“How do you know that I have a chance?”
It was a good question and actually, I was totally unqualified to make that determination. “I know that you have to push. When I was applying to colleges—”
“This isn’t the same thing.”
“I understand that! But I also didn’t think that I could do it. No one in my family had ever gone and my dad told me that I was stupid. Why didn’t I follow him and do something useful? But I decided that I had to try. Why not? Why not give it a shot? What’s the worst that could happen?”
Ronan stared at the pine trees outside the window. “I wouldn’t make it. I wouldn’t be good enough.”
“And then you’d go back to the Juniors and then, if you wanted, you could figure out how to get financing and buy your own auto shop. That all sounds ok to me,” I told him. “But psyching yourself out before you even try…” I shook my head. “That sounds dumb. Don’t do that.”
He turned to look at me. “Ok. I won’t do that.” He took a breath. “If the job with your Ken-doll boss doesn’t work out, you should think about motivational speaking over welding.”
“I don’t care about motivating most people but I’m glad it worked for you.” I realized that my heart was pounding. “Did you want to eat?”
“Yeah, I’m suddenly starving.”
We went to his house to have dinner together and then we were supposed to go out later for drinks—what might have been a drink for me, Kiya, and Channing, but would be water forRonan. Actually, Channing would probably order more than one because when we’d gone out before, he’d imbibed quite a bit.
Ronan stayed a little quiet while we cooked and also as we ate, but it didn’t have the same stony, angry feel as before. He seemed to be thinking this time. Channing noticed it, too, when we got to the bar. It was crowded and loud but that still didn’t cover the fact that no one on our side of the booth was chatty. The odd thing was that Kiya wasn’t saying much, either. We were sitting four at a table with seventy-five percent of us generally silent.
“This is fun,” Channing said. “Me and the three…what are three mute things? Blocks of stone? What? Ronan, come up with something. You’re the funny one.”
“No, I’m the smart one. Also, the handsome one, and the best at starting campfires.”
“Remember when we got lost on that hike last summer?” Channing asked, and the ice broke a little as they reminisced.
Kiya finally broke her silence, too. “I’m going to ladies’ room,” she told us, and looked at me.
I got it right away this time. “Me too,” I said, hopping up. We went through the crowd and found that the bathroom was also filled. Women jockeyed to see themselves in the mirrors but she went around them and took my hand to pull me into a stall.
“First of all,” she said, “I have to fix something.” She messed with my hair for a moment and then nodded. “You’re coming over to Taylor’s and my condo next week and we’re going style this together, ok?”
“Ok,” I agreed. Had my hair really been so bad that we’d needed a private conference?
No. There was something else. “I’m so upset!” she told me. “I don’t know what to do.”
We were in that stall for a while as she poured out the story. Channing—her ‘Cado’—had been acting weird all week, really weird. She’d kept asking and asking what was wrong but he’d blown her off and then had gotten mad and told her to leave him alone, it was nothing.
“And you left him alone,” I said.
She stared at me as if I’d grown horns. “No, because I wanted to find out what it was,” she said.
“What was it?”
“I don’t know because he wouldn’t tell me! I need you to find out,” she explained. “Not you, but Ronan. You said that they don’t have personal talks, but I bet my Cado will open right up if someone else asks him.”
“Um, I don’t know,” I said slowly. “Ronan wouldn’t be subtle at all. He would probably yell questions right across the table.”
“No! I don’t want that,” she responded immediately. “What if I text you what he should say? Like a script.”
“I don’t think he would be good at that,” I told her. “Let me talk to him about it.”
“Take him to the dance floor,” she suggested. “No one will suspect anything.”
“I mean, who would bother to suspect? No one cares…yes,the dance floor is a good idea,” I quickly added, because she already looked upset and that comment had made her frown even more. “I’ll talk to him there.”
There wasn’t exactly a “dance floor” but towards the center of the bar, there were a few people kind of bopping along to the music. I also wasn’t exactly a “dancer” or even “a person with rhythm” but I owed it to Kiya to try to figure this out. I really liked her and I had never done my hair with other women before. It was fine the way I styled it, of course, but that sounded fun.
