush, leaning forward so that everything doesn’t tumble onto the counter. “Right. Sorry.”
He starts scanning the items, and in the silence I realize that I’m losing momentum. I look back and scan the aisles until I find Grace, hiding close to the exit. She mouths Question to me, and flashes a supportive thumbs-up.
“How do you grow basil?” I ask, the words tumbling out. “Kelvin,” I add, when I notice his name tag.
He raises his eyebrows at me and he looks down at the packet of seeds conveniently in his hand. I just smile and wait, admiring the dimple in his left cheek.
“Like, from scratch,” I add. “How do you grow it… from scratch?” I repeat when I start to hear the sound of my heart beating over the silence stilling the air between us.
He smiles at me and then looks down at the seeds again. He flips the packet over, and for a second I’m afraid that the directions are on the back and I’m looking like a thoughtless idiot to him right now. But he quickly flips the packet back over and scans the front before leaning forward on his elbows on the counter. He holds the packet out between us, and I take the invitation to lean down closer, thankful that I’m wearing a crew-neck T-shirt under my coveralls.
“You start off with some potting soil. Plant a few seeds about a quarter inch below the surface, and water it enough that the soil is constantly damp. I think basil takes a week or two to sprout.” He pauses and looks at me. I let him catch my eye, and for a second I feel weightless. I feel incredulous that Grace’s plan might actually be working. “After you have a plant, you’ll want to water it almost every day. Basil is mostly water.” He focuses on the picture of basil on the front of the packet. I look at it too and realize that I don’t have potting soil at home.
“Does that help?” he asks, adjusting his glasses as he stands up.
“Yes, thank you.”
He smiles at me and returns to scanning my items. Even though it was nice of him to give me an explanation, it wasn’t a moment. Gladys and Harold were inseparable after they bumped into each other. He put her in danger and saved her. The way they met was memorable; it stands out. I have to make an impression. But how?
I try to think of something else to say. I look at his newspaper and see that he’s reading about Gilbert Valley’s swim meet last week.
“Oh my gosh,” I say without thinking.
“What?” he asks, looking down at the knee pads in his hands.
“No, not you,” I say, smiling. I reach for his newspaper and look more closely at the picture in the article. When I see the date, I know for sure. “I was in this swim meet last week.”
“You were?” he asks, leaning across the counter to look.
“Yeah. We blew Gilbert out of the water.” I had one of my best times for backstroke that day. “I came in first in all my races.”
“Do you go to Hayfield?”
“Yes!”
“I feel like I recognize you! I have some friends on the team and I was at that meet.” He stares at me for a moment, pushing his glasses up onto his forehead again. “You were that girl. My friends hated you, but in a good way.”
“That’s cool,” I say, blushing a little. “That was a solid meet. And Gilbert isn’t that bad,” I tease.
“You don’t have to sugarcoat it,” he says, laughing. “You guys smoked us.”
“You go to Gilbert, then?”
“Yeah,” he admits, taking a moment to scan my gloves. “So, your total comes to twenty-four dollars and sixty cents.”
I look down at the screen in front of me and read the prices. “I thought the gloves were sixty percent off?”
Kelvin frowns down at his screen and says, “No, they rung up full price.”
“They might have rung up full price, but there’s a sign that says they’re sixty percent off.”
“I don’t even think we’re having a sale on gloves right now. I know we are in paint,” he says, not looking at me. He rubs his chin, still staring down at his screen.
“I can go get the sign if you want,” I tell him, turning on my heel.
“I mean, the gloves are just twelve bucks.”
“Just twelve bucks?” I ask, raising my eyebrows. “Look, I can prove they’re on sale.”
I take a step back toward the aisle with the gloves, but Kelvin says, “Even if there is a sign, my manager has a lock on the register. I can’t change the price.”
I open my mouth and close it, realizing it would probably ruin things even more if I asked him to get the manager.
“Sorry about my friend,” Grace says, coming over and wrapping her arms around my shoulders. “She’s just having an off day.”
Kelvin looks between us suspiciously, not sure what to do.
“I don’t know if I want to buy the gloves at full price,” I say.
“Mia,” Grace hisses.
“Grace,” I mimic her.
“I’ll buy the gloves. Okay?” she says, looking back and forth between us. “No biggie.” She pulls her backpack purse off her shoulders, and as her braids fall from behind her neck to form a curtain around her face, I catch Kelvin giving her the once-over.
“Loosen up, guys. The tension in here is so unnecessary,” Grace says, flashing Kelvin an apologetic smile.
“Sorry. I mean, if I could change the price myself, I would,” he says to her, accepting her debit card.
“I understand. It’s no big deal. It’s definitely not worth you getting in trouble,” Grace tells him.
“That’s nice of you,” he says, smiling back at her. Even though he smiled at me before, now I notice the way his eyes seem to glisten under the fluorescent lights. I also notice the way the fan is blowing Grace’s hair gently back from her face. “Do I know you from somewhere?” he asks.
“I don’t know. Do you?” Grace asks coyly.
He hands her my bag of stuff and shifts his weight to one side, leaning against the counter. “I feel like we were in a play together.”
“Oh my gosh,” Grace says, pretending to be surprised, like the actress she is. “Drama camp, two summers ago?”
“Yes!” His eyes get wide, and for a moment his mouth hangs open. “Oh my gosh, I remember you. Grace?”
“Yes, and you’re Kelvin,” she says, laughing, pointing to his name tag.
“It’s been forever since I’ve even thought about that play,” Kelvin admits.
Grace leans into the counter, my bag around her wrist. “I know. I still can’t believe they had us act out a donor’s play instead of a real one.”
“And it was such trash, too,” Kelvin reminisces.
I watch the way their eyes stay locked on each other, how naturally they’ve both managed to lean to the same side and with each sentence get closer. Elbows on the counter. Chins propped in the palms of their hands. Even though I know Grace is just being conversational, I feel frustrated watching Kelvin. This is what it looks like when a boy is interested. He leans in. He smiles uncontrollably. He laughs.
And here I am, some grumpy old lady haggling over the price of a pair of radish-print gloves. I slip out of the store without either of them noticing and make it as far as my car before the blister on my toe stops me from taking a therapeutic rage walk. What’s worse is that I can’t drive off, because I’m Grace’s ride home.
For a second I stare at my reflection in the window of my car. This is the face of the least-flirty girl on the planet.
As soon as I get into the driver’s seat, I kick off my shoes and text Grace that I’m waiting and ready to leave. I wait a few moments to see if she’ll read it immediately, but I have no such luck. No free Starbucks for her, and no date to the wedding for me.