She was right, of course.
When was the last time I stopped for more than a second?
But
it was the way she talked, rather than what she said, that made me stop me in my tracks.
Words
just came bubbling out
of her
. S
he spoke with
grand sweeping gestures of her arms and torso
, every part of her body animated
.
S
he’s looking at me dead in the eyes, inviting me into her words, into her thoughts.
When
most people
talk,
they’re more
interested in what they have to say that they
barely
even notice that there’s
another person in the conversation.
With Ha
llie, it’s exactly the opposite
. Make your mouth work, I tell myself.
She had said something about a…
“The com
bine?” I ask
, puzzled.
“The NFL combine?”
She says it like
it’s
the most obvious thing in the world.
“Football.
”
I’m surprised for a second.
She s
tops
dead
in the middle of the sidewalk. I hear
a couple of groans from people who
have
to step around us.
She murmurs an apology to them, but
she
doesn’t move.
“You’re not telling me that yo
u don’t like football,” she squawks
,
incredulous
. “I don’t think I’ve ever met a guy who didn’t like football.”
“I’m more o
f a baseball guy myself,” I say
sheepish
ly
. I had played basketball and baseball in high school, but the only thing I followed with any regularity was my team, the Yankees. It probably had something to do with my dad not being around and the fact that sports bored Diana to tears
. T
he only football game I had ever been to was when I was six
.
Thanks, Dad.
“That’s it,” she says
, turning around. “I cannot spend the day with you. It’s over.”
She starts walking away and I’m
too stupefied to do anything. Wa
s she really about to cancel our
day just because I didn’t know what a combine was?
She turns
back to me, laughing. “Totally kidding, by the way.”
She must have seen the look
on my face, because she stops
laughing. “I really was. I’m actually more of a baseball girl myself.
Kind of. I have split loyalties.
”
Relief. “Team, please?”
“Cubs.”
I shake
my head, disgusted. “Fairweather fans.”
“I have been a Cu
bs fan my whole life,” she adds
proudly. “Of course, they always suck and I’ve seriously thought about switching loyalties at least ten million times.”
“Let me tell you about the Yankees,” I
tell
her, opening the door to Sarabeth’s for her.
We had to
wait in line for about an hour
even though it was a weekday. I spent the whole time trying to convince her that the Yankees were the only team that mattered.
“Sell-out.
”
She smirks at me.
“I actually live in New York. It’s only the
Yankees fans
in Arizona who are the sell-outs.”
“All they have is the Diamondbacks. So, I would argue that it completely fair to jump ship. It’s the Yankee
s
fans in Atlanta who only think the cap looks cool that are
total sell-outs,” she counters
.
“Fair.”
Our conversation was interrupted by an angry-looking hostess waving menus at us.
After apologizing profusely, we make our way to the table.
“Perfect,”
Hallie
says
with a satisfied sigh after looking over the menu. “
I would kill for a good omelet
.”
“They
make the best ones here.
So
how did you
…”
The waitress
comes back
quickly,
and I put the words aside
. I had been about to ask
about her trip to New York, about her friendship with Sophia. But I sudden
ly realized that I didn’t care and
I
definitely
didn’t want to talk about Sophia. Not
now
and maybe not ever.
The waitress looks
at
us
expectantly, pen in hand.
“Black
coffee, please. And an omelet
with bacon, onion, and green peppers. And hash browns. And
toast,” she says
finally,
looking up at me
guiltily
.
“Sam
e.
”
Of course she had nailed my usual order. Of course.
The waitr
ess dashes
off
and
Hallie
smiles
at me.
“Copycat.”
“You can ask anyone. I always get the same thing here.”
“Me, too. I mean, at any breakfast place. Not here, obviously. But when I order things for breakfast.
Toast is essential. I mean, actually the jam is the essential part, and the toast is just something to put it on. I have this condiment fascination…
”
The
way her hands move as she expounds on the merits of jam mak
e
s
me hungry to know what else she’s
fascinated with.
Chapter 9
HALLIE
We’re halfway through breakfast before I remember that
Sophia
had tried to set me up on
a recon mission. I was in the midst of a story
about
when I was seven an
d tried to shoot the puck into the
goal at one of
thos
e halftime hockey contests.
I happened to miss the puck entirely with the stick
before falling flat on my face
. Most of the time, the crowd tries not to laugh at the little kids when they’re shooting, but in my case, they made an exception.
Most of my stories involve some kind of embarrassment.
I made a decision a long time ago to own the awkwardness (it’s pretty much the only choice when you’re basically a walking disaster), and I can usually tell the stories
without flinching. However,
as I
got to the point in the story where I fell down from the momentum of my swing
,
I did ask myself why everything I said seemed to just shine the spotlight
on my total incompetence as a member of the human race
.
Chris
is
leaning back and laughing, so the momentary humiliation (both then and now)
is
worth it.
We had been jabbering away for the past two hours, talking about everything and nothing all at once. The only character flaw I could find was that he didn’t seem to be a huge football fan. I mean, I could work with that, but what kind of red-blooded American male didn’t love football?
“Like, a total whiff?”
“
A total whiff,” I confirm
.
“And a wipeout to boot.”
“They really shouldn
’t have laughed at you,” he says
, barely able to cover
the fact that
his
own
voice
is shaking with laughter
.
“Nah, it’s ok. I would have laughed at me, too.”
He was still trying to stop laughing when
it shot like a bullet through me—the look in
Sophia
’s eye when she had asked for her
“favor.” Did she like him? If she did, there was no way I could ever compete. The only time I had ever halfway tried flashed through my head.
Todd
.
He was cute in a nerdy way.
We were lab partners in chemistry, which was a totally hopeless subject for me. I was always mix
ing the wrong things together, and i
t was
nothing short of
a miracle that I hadn’t blown up the lab. Fortunately for me, Todd wanted to be an engine
er and seemed to take pity on my disastrous attempts to create chemical compounds.
We spent a few weeks flirtin
g back and forth.
I
t
was
nothing serious, of course.
He did seem to touch me more than was strictly necessary
and he had even kissed me one night when we were staying late at the library.
He had backed off immediately, murmuring sorry and looking contrite. But then he asked me to a party at the frat that he was rushing, and I had spent quadru
ple my usual time getting ready. I had even borrowed
one of
Sophia’s
little sparkly dresses.
When I walked in
to the party a couple of hours late
(to keep the mystery, you had to be fashionably late,
Sophia
said),
Sophia
was draped all
over the arm of
Todd’s
chair
.
In the midst of the crowd,
Sophia
had taken
his
glasses off and was posing with them, causing him to laugh at her and skim his hands down her arms. She hated glasses. Why was she flirting with Todd, when there were two dozen guys, better-looking, more popular, and more
Sophia
’s type, staring her down? Why had she picked this one?
I had watched them together for the first few minutes after I walked in the door, and all it took was a little small talk and
a few extra touches of his chest and arms and lower torso
before he had completely forgotten that anyone existed outside of her
.
Maybe she hadn’t known it was the same guy because she had too much to drink or something. But I didn’t think that was it.
Sophia
never drank too much because she always want
ed to be in control of herself, which
she
had told me the time she laughed at the girl
who stumbled on
her
heels walking across the quad du
ring one of our morning-after sessions
. Besides, I had pointed him out to her earlier that day, and she had replied, “He’s cute. Totally not good enough for you, though.”
If he hadn’t been good enough for me, he certainly wasn’t up to the caliber of guys that she usually seduced. I couldn’t get rid of the feeling that she was testing me. I knew that she didn’t have many female friends, that she played games with boys
and that she usually won
.
She would probably do the same things with her girlfriends, my brain warned
.
The next morning, I got myself a coffee and went through the motions of
running down
the past night’s events with
Sophia
over breakfast. “Let’s grab some coffee. Tell me everything,” I said, whispering
so I didn’t
wake
up
our third suitemate
, who spent at least 97% of her time at the library and 3% of the time listening to some terrible country music.
“You do know that you hooked up with Todd from my chemistry class last night, right?” I asked, watching her face for any sign of deception.
“Oh, that was Todd?” she said to me, her face crestfallen. “I’m so sorry,
Hallie
. I really didn’t know. But it’s a good thing anyway. He was total crap in bed. He kept licking my chin. It
was seriously the funniest thing ever. It was like he didn’t know how to find my lips or something. And I’m telling you—he’s like four inches on a good day. You
never would have wanted that.”
There was something behind her eyes that told me that she wasn’t giving me the whole truth and that bothered me more than the whole Todd situation
, but I let it go. No friend is perfect, I told myself. And it’s not like you’re going to find the love of your life at Greenview anyways.
W
hile I to
ld myself that it didn’t matter as long as I never introduced her to Ben
, the way in which she had thrown herself at the only person I had ever expressed any interest in wasn’t totally forgotten.