I marched into Mick’s and stopped at the hostess desk.
“Good evening. How may I help you?”
My heart sank. The hostess was one of those women who make you feel uncultured and immature just by looking at her. Her makeup was flawless, her hair sleek and shiny, and somehow even her black skirt and white blouse looked high fashion.
I cleared my throat. “I have reservations at 6:30 in the name of…
Love
.” I tried to force a smile through clenched teeth. Name of Love. Seriously, who could blame me for wanting to send Jimmy Foster through a meat grinder at this point?
She smiled sweetly. “Of course you do. Right this way. Your party has already arrived.”
Great. I’d been hoping for a few minutes to pull myself together.
Mick’s is not a place most high schoolers go unless it’s their mother’s birthday or out-of-town relatives are visiting. Not that it isn’t nice; there’s just something about jazz and white tablecloths that make you feel like you’re twelve again. I clutched my messenger bag tightly in case it knocked over a water glass or candle.
She led me to a corner, thank God, and waited expectantly for my date to stand. Only he didn’t know that’s what she was waiting for. The uncomfortable twelve seconds passed more like ten minutes worth of painful silence. She finally realized neither of us knew what we were doing and pointed to my chair. “Enjoy your dinner.”
My mind tried to process the small details of my date’s face while I struggled to place him. I’d seen him before, but I didn’t know who he was. My biggest fear was that Foster would set me up with twelve trolls. This guy was actually cute. He had a little unfortunate acne, but nothing was glaringly hideous. Sandy brown hair, blue eyes, and he’d worn a nice sweater.
So far so good.
“Hi, I’m Layney.”
“I’m Chuck.”
When he didn’t follow that statement with anything, I realized I was going to have to use my interviewing skills after all. Open-ended questions were going to be my friends. If I relied on yes-or-no answers, we would never get anywhere.
I worked up my cheery smile. “I’m sort of nervous. I’ve never been on a blind date before. Have you?”
“No.”
See what I mean about yes-or-no questions?
Take two. “So what made you decide to do this?”
He shrugged.
Our waiter brought over the dessert menu and coffee. I ordered the tiramisu just in case that really was part of the conditions for the owner picking up the tab.
“Chuck, do you play any sports?”
“Basketball.”
That’s where I’d seen him. “What made you choose basketball over, say, baseball?”
He smiled. “I’m six-four.” And then he blushed.
Shyness I can empathize with. While I wasn’t much on dating, it wasn’t because I was shy. Shyness doesn’t get great stories. I tended to be a little more…aggressive. But I also knew how to set people at ease, make them comfortable enough to spill their guts to me.
Well, okay, sometimes I made people uncomfortable. Just not usually the ones I interviewed.
I broke the elbows-on-the-table rule and rested my chin in my hands. “Okay, let’s get this out right now, then. You’re tall, handsome, and a varsity ball player. And you are obviously not the kind of guy that goes out of his way to get into calendars. Why are you on a blind date with me?” I even batted my eyelashes.
He started to say something, but our food arrived. One tentative bite later and I was hooked on tiramisu. “Oh my God, this is good. Is yours good?”
He nodded. “It’s vanilla ice cream. But yeah, it tastes good.” And then he pushed it away. “God, I’m so stupid.”
“What’s wrong?”
He covered his face in his hands. I checked out the room to make sure nobody was staring at us. If he started crying, I was going to have to take a vow of agoraphobia and spend the rest of my life in my room.
“Chuck?”
He moved his hands out of the way—fortunately, no tears. “I’m sorry. I just feel so stupid. I mean, no wonder she broke up with me.”
“I’m going to need a map or something, Chuck. I’m not following you at all.”
Please don’t cry. Please don’t cry.
Foster would never let it die if I made a boy cry on my first date.
He exhaled and went back to his ice cream. “I’m boring. I can never think of the right things to say, and I order vanilla ice cream, and everything about me is uninteresting.”
Okay, then. Boys got insecure too, I could see. “Your three-pointers are pretty amazing,” I offered.
“That’s the problem. My girlfriend, she thinks—well, she thought—that basketball is all I care about. And it’s not. It’s just the only thing I know I’m good at. She broke up with me, but she doesn’t understand.”
“What doesn’t she understand?”
“She’s all I think about. Not basketball. Not sports. That’s why I agreed to do this. I thought maybe she’d get jealous. But that’s probably dumb too.”
If that wasn’t the sweetest thing ever, I don’t know what is. She was obviously a moron. “Here’s the thing. I’m totally lame at the whole relationship thing because, well, I choose not to have them; but did you ever tell your
girlfriend
what you just told me?”
He shook his head. “Can I try your…whatever that is?”
I pushed my plate to him. I wasn’t going to stand in someone’s way while they tried to break out of their comfort zone.
“This isn’t bad.”
“Vanilla ice cream is good too, though, Chuck. Tell me about your girlfriend.”
Chuck smiled. “She’s amazing. She’s so smart and really pretty. She went to every single home game last year, even when she was sick. God, she was so supportive of me, but I totally blew it. I never even tried to learn about the stuff she liked. I just assumed she was happy doing the stuff I liked.”
When he finally took a breath, I asked him if she was still available.
“Yeah. I think so.”
“Then promise me you’ll try to get her back, Chuck.”
“You don’t think it’s too late?”
A girl like me had no business giving relationship advice. The only real boyfriend I’d had turned into hellfire’s answer to John Mayer after we broke up, but I liked Chuck and really wanted him to be happy. “Just because you took too much for granted before, doesn’t mean you can’t learn from your mistakes. Tell her you’re sorry, that she was the best thing that ever happened to you, and that you wished you had appreciated her more when you were together. Then tell her all the mushy stuff about how you feel.”
“Mushy stuff.”
“Yeah, you know,” I mumbled while sweeping my hands in the air. “Like, she’s the only thing you think about, you’re so in love, yada yada yada.”
“Yada yada yada?”
“Oh, don’t actually say that part. Some people get touchy about stuff like that.”
He crinkled his brow. “Are you sure you’re a girl?”
I shrugged. “Most of the time.” Just not your average girl. Hearts and flowery talk gave me hives.
By the time our date ended, I’d helped Chuck write out a script for making up with his girlfriend. We even had Plan B and Plan C, depending on how well she responded—or how well she didn’t. He told me over and over how this was the best date he’d ever been on. I told him he probably shouldn’t share that little nugget with his ex.
We stood in front of the restaurant, and I broke the rules and hugged him goodbye.
My ride home was less than amused.
“That was irresponsible and unethical, Logan.”
“What is your problem?” I’d barely buckled myself in before Foster peeled out into the street.
“A good reporter knows the boundaries of an interview.”
“I thought it was a date.”
His white knuckles looked stark against the black of the steering wheel. “There were signed contracts. I can’t believe you just…”
“Just what? Acted like a girl?”
Foster didn’t say another word to me until he pulled into my driveway. “How was the tiramisu?”
I slid out of my seat. “It was better than I expected.”
Chapter Three
Mr. February
Monday morning found me where every weekday morning found me—in the newsroom before school trying to figure out what I’d done to deserve the mess I’d been handed.
Someone had dumped several cases of old textbooks in the middle of our newsroom before I’d gotten there that morning. I guessed we were now the new school storage closet. As I lugged them to the corner and stacked them against a wall, I tried to sort out some of my to-do list.
We still needed to recruit a decent photographer, especially for the calendar. We also still needed to come up with some regular columns and find some investigative stories to report on. Plus we needed to learn web design because not one of those new girls knew any code at all, and I sure as heck didn’t.
Only a few weeks ago, I’d been blissfully unaware of the jam I’d be in. I looked forward to my senior year. Until Mr. Blake called Foster and me to the school a week before class started.
“As you know, the school district—our entire community—is facing some tough economic choices,” Mr. Blake had begun. “There’s no easy way to say this, kids—they’ve cut journalism from the schedule. The local newspaper is shutting down too, which means there will be no
Follower
this year.”
It was the day the music died for me. And not the Madonna version either, thanks.
The local paper used to do our print runs for free. With them out of business, we couldn’t go to print, which is why we opted for a web version. Why we opted for any version at all had more to do with pride and stubbornness. The two things Foster and I had in common.
Trying to resurrect the institution that once was the paper consumed me. So much so that I didn’t realize I was no longer alone in the newsroom until someone cleared her throat.
“How was your date?” Maryanne asked. Right away, my Spidey sense tingled. Typically, Maryanne was not one of the
before
-school visitors. Sometimes she came in at lunch, but usually just after school. She was also the only girl who wasn’t always hanging all over Foster.
“It wasn’t bad,” I answered. “He was pretty nice.” I watched her body language closely.
Maryanne didn’t look at me, instead traced her finger back and forth across the scarred tabletop. “Did you think he was…interesting?”
“I suppose so. He was kind of…” I was about to say vanilla when I realized she was working extra hard at acting nonchalant. “Obsessed.”
She nodded and sighed. “With sports, right?” She twisted her ring, “I mean, you know, like all boys.”
“No. In fact, he barely talked about basketball at all.”
Her head shot up, and her eyes blazed with curiosity. “What was he obsessed with, then?”
I shrugged and powered up a computer. “His ex-girlfriend.”
One. Two. Three.
“Really?”
“Yeah. He had zero interest in dating me at all. Or anyone else. I think he just went along with the idea to find out what girls are looking for. I think he’d do anything to get her back.” Even date me.
“Really? Huh.” She bit her lip. “So what did he say about his girlfriend?”
“You mean his ex-girlfriend.”
“Yeah.”
“Maryanne…why don’t you ask him yourself?”
Her cheeks pinkened. “What do you mean?”
“Never try to hide your motives from a reporter. We can smell deception like garlic. Chuck is still crazy about you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But her smile said differently.
“He even tried tiramisu last night.”
“What is tiramisu?” she asked.
“Exactly.”
I love it when people have little light bulb moments. I only had to wait a second before she realized that I was telling her that her boyfriend was at least
trying
to overcome his inclination toward all things boring.
“Maryanne, the paper still needs a sportswriter. I think you should sign up for that position.”
“But I don’t know much about sports, except maybe basketball.”
“It’s a shame. None of us on staff do, really. Elden and Foster aren’t exactly fanatics either.”
“His name is Alden.”
“Huh?”
“The guy you keep calling Elden is really Alden.”
“Oh. Wow. He must hate me.”
“No more than he hates Jimmy,” she agreed.
“Meh. Everybody should hate Foster. Anyway, it’s too bad that nobody here knows very much about sports. Even if someone wanted to learn more about them, that would be helpful. Like, if they knew somebody who could spend time teaching them about sports or something.”
She crossed her arms. “You think I should have Chuck help me write the sports stories, don’t you?”
“I might be thinking that he knows too much about sports and not enough about you—and you know all about you but nothing about sports.”
“I’ll, um, think about it.”
“You do that.”
After Maryanne left, I had one blissful moment of solitude before Lucifer joined me.
I hopped on the table. “Hey, Satan, how’s it going?” I asked.
“Fantastic. I recommend beginning every day bathing in the blood of sacrificed virgins. It’s quite invigorating. How was your weekend? Did you clip coupons and knit socks for the war effort?” He stood in front of me and dropped his books on the table to my right.
“No, sadly, my sciatica was acting up again. Hey, did you know Elden’s name is Alden?”
“Who is Elden?”
“Never mind. What do you think of Maryanne taking the sports section with help from her jock boyfriend?”
“Can he write?”
“I have no idea. But he can translate the stats into English.”
“That might have to be enough. It’s more than we have right now, anyway. Maybe they can do a ‘He Said/She Said’ column.”
“Nice.” I scribbled down a note on his spiral notebook with the pen he’d left on top of it “Don’t let me forget to pitch that idea to her this afternoon. What’s on our agenda this week?”
“I need to start booking photo shoots with the super models until we get a new photographer. Sounds like you may have wrapped up our sports section. We still need to figure out the website design or we’ll end up using a free blog.”
“That’s not a bad idea. Unless we can recruit someone from the computer tech classes, that would be cooler. When is my next calendar interview?”