Smart Mouth Waitress (40 page)

Me:
With your big, strong arms?

His response took some time, and I chewed nervously on my hair, a habit I thought I'd lost along with the dreadlocks.

You're probably wondering why I was text-flirting with Marc when I'd been connecting with Cooper that day, and moments before had even been sniffing my wrist.

I did like Cooper, but I wasn't over Marc. Feelings don't turn on and off like taps. It was like how the news that my parents weren't divorcing had made me feel better, but hadn't returned me to the pre-worried state I'd been in beforehand.

I was in that weird headspace, that mixed-up, goofy state. Typing messages to Marc didn't even feel real. It was just me, typing some letters on a keyboard, alone in my room. The idea of another person on the other end of the internet was just that, an idea.

As of now, I understand how I got confused. That night, after all the family drama, I was swept up in the
idea
of Marc.

In a moment, I'm going to tell you what I said to Marc. To understand why a girl would say such a thing, you have to understand my background.

Being on the plump side when I was twelve or thirteen had been a blessing in disguise, according to my mother, because the reporters and photographers treated me like the kid I was, and left me out of pictures and stories.

When I was fourteen, and still carrying the so-called baby fat, I overheard some boys at school talking about my bum. I was horrified, but kept listening, as they talked about how the seam of my pants was splitting. I thought they were exaggerating.

When I stood up and turned to face them, the boy I had a crush on, Scott Weaver, said, “Ne ne, ne ne.”

The other boys laughed, but I didn't know why.

I ran to the bathroom. To my horror, I found the seam on the butt of my favorite jeans had pulled apart. There were two letters visible, 
ne
—the middle part of my Wednesday day-of-the-week panties.

Haylee and Courtney came running into the bathroom, as they'd heard from someone else about what had happened.

Courtney told me to wrap my sweater around my waist, but I didn't want to, because I was just wearing a tank top underneath, and everyone would see my chubby arms. Haylee took off her own cardigan and gave it to me.

Then something in me kind of
clicked
.

I had a change of thoughts, a change in attitude.

Feeling calmer than I'd been in years, I decided I wasn't going to care what people thought of me. My famous musician mother was obsessed with reading reviews of her work and analyzing articles about herself, and I was definitely not going to be like her.

I accepted the cardigan from Halyee, but I didn't wrap it around myself. I folded it over my arm and held it in front of me as I unzipped my pants and marched out of the bathroom.

I marched right up to where Scott Weaver and his pals were hanging out in the hallway eating their chili dogs, and I said, “Hey, Scott. I understand you were trying to read something today.”

He made that jerk face that jerks always make when someone talks back to them. He said, “What, like a book?” He looked to his friends, who laughed, because I guess the idea of Scott reading a book was hilarious.

“Yeah, you were trying to read a word. Here, let me give you a better look. Just sound the letters out one by one.”

I turned my back to the boys and whipped down my pants, revealing the word
Wednesday
.

“Can you say that word, Scott?” I called back. “Try sounding it out. The first d is silent.”

The boys were all quiet.

I pulled up my pants and did up the button, then turned around and said to their stunned faces, “Wednesday.”

As I walked away, I knew I had discovered something powerful.

In fact, I had
all
the power, because I wasn't afraid to shock people. Saying outlandish things, shocking people and tipping them off balance makes everyone a lot easier to deal with.

Which brings me back to the text conversation I was having with Marc.

After a big pause, getting back to me on the spider-smashing topic, he typed:
Yes, with my big, strong, arms. Tell me there's a spider there right now and I'll come over.

What I did next was attempt to tip him off balance so I could regain the power. It wasn't intentional so much as it was a pattern—something I always did.

Me:
My parents are out of town and I'm naked and horny. Why don't you drop what you're doing and come over this instant?

As soon as I clicked the Enter button to send the message, I regretted what I'd said, but it was too late; the message had been sent. I considered typing
j/k
 along with a charming emoticon or two, but I didn't.

I was proud of myself.

Marc had been keeping me off-balance for weeks, with his friend-zoning, then talk of kissing, then flirty messages. I'd given him the mighty shove he deserved.

In the seconds before he responded, I realized something.

Have
you heard about the coin-toss thing? It's what you do when you can't decide between two things. You take out a coin and decide if it lands Heads, you'll do one thing, Tails, the other. In the time it takes for the coin to flip up in the air and come back down to your hand, your heart speaks to you.

Your heart speaks.

And you
know
what you want the outcome to be.

Chapter 25

As I waited for Marc to respond, I knew I wanted him to refuse my offer. I would then say I was joking and tell him I really liked his friend Cooper. I could even ask him things about Cooper, like what bands he liked.

What Marc said next was not that he was coming over to smash spiders or do other things. No, it was much worse.

Marc:
Cooper came down to hang out and he's reading our messages over my shoulder. What a perv.

I slammed shut the top of my laptop and jumped off my bed. I flailed around my bedroom, only stopping when I banged my foot against the frame of my bed, possibly breaking the middle toe on my right foot.

I grabbed the laptop, opened it again, and hastily typed in:
I hope Cooper knows I was just joking!

Marc's green light was off; he'd logged out.

So, after I finished (metaphorically) pooping my pants, I changed out of my pajamas (I'd lied to Marc about being naked) and threw on some clothes from the floor.

I had the address of the house where the Cooper family and Marc lived, thanks to Marc's business card.

In my mother's Land Rover, I pulled up to the house, which was only thirty blocks or so away from my place. It could have been built by the same builder who'd constructed our house back in the early 1900s. The house was even the same color as ours, an earthy shade of green, with cream trim. We don't have a basement suite, though, so the extra door at the bottom of the house jumped out at me. That was Marc's place, where Cooper was—or at least where he had been a few moments earlier.

I jumped out of the Land Rover and dashed across the street, my heart pounding.

Crap! I really liked Cooper, and I'd screwed up everything.

Timidly, I knocked on the door.

From the other side, a guy yelled, “Go away Sunshine, this is a boys-only party,” followed by laughter.

I knocked again and someone yelled for me to come in, so I turned the handle and slowly pushed in the door.

Marc looked surprised to see me. Cooper seemed surprised, and happy.

Breathlessly, I said, “Cooper, did you see what I wrote to Marc on the computer? Just now?”

Marc grabbed his laptop from his bed—the entire suite seemed to be one open room, with the kitchen sharing the bedroom—and invited Cooper to come look.

“No!” I charged them and grabbed the laptop away.

Cooper's expression changed, and it was clear to me he'd figured enough out to be hurt.

“Can I talk to you, privately?” I said to Cooper.

Marc shook his head and commented on how messed-up things were whenever I was around. I didn't argue, but grabbed Cooper's arm and pulled him toward the door.

“I do stupid things,” I said when we got outside. He didn't respond so I pulled him further away from the warm house and down the wet sidewalk, under the streetlamps. 

“I do stupid things too,” he said. “Taking my clothes off for that drawing class was pretty high up there.”

I was still holding his arm, and I slid my hand down to his and squeezed it. “I thought that was amazing. Crazy, but amazing.”

His voice serious, he said, “Yeah, but when I saw those drawings you did, I didn't feel so amazing.”

I stopped and pulled him to a halt. “Cooper. I've never drawn a person who wasn't a stick figure. Don't tell me you were bothered by my drawings of you. I'll die. I'll just die if you were.”

He didn't look me in the eyes, but turned his face toward the hedge we stood near. “People draw what they see. And you made me really fat.”

“You were offended. No! Don't be offended! I'll die!”

He looked around to check that nobody was listening. “And you made my dick really small and shaped like a boomerang. That's how you saw me, wasn't it?”

I put my hands over the lower half of my face to cover my smile, but I couldn't stop the giggles.

He lightened up, and with a hint of a smile, said, “Guys have feelings too. Like, about their bodies.”

“Cooper! I'm bad at drawing. No, I'm the worst! Plus I was nervous. Your mother was right there next to me. Besides, didn't she say the model shouldn't look at the drawings unless invited to? I never said you could look at them.”

He crossed his arms and put his chin on one hand. “I guess I should know better.”

“Yeah, you're the artist,” I said. “I thought you looked really good naked, and I'm sorry my drawings didn't do you justice, but you can't hold that against me.”

“No.”

“I'm glad we're being honest,” I said. “Now, what else?”

“My feet are cold.”

I looked down and saw he wasn't wearing any shoes or socks.

I knelt down and put my hands on the tops of his feet.

He laughed. “What are you doing?”

“Warming your feet? I'm so sorry. Ugh, I do everything wrong.”

He reached down and helped me up from kneeling. “Do you want to go somewhere and talk?”

I pointed to the Land Rover, just down the street. “We can sit in the truck.”

He felt he'd be warm enough once he had his feet off the cold concrete, so I clicked the doors open and we climbed into the front seats.

He said, “I know today was a bit of a crisis for you, but I had a nice time driving to New Westminster, spending quality time with your family, and the Chinese food was okay.”

“Cooper,” I said. “Oh, Cooper.”

“Yes?”

“I have to confess that I did have some feelings for your friend Marc. Not anymore, but I did. He was being weird tonight, on the computer, and I said some things to him. I didn't mean the things, but sometimes I say stuff to people as a sort of defense mechanism.”

“What, like you push people away? No … I don't think you do that.”

“No, I don't push away, exactly, but I do shock people sometimes. I guess … it's easier to give people a real reason to not like you, instead of having them not like the real you.”

He looked at me sidelong. “This is sounding rather philosophical.”

“Maybe it is. Maybe I'll never understand why I sent Marc that message, but after I did, I knew I didn't want anything to do with him.”

“He's a great guy,” Cooper said.

“Are you trying to sell me on him? Don't you like me for yourself?”

He flashed a big grin and popped open the glove box nervously, then shut it again. “Marc's not
that
great.”

In the pause that followed, I remembered my night drinking with Haylee, and the drunk dialing. I asked Cooper what I'd said to him that night, or if he knew what I'd said to Marc.

He said that neither of them had talked to me, but I'd left them both pretty much the same voice mail. “Here, I'll play the message for you,” he said, pulling out his cell phone.

With Cooper's phone held up between us, we both listened to my message, which was incomprehensible babbling and giggling, followed by what sounded like “Happy New Year!”