GRIFFIN:Sophie please
My heart is thumping by the time I finish reading his messages. I’m so confused. Does he miss me? Is he regretting what he said? Or does he just feel guilty about how it all went down?
I send back a quick message:
ME:Not ready to talk to you yet
Then I power the phone off before I can see his reply. There’s no reason I should feel guilty—we broke up—but it’s there, underneath everything else. I’ve had a great day and I hate that Griffin is making me feel bad about it.
I watch Seth as he balances two hot chocolates, a funnel cake, and a bag of cotton candy. He gets tangled up in a group of toddlers, then nearly drops everything when some kid who’s texting and walking bumps into him. A few steps later, he and an older woman start some awkward dance when he tries to step around her but she meets his every move. He finally gets in the clear and stops, looking at me in amazement.
“Did you see that?” he yells across the short distance.
I’m laughing when he closes the gap with a little dance in his step.
Griffin may make me feel guilty, but Seth makes me smile.
I take one of the drinks and pinch off a piece of the funnel cake. Olivia and Drew emerge from the photo booth, laughing at the strip of pictures, and that’s all it takes for Seth to drag me in for pictures of our own.
When we finally pull up in front of Nonna’s, Seth has just told us about when Drew was in kindergarten and gave his teacher a tampon as a gift because he thought there was candy inside. Olivia and I can’t stop cracking up.
“This story is going to haunt me for the rest of my life,” Drew says, then pulls Olivia in for a good-bye kiss. I look at Seth so I’m not staring at them, and he shrugs, clearly feeling as awkward as I do.
Olivia gets out of the backseat and I give Seth a quick wave before opening the door. “I had a great time,” I say.
He smiles and says, “We’ll have to do it again.”
Nonna is waiting up for us when we get back, ready to gloat.
“So…how was it? You can’t hide that smile from me forever, Sophie,” Nonna says.
I lean against the kitchen sink, where she’s washing the last of the supper dishes. “You got me. We had a good time,” I reply. “But it doesn’t make this any less weird! And there’s still nine more dates to go, so, you know, there’s still the potential that this is going to be a disaster.”
Nonna hands me a tied-up garbage bag. “I think you’re going to surprise yourself. Add this to the can at the curb for me, please.”
I run down the front porch steps and drop the bag in the trash. On my way back to the house I see Wes pull into his driveway next door. I wave and wait for him to get out.
“Hey,” he says. “How was your first date?”
“Not bad, actually.”
We walk toward each other, meeting right at the property line. “Where’d y’all go?” he asks.
“That festival in Natchitoches. Ate funnel cake, had a snowball fight—you know, typical Sunday night,” I say, laughing.
He nods, then cocks his head to the side. “I think Nonna was right.”
My face scrunches up. “Right about what?”
“This dating thing. You look good.”
I can feel my cheeks warm. “Well, I must have really looked like crap earlier.”
Wes laughs. “I didn’t say that. I’m just glad you’re smiling.”
He heads toward his house and I walk back into Nonna’s, each of us waving to the other when we go through our front doors. Just as I enter the kitchen, I hear Olivia say, “Uh-oh.” She’s staring at the date board.
Aunt Patrice has filled in the details for my next date:
