Pastries don’t fix the world, but on the morning after a bad day, warm chocolate goes a long way toward smoothing the rough edges. I sit on the dock in my and August’s “office,” absent-mindedly chewing and considering how I’m going to patch this up with him, when I hear his steps on the wood behind me.
He sits down on the dock next to me with his Snoopy mug of black coffee, without saying a word. A couple seconds pass with us staring at the water. It’s not that August and I have some sparkly relationship that’s devoid of fighting—we’ve gone through years when we’ve bickered constantly—it’s just that this feels different. Des. Kyle. All the untouchable topics and things we haven’t said.
“About yesterday . . .” I start, getting myself geared up to hash this out. “I know—”
“I was an ass,” he says, and I look at him. “I shouldn’t have walked off on you like that.” He rubs the back of his neck.
“No, you shouldn’t have.”
“Agreed.”
“Right,” I say, and my words putter to a stop, my argument whizzing out of me. “You know, this is just like you. Deflate all my carefully cultivated insults with three sentences. How am I supposed to vilify you now?”
He leans his shoulder into mine, and in an irresistibly sincere voice he says, “Think you can forgive me, Tiny?”
I exhale. “Do I have a choice?”
“Depends. How good were those insults you were working on?”
“Like, choke-on-your-coffee good.”
“Well, then maybe you should let them fly.”
I squint at the water, considering. “Nah. I’ll save them for the next round.”
He laughs. And just like that, we both let it go.
“Ella texted me,” he says, sipping his coffee.
I perk up. “Wait, really? What did she say? Good? Bad? Had to be good or she wouldn’t have texted, right?”
He hands me his phone, and I smile as I read through their banter. That is, until I get to August asking her if she ever freezes. My head shoots up. August is being real with a girl he doesn’t know about his heavily guarded emotions? He’s barely even real with me about them.
“Keep reading,” he says as though he knows what I’m thinking.
I give him a questioning look but return to the phone. And then I see it—Amber.
“I swear this Star-Crossed Lovers move has some bad luck,” I say and run through what I know about Amber, relaying the highlights. “Okay, Amber. Bossy, leader of Ella’s friend group, vicious when she wants to be, adored, broke up with her boyfriend Derek a couple of months ago.”
“He’s still in her photos,” August says. “And he was at Ella’s party.”
I nod approvingly; August doesn’t make a show of it, but he notices every detail. “True. Which means they’ve moved on to friends, leaving her single and available. She’s like a shark, that one. ‘Sharky’ actually wouldn’t be a bad nickname for her.”
August takes his phone back and types into his chat with Ella: Cool if I bring my cousin?
He looks at me for approval, and when I nod, he presses send. And even though it’s a little gesture, it makes me feel good. He waited for me to make this decision. We’re in this together.
I hand him my phone, open to Ella’s dad’s message. “Also, this.”
He reads it and looks up. “Quick call?” he suggests, even though I know he doesn’t like talking to parents or friends, hence the fact that they always communicate with me.
“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. We just reassure him and that’s that.”
“Agreed,” he says, and I press call.
But as I do, August’s phone dings and he holds it up. It’s Ella telling him that the party isn’t in a backyard or on some beach. It’s on a boat. In an hour. And if we’re late, it’ll leave without us. In unison we jump up, August sloshing his coffee.
“Went to voicemail,” I say and press end. “Meet you by the Jeep in twenty minutes?”
“Yup,” he says, and we both head toward our houses. But as I step onto my porch, I spot Bentley through his kitchen window and hesitate, remembering how I bit his head off.
Quick detour, I tell myself and jog over to his house. I knock three times on the screen door.
“Come in!” he yells, and I do.
The door opens into his living room, which is scattered with toys belonging to his seven-year-old twin brother and sister. The blue couches are faded, and the carpet is a little frayed but clean. I make my way into the kitchen, only to find Bentley wearing an apron and cooking a big frying pan of cheesy eggs.
His eyes double in size when he sees me. “Valentine? What are you . . . I mean . . . hey.”
“Hey,” I say, now feeling flustered that he’s flustered, and possibly like I’ve intruded. “I just—”
But before I can get a word out, the twins run in, smacking each other with long cardboard tubes.
“Huuungry,” his little brother, Trevor, says.
“Double hungry,” Maisie agrees.
I stare at the three of them. Bentley cooks? I know his mom works a lot, that her car is rarely in the driveway, but I just never thought of him as the apron-wearing, babysitting type. It’s about as far from his cultivated cool persona as you can get.
“I came to apologize for barking at you yesterday,” I say.
He shrugs. “We all have bad days. Don’t worry about it.”
Because he’s so decent about it, and because I’m weirdly intrigued by his domesticity, I add, “Maybe I can make it up to you. Take you to lunch?”
For a long second, he just stands there, spatula in hand, looking startled. Then the corners of his mouth lift. “Like a date?”
The twins stop hitting each other to look at me.
“Well . . .” My cheeks heat. “Maybe. Yeah.”
Bentley’s face lights up, but before he can respond Trevor hits him with a cardboard tube.
And the twins chant, “Bentley has a day-ate,” in unison.
“Anyway, see ya,” I say, backing up toward the door. “Also, you might want to flip those eggs.”
Bentley turns toward the stove, where his eggs are browning on the pan, and jumps into action. I show myself out, and as I run through my yard, it occurs to me that in some bizarre twist of fate I asked Bentley out. Me. And Bentley of all people. Today is all kinds of upside down.