Theo and I sat there, right beneath the Coastal Federal sign, as it informed us that it was 9:07 and 81 degrees. Then twice. Three times. Finally he said, “Well, that was a bit awkward.”
“It’s nothing,” I said, although in truth, it was unlike Luke to be visibly annoyed, ever, about anything.
“I’m sorry if hanging out tonight caused a problem for you,” Theo said.
“It didn’t,” I said.
“He didn’t seem very happy.”
“He’ll be fine.”
I backed up, then turned onto the main road. Now that we were close to town, there were more cars, there was more life, people coming home from dinner or going out to the clubs. As we pulled up to a stoplight, Theo said, “You guys been together a long time.”
It wasn’t a question. But I answered it like it was, saying, “Since ninth grade.”
“Wow.” He sat back, exhaling. “I can’t even imagine still being with any of the girls I liked back in ninth grade.”
“No?”
He winced. “Ugh. No. But then again, I was into the skinny, mean types. Who’ve probably just gotten skinnier and meaner.”
“Or fatter and nicer.”
“Maybe.” He looked down at the bracelets resting over the edge of the milk crate. “Don’t have an interest in finding out, though. I’d be happy if I never had to see anyone from high school again.”
“Really,” I said. “Aren’t you only, like, a couple of years out, though?”
“Doesn’t matter. Even in ten years, I still won’t want to see any of those people.”
The light changed and we moved forward.
“Sounds like it was pretty bad.”
“There just wasn’t much for me there,” he said. “It was jock-centric, seriously elitist. As a computer geek into the history of cinema and my trombone, I functioned mostly as a school-wide joke or a punching bag. Usually both.”
I glanced over at him. “Trombone? Really?”
“It’s an incredibly underappreciated member of the brass family.”
I didn’t even know what to say to that.
“I know.” He sighed. “I had no idea how to be cool. It was like I wanted to be beat up.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“You don’t have to. I heard it plenty, usually just before someone slammed my face into a locker.” His phone buzzed and he pulled it out, glancing at the screen. “College, though, is awesome. Plenty of geeks. No lockers. Much better.”
“Good to hear,” I replied. “I leave at the end of August.”
“You’ll love it,” he told me. “A whole new world. I promise.”
I nodded, slowing for a light as he typed a response to whatever text he’d gotten. I knew I should have told him that, really, the next four years wouldn’t exactly be that kind of sea change for me. Not at East U, anyway. But it was one thing for me to share my past in Colby with Theo; the future, as always, was different. I thought of the guys at the fish house, Rachel Gertmann at her table. It seemed like things either stayed just the same or changed irrevocably. And like most times I found myself with hard choices, I just wished there was something clear and easy, right in between.
8
“WHERE’S LUKE?”
This, apparently, was the million-dollar question, although I hadn’t expected Benji to ask it. At least, not the very first second he saw me. I hadn’t even gotten all the way up Miss Ruth’s walk yet.
“He got called into work,” I said. “Pool cleaning emergency.”
Benji gave me a doubtful look. I knew this was a bad lie, but I didn’t know where Luke was, as he was not returning my phone calls or texts. Mr. Easygoing apparently was not so much right now, at least when it came to bumping into me and Theo.
“If you ask me, he’s just being a big baby,” Morris had said earlier, when I’d told him and Daisy about what happened. We were on a bench outside Wave Nails, where Daisy was about to start her gyno shift.
“I didn’t ask you,” I told him.
“I think,” Daisy said, speaking around the bobby pin in her mouth as she twisted her hair up in a knot, “that Luke did overreact, a bit. But look at it from his side. You ignored his text to go out with another guy. He was upset.”
“Like a big ol’ baby,” Morris added.
I ignored this, turning back to Daisy. “I told him it was a mistake, that I thought the text went through. I didn’t even want to take Theo out in the first place. I got totally pushed into it.”
“I know that.” She removed the bobby pin, reaching up to slide it into the knot. “But Luke didn’t until after he saw you. So he’d already had a chance to take things his way.”
I rolled my eyes. Behind us, a moped whined past. Morris watched it, then said, “You know, they’re really not that annoying.”
“Yes, they are,” Daisy and I said in unison.
“If he insists on ignoring me, though,” I went on, “I can’t apologize. So what do I do?”
“Just give him some space and time to cool off,” Daisy told me. “You know he will. It’s Luke.”
She was right, of course. It was just a misunderstanding, exacerbated by both of us being tired at the end of a long workday. No big deal. And yet, I still felt uneasy as I walked up the steps to Miss Ruth’s wide front porch, where Benji was waiting for me in the porch swing. He, too, looked down in the dumps. Apparently, all the men in my life had PMS.