On the Rocks(17)

“Hey, you must be Abby,” he said as I shook his impossibly small man hand.

“I am. Nice to meet you, Bobby. Grace told me a lot about you.”

“You’re a kindergarten teacher, right?” he asked, as if my profession was somehow more important than my name.

“Yup.” I realized that I was more out of practice than I’d thought. I didn’t even know how to make small talk with guys. I was screwed.

“Single?” he asked.

“Yup.”

“Interested?”

“Nope.”

“Apparently, you share the verbal communication skills of the kids that you teach,” he quipped with a laugh.

“Only when talking to people who share their maturity level,” I shot back.

Well, this was off to a stellar start.

“Abby!” Grace said as she elbowed me in my side. She turned to Bobby with a smile. “You’ll have to forgive her. Abby is now one of those people whose initial instinct is to dislike everyone she meets until they prove they don’t want to somehow ruin her life. Be nice, Abby. He doesn’t bite.”

Nice. I could do that. It had been a while since I had tried to make friends of the opposite sex. Truth be told, it had been a while since I had really spoken to members of the opposite sex. I hoped it was like riding a bicycle—which I was never particularly good at now that I thought about it.

“Sorry,” I said, and I meant it. I didn’t want him to mistake my nervousness for bitchiness, and it was a very fine line.

“Ahh. I get it. So, who’s the guy?” he asked smoothly, as if it wasn’t an entirely too personal question to ask someone he’d just met.

“What makes you think it’s a guy? How do you know that I’m not just someone who likes to know people before I’m overly friendly to them? If more girls were like me, there’d be a lot less need for pepper spray in this world.”

“It’s always a guy. Do you want to tell me about him?” Bobby asked. He seemed genuine, but I’d come here to get away from Ben and the stigma of being his jilted fiancée, not to tell everyone I met about what happened. I might as well have stamped “damaged goods” across my own forehead.

“Not really. Why do you even want to know?”

“I’m just trying to get to know you. I don’t mean to pry, but since we’ll be hanging out all summer, we might as well cut to the chase, don’t you think? What’d this guy do to make you so defensive?”

“Why do you assume we’ll be hanging out all summer?”

“How many people do you know in Newport? Including me and Grace, who’s only here part-time?” It wasn’t a question so much as a challenge, like he was saying I simply had no choice but to be his friend or be alone. Little did he know that I was quite comfortable with being alone, so it wasn’t a hard choice at all.

“Two,” I admitted, hating to concede he had a point.

“Exactly. But okay, I get it. You like to keep your life private. I can respect that.”

“Thank you.” I sighed, feeling the tension leave my shoulders.

“Eventually you’ll fill me in. I’ll be patient.”

“That’s your way of respecting my privacy?”

Before he could answer, a very tall man made his way over to our group. He gently slapped Bobby on the back and said hello, betraying a thick European accent I couldn’t place. Then again, I’d never been to Europe, and my familiarity with accents was confined to what David Beckham sounded like in fast-food commercials, so that wasn’t all that surprising. He waved to Grace and me as he energetically introduced himself.

“Hi there, I’m Maximillian Wolfgang, but everyone calls me Wolf. It’s so nice to meet you guys.”

“Your name is Wolf?” I asked as I stared up at him. He was probably six-five, and standing next to Bobby, he looked like André the Giant. Thank God he was friendly because otherwise I’d have been terrified of him.

“Yah, I know it sounds a little strange, but it’s a common name where I’m from.”

“I’m Abby,” I said as I found myself relaxing a bit after Bobby’s forward introduction. I liked Wolf. I already could tell he would never probe into a girl’s personal life within a minute of meeting her. Kind of sad that that’s how low the bar was to impress me.

“So, Wolf, where are you from?” I asked, feeling comfortable talking to a guy for the first time in a long time.

“Munich, but I’ve been living here for about a year now. My dream is to one day get my citizenship and be proud to be an American,” he said, excited, the way I sound if I find a pair of boots on sale or read something scandalous in one of the gossip rags.

My priorities are apparently very screwed up.

“That’s great, congrats. I’ve actually never been to Germany,” I admitted, without confessing that I’d never even left the continental United States.

“Oh really? You should definitely go, it’s a ton of fun. I go back to the tents at Oktoberfest every year. You should check that out at some point! People get super-drunk, but it’s one of the best weekends in Europe, and all the girls wear dirndls. I’m sure you’d love it.”

“What’s a dirndl?” I asked, not entirely sure I wanted to hear the answer. Then again, Ben had said he wanted to travel, so maybe it wouldn’t kill me to learn a few things about foreign cultures, just to give Ben another reason to wish he’d never broken up with me.