Apparently, I know nothing. Who are you, Porter Roth?
“And I’m not sure if you know everything about your date—”
“Jesus, do you have to talk so loud?” I whisper. “He’s not my date.” Not at this rate, anyway.
“Whatever he is, I’m telling you this because I hate to see you wasting all that primo irt material on someone who doesn’t appreciate it.” He leans across the rack, beckoning me closer. “Patrick has a boyfriend in Guatemala.”
My eye twitches. I blink. Stare at Porter.
Holy shitcakes … I think back to when I rst met Patrick in the Pancake Shack, and him talking about Cary Grant and Randolph Scott being lovers. Patrick hesitating when I asked him to come here today. No wonder he was asking me about Dupont Circle; if I’d let him talk instead of running my nervous mouth, he’d probably have been seconds away from asking if I’d attended the annual Capital Pride festival there.
I don’t say a word. I just slowly sink back down onto the ats of my feet, the top of Porter’s face disappearing from my view. I straighten my skirt and turn, resigned, adding up my tally of humiliations for the morning. (1) My so-called date is a bust. (2) I’m a loser who can’t tell straight from gay. (3) I’m no closer to
nding Alex than I was weeks ago when I rst came to town. (4)
Porter witnessed the whole thing.
Patrick is striding toward me. “Nothing new in the storeroom,” he says. His gaze darts to the second aisle, where Porter emerges from a section marked BLAXPLOITATION AND KUNG FU FLICKS. He’s dressed in long gray board shorts and an unzipped army-green jacket with the words HOT STUFF embroidered next to a cartoon baby devil on a tattered breast pocket. His curly mop seems longer today; the bottom of his hair kisses the tops of his shoulders. His gaze connects with mine and sticks for a second, which does something funny to my pulse.
“Oh hey, Porter,” Patrick says cheerfully. “How’s Lana? Heard she was hitting the pro circuit.”
“Indeed she is,” Porter says, all lazy and casual. Still looking at me.
Patrick’s eyes it back and forth from Porter to me, like he’s suspicious we’ve been talking behind his back. Great. Now I feel guilty on top of being humiliated. “Hey, Bailey, it’s been fun, but my dad texted from the boat, so I probably should get back to work. Coffee sometime?”
He seems to mean it, surprisingly, and it hits me for the rst time that, unlike me, he never thought this was a date. He just assumed we were two like-minded people hanging out. Does that make me an even bigger jerk if I walk away from this never wanting to see him again because he prefers another man’s ham sandwich instead of my lady bits? I decide that yeah, it does. Add that to my never-ending list of major malfunctions.
“Coffee would be great. Or tea,” I amend. “You want my phone number? Maybe we can catch some of the lm festival together, or something.”
“Sure,” he says, smiling, and we head to the front of the store together, exchanging digits, before he waves good-bye, heads off into the fog, and leaves me standing outside with a tiny scrap of my dignity intact.
I should probably message Alex—just to feel things out, make sure he knows nothing about this asco. But at the same time, maybe I need to clear my head rst. I wanted to nd Alex so badly that I’d jumped to conclusions about Patrick and ignored good sense. ?at was a stupid mistake, but I don’t want to beat myself up about it too much. I just …
I don’t know what I want anymore, honestly.
“You okay?”
Porter stands next to me. ?e door to Video Ray-Gun swings shut behind us.
I let out a long sigh. “Yeah, I’m … just having a really bad day. It must be the fog.”
“Can’t be that,” he says. “Foggy days are the best.”
I wait for the punch line, but it never comes. He glances down at my knee; it’s scabbed over from yesterday’s takedown of the Maltese falcon thieves, but I was too vain to wear a Band-Aid today.
“I thought California was supposed to be sunny all the time,” I tell him. “Foggy days are depressing.”
“Naaa. ?ey’re kind of magical.”
“Magical,” I repeat dismally, not believing him.
“What, is magic too lowbrow for you?”
“Don’t start with me today,” I say, more weary than frustrated, but if he goes much further, I can’t promise that won’t change. “Do you enjoy picking ghts with people?”
“Just you.”
I search his face, unsure if he’s teasing. “You ght with Pangborn all the time.”
