The next day after school, Morgan and I grabbed a cab and headed to SoHo, to the classy French bistro Balthazar. We were taking a photography class together and had to do a partners photo shoot where the focus was on food. Since Balthazar has some of the most gorgeous (and incredibly delicious) pastries in the universe, we figured there was no better excuse for a field trip.
“Oh my God, I love this song. Can we turn it up?” Morgan asked the cabdriver on the way downtown. She turned to me. “They never play the Kinks on the radio, can you believe this?” She grinned, singing along to the funky rock music.
I nodded in agreement, even though most of the time Morgan’s music references were sort of over my head.
“My parent’s have the best Kinks vinyl collection at our cabin,” she said. “I’ll have to play some for you when we go up there next weekend.”
“About next weekend,” I started to say. I knew I had to come clean to Morgan that I wasn’t as gung-ho as she was about abandoning Valentine’s Day, but I wasn’t sure how to bring it up.
“Oh, here we are!” Morgan told the cabdriver as we paused on Spring Street to pay the fare. “Let’s just hope Balthazar has enough taste to spare us the Valentine overload.”
“A romantic French café?” I joked. “That’s likely.”
Inside the restaurant, the red leather banquettes were packed with cappuccino-sipping power-lunchers, miniature poodles tucked into handbags, and a few saliva-swapping newlyweds. I thought the Valentine’s decorations hanging from the ceiling were totally tasteful, but Morgan looked at me and made a gagging motion with her finger.
We decided to eat before we worked, and slid into a booth as far away from the Cupid’s arrows and groping couples as possible.
Morgan had just ordered a palmier and a latte, and I was looking forward to my linzertorte and Earl Grey tea, when I felt a strong hand grip my knee under the table.
“Flan, OMG.” Morgan’s face was white. “Random Exeter Boy is over there.”
She pointed at a couple two tables down, though I could barely see the guy because his face was being swallowed by a waif girl with dyed red hair. I’d actually never had a chance to meet Random Exeter Boy back during his short-lived romance with Morgan, so I didn’t know what to expect. I did know that Morgan was way cuter than the girl he was with today. I looked at Morgan to see how she was taking it, and to my surprise, the color seemed to be coming back into her cheeks.
“Hey.” I grabbed her hand under the table. “How you doing? Do you want to leave?”
“You know what,” she said. “I never liked the way he parted his hair. And look at how he kisses. It’s all wrong. Yuck. He hated the Kinks too, if you can believe that! Plus, he does this really weird impersonation of his pet turtle that I just don’t think I could ever be cool with.”
“I’m gonna need a visual on that,” I said.
Morgan scrunched up her lips and retracted her head back into her neck and started speaking in this really slow, hilarious, if-turtles-could-talk voice.
I started cracking up, and when Morgan saw my face, she started laughing too. By the time the waitress arrived with our snacks, we were practically rolling out of the booth.
“So yeah, enough said.” I laughed, raising my mug of tea to cheers Morgan. “Looks like it’s a good thing Random Exeter Boy didn’t exactly come out of his shell. You should never be with someone who doesn’t appreciate the Kinks.”
When Morgan finally stopped laughing, she sighed. “You know, in a city this big, sometimes I think it really is fate when you run into someone you’ve been avoiding. Here I’ve been beating myself up for weeks imagining Random Exeter making out with someone else. Now that I’ve seen it up close, I’m so not worried about what I’m missing.”
“Good,” I said, offering her a bite of my linzertorte—and instead of disdaining the heart-shaped, red jelly–filled cookie, she took it.
“This is amazing,” she said, wide-eyed. “I can’t believe I’ve never tried one of these before.”
“Wait—hold that pose,” I said, pulling out the battered old camera I’d gotten for my birthday in sixth grade. “I think this could be just the look I’ve been trying to get.” As Camille posed for delicate bites of the most Valentine’s-y of cookies, I took almost a whole roll of film. With all the votives on the tables and the dusk outside, the lighting was perfect, and even more noticeably, something in Morgan’s face looked lighter than it had just minutes before. I wondered if now was the right time to bring up the dance.
“Morgan,” I said hesitantly, “I know we all agreed to go to your cabin next weekend, and it sounds really great, but—”
“But you want to go to the Valentine’s Dance with Alex,” she filled in. I nodded. “I know,” she said. “I thought about that last night. Maybe I was a little too forceful with my whole solidarity thing. You shouldn’t be punished for having a cool boyfriend.”
“But I do want to be there for Camille,” I said.
“Listen,” Morgan said, taking a final shuddering glance at Random Exeter. “Next Tuesday is our pre– Valentine’s Day Girls’ Night Out. Camille was telling me all about how the two of you used to celebrate in middle school, and she wants to reinstate it this year.”
I’d forgotten how much fun those nights used to be—no boy pressure, just exchanging valentines with your friends and doing the gushy stuff guys usually only pretend to like on Valentine’s Day.
“We’ll go all out for Camille that night and see how she’s doing. We can adjust our plans for the weekend based on her needs.”
That sounded fair. The bottom line was that we both did really care about Camille—we were just showing it in slightly different (and, well, personally gratifying) ways.
As we paid for our pastries and grabbed our coats, I said, “You know, it might cheer Camille up to go to the dance. What if I could find her a really amazing date? Doesn’t any part of you want to go too? Especially now that you’ve got proof positive that you’re over Turtle Man in there?” I stuck my thumb in the direction of the still-making-out prep school boy.
Morgan bit her lip. “Yeah, right, who would I even go with? I’m so sick of these private school boys who think they’re so great. All they want to do is trade up. It’s like, just pick a nice girl and stick with her—”
“Morgan,” I called, “look out!”
Her tirade was cut abruptly off when she ran smack into a tall, dark-haired guy in a red ski cap who was turning the corner from Broadway.
“Whoops!” Morgan said. “I’m sorry.”
“No,” the guy said, “I’m sorry.” He looked at me. “Flan?”
Huh? I looked more closely under the ski cap and noticed that the tall stranger was Rob Zumberg—Terrick Zumberg’s cousin, whom I’d hung out with last fall in Nevis.
“Hey Rob!” I said. “Long time no see.” I looked at Morgan, who was eyeing her collision victim pretty closely. “This is my good friend Morgan. We go to Thoney together. Morgan, this is Rob. He was our resident brilliant musician in Nevis over Thanksgiving break.”
“What do you play?” Morgan asked, looking super interested.
“Guitar mostly, but I can also play the saxophone and the accordion,” Rob said. He was shifting back and forth on his feet and stammering a little bit. I’d forgotten how shy he was.
“Oh my God, I’ve always wanted to learn to play the accordion,” Morgan said. At least she was giving him some positive reinforcement!
“It’s really easy to learn,” Rob said. “I could show you sometime.”
Then both of them looked at me, either to seek my permission to hang out with each other … or maybe because I was getting in the way?
“You know what?” I said, catching the vibe. “I’ve got to head home and read up on how to develop these pictures tomorrow—”
“Oh no,” Morgan said, looking stricken. “I completely forgot to take any pictures at Balthazar.” She turned to Rob and laughed. “We were supposed to do a food photo shoot and Flan came all the way down to my neighborhood to go to Balthazar and then we started talking and—wow, that was dumb.”
“You live around here?” Rob asked. “I’m two blocks up. Well, if you need another food subject for your shoot, I could show you my favorite French café. It’s not as over-the-top as Balthazar, but—”
“Sounds perfect!” Morgan practically exclaimed.
“Okay, I’ll just—” I started to say.
“Okay, ’bye, Flan.” Morgan waved, grinning. “I had so much fun!”
I laughed and waved good-bye to both of them. I could tell Morgan was having even more fun since she literally ran into Rob.
Rob Zumberg! Why hadn’t I thought of him before? I mean, he was a little on the quiet side, but he was sooo into music. He was such an obvious choice for Morgan. Everything about this afternoon seemed so serendipitous. Meeting Rob right on the heels of seeing Random Exeter boy? You couldn’t write that kind of stuff! As I started walking up Broadway toward my house, I had to smile. My first real match had basically fallen into my lap.