Everything You Want Me to Be(46)

“What’s up with you?” he asked.

“Just grabbing a bite before work.”

“Oh. Cool.” He scratched his hair, which wasn’t exactly curly. It looked more like he’d just gotten out of bed.

I took a drink and my straw made that slurping noise when you get to the bottom. Tommy eyed the cup hopefully.

“Do . . . do you want me to grab you a refill?”

“Sure.” I handed it to him. “Half orange, half Sprite, three ice cubes.”

I watched him go to the soda fountain and fill my ridiculous order exactly. He even dumped out a little orange to make sure it only filled half the cup. When Derek walked over and punched him in the arm, Tommy shoved him mercilessly into the condiments counter and came back to the booth without spilling a drop. Amazing. It was like a social experiment. I took a sip and tried experimenting some more.

“So what do you think of Portia?”

“Portia Nguyen?” he asked, and I tried not to roll my eyes. There were no other Portias in the entire town.

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know. She’s nice, I guess.”

“What would you say if she asked you to Sadie’s?”

“Oh.” He flushed bright red and started playing with the napkins again. “I, um, I didn’t think . . . she was gonna ask me.”

Then he swallowed and met my eyes. Funny, I’d never noticed his were a perfect blue, like the kind of sky that made you forget there was anything behind it.

“I thought maybe you might ask me,” he blurted out.

I offered him an onion ring while I considered. There was a lot to consider all of a sudden.

“Why do you want me to ask you instead of Portia?”

“I don’t know. She’s just kind of loud. She’s always talking about people. I know she’s your friend and all, but . . .” He let the sentence hang, looking completely uncomfortable, and shoved the onion ring in his mouth.

“She is pretty loud,” I agreed with a smile. He smiled back, a half grin that made his baby face cute and crooked. So he wanted a quiet girl.

“Are you going to ask me then?”

“I don’t know.” I leaned forward and let my hair fall in my face. “I think I need to see you dance first.”

“What? Right here?” He seemed confused.

Okay—a quiet, simple girl. I offered him another onion ring and watched his face light up. He liked being fed. The list of characteristics grew. And just like that, Tommy Kinakis’s girlfriend started to form.



For our first date, we went to see No Country for Old Men. He picked me up in a gigantic truck that he clearly worshipped. He pointed out the new seat covers, the sound system, and even showed me how he’d built a secret cubbyhole in the driver’s side door that held a flask of whiskey, which he tipped my way in the theater’s parking lot. I declined. We shared a monster-size popcorn during the movie although it was gone before I’d had more than a few bites; I was too engrossed in the performances.

“I love the Coen brothers,” I sighed on the way home.

“Was one of them the hit man?” Tommy asked. “He was awesome.”

We didn’t talk again until he pulled into my driveway and then he fiddled with the radio and mumbled for me to hang on.

“For what?” I asked, but he was already out of the truck and walking around to my side.

As he opened my door he held out his hand awkwardly. I took it to jump down and would have let go if he hadn’t closed his fingers around mine and put his other hand gently on my shoulder.

“You . . . said you wanted to see me dance.”

And then it registered—the country music he’d turned up and the bashful expression on his face.

“Oh.” I flushed and dropped my gaze, thrown off balance by the gesture.

He drew my hand in to his chest and turned me in a few circles until the song ended and I backed up.

“So will I do?”

I smiled. “I think so.”

The next weekend we went to Sadie Hawkins and a postseason football party afterwards, where Tommy kissed me next to Derek’s dad’s beer fridge. Yells went up all around and after that everyone started talking about us like a couple. It even sounded right. Tommy and Hattie, high school sweethearts.

By Thanksgiving we’d established a routine. We went out on Saturday nights, and since we didn’t have any classes together—I took all advanced subjects and he was mostly on the remedial track—we only saw each other during lunches at school. I sat with him at the football table and let him eat most of my lunch while I played on my phone. On the days with chocolate chip cookies, though, he always gave me his.

Tommy obviously liked me—all I had to do was smile at him and he lit up—although it wasn’t me he liked so much as just having a girlfriend. He gave me bone-crunching squeezes whenever the other jocks corralled their girlfriends and we usually spent Saturday nights double-or triple-dating with some of them. I think he felt like he truly belonged, now that he had his own plus-one, and even though he was dumb as a box of rocks, he was still a sweetheart. I was glad I could give him that kind of acceptance from his friends.

Mom and Dad were happy, too. I think they thought having a boyfriend grounded me here, like maybe I would change my mind about New York. They invited Tommy over for Sunday dinner and he and Dad watched the football game afterwards, just like Greg and Dad used to do.