“And they’re showingSlap Shot?Mighty Ducks?”
“Goon,” I reply.
“Nice choice.” Bobby smiles. “Don’t end up in Adler’s popcorn line. He’ll likely poison the butter topping.”
Daisy laughs and I fight a frown. I’m my own worst enemy. I don’t want anyone to know about me and Tate but I’m the one who can’t keep a poker face. Daisy and I drive in silence the entire way back to the apartment. She stops on the porch, which is shared by all four apartments, to check the mail. We’re usually very bad at that since none of us usually get any important mail of any kind, but Daisy has been relentless about checking for about a week now. She even checks it on Sundays when we aren’t getting mail in case there was a late delivery Saturday evening.
Today she pulls a bunch of flyers out of the mailbox and a ubiquitous white envelope. I unlock the door and we climb the stairs to our third floor apartment and as I swing open the door at the top of the stairs Daisy speaks. “Oh my God! It’s here! I got it!”
“What?” I ask.
“The ancestry site. They’ve sent me my preliminary results!”
“They’re back already?” I ask as I walk into the front hall, and she shuts the door behind the two of us and waves the envelope in my face.
“Yes!” Daisy is so excited she’s bouncing, and her high-pitched tone gets Caroline to wander out of the living room.
“What’s up?” she asks, still holding her textbook and wearing her glasses.
Daisy explains she got the DNA results back. Caroline puts down her book and grabs the envelope from her and tears it open. She reads the piece of paper inside as Daisy and I stare at her. “Congratulations, you’re forty-five percent Irish, twelve percent English, fifteen percent Scottish and—”
“What about living relatives? Any matches?”
Caroline hands back the paper. “You have to log in online for that info.”
Daisy snatches the paper from her and heads to her room, and no doubt directly to her laptop to pull up the site. I walk in the other direction toward my own room but call over my shoulder, “I’m leaving in twenty minutes whether you guys are with me or not!”
“I’ll be ready in fifteen,” Caroline calls back.
She scurries off to her room as I walk into mine and start peeling off my clothes. My only thoughts, as much as I hate to admit it, are of Tate. I think about him all the time, which is scaring me a little. He’s not my boyfriend. In fact he’s nothing but an accidental hookup who is open to the idea of repeating the mistake, and that’s what I am to him. I have no idea how to be that person, which is probably why I am obsessing over it.
I’ve had two boyfriends so far in my life, which isn’t bad for nineteen if you ask me. There was my high school boyfriend, Austen. We broke up three weeks after prom, and I went through the whole sobbing and eating ice cream out of the container thing like you’re supposed to when you lose your first love. But by the end of the summer, when Austen went off to school in Upstate New York, I was over him completely.
And there was Dylan, who I dated very on and very off last year. I wouldn’t even say we broke up. We just kind of faded out of each other’s lives. I stopped calling. He stopped coming by. And then it was summer and he went back home to White Plains. He’s back this year. I saw him at the library the first week of school, and we said hi but that was it. I wasn’t broken up and neither was he.
And I’ve gone on a bunch of dates—mostly bad ones, like the cop who told me about Clyde’s arrest—but nothing remotely serious. And nothing as remotely trivial as random hate sex. I wasn’t sure how to do something so meaningless. Was meaningless supposed to feel so…meaningful?
Anyway, I was totally winging this but I figured ignoring him was the right thing to do, so that’s what I did the one time I have seen him in the last four days, which was in class. I made sure to sit as far away from him as possible and leave before he even got out of his seat when class was over. I didn’t want to be that needy girl who hangs around hoping he’ll stop and talk to me.
As I get out of the shower and towel dry my hair, I hear my phone ping from where I’d plugged it in to charge on my night table. I walk over and glance at it and see it’s an email alert. “Speak of the devil,” I whisper as I drop down onto my bed and pick up the phone. It’s Tate. He got my email address when I sent him the notes from class.
Firecracker, just wanna know if you’re going to movie night?
I email him back. Just one word—yup—and then go about getting ready, pretending that I’m not holding my breath waiting for his response. Does he want me to go? Is he checking so he can avoid me or run into me? Why do I care so much? Ugh!
“Maggie! You ready?” Daisy calls from the hall.
“Just a sec!” I call back and as I slip into my shoes my phone pings again and I bite my lip in anticipation as I pick it up.
I’m working the concession stand left of the screen before the show. Find me.
I smile but type back,Bossy, much?
I tuck my phone into my back pocket and leave my room. Daisy and Caroline are waiting impatiently in the hall. “Finally!”
“Why do you look so cute?” Caroline wants to know. “It’s an outdoor movie.”
“I look cute?” I repeat and stare down at my outfit. It’s a little chilly tonight so I put on a fuzzy gray kitten sweater and my favorite jeans, with my favorite suede booties. I did spend a little extra time on makeup and let my damp hair air dry so it waves a little…because Tate seems to like it down and wavy. Umm, I mean… I did it because I had it up all day so down is a nice change anyway.
