The Romantics(40)

Perhaps he should have tried a better opener.

“Sorry, I was just excited,” he said.

Piper crossed her arms. “I’m trying to learn things. Do you have to talk?”

Sammy looked down at Piper. “If you want quiet space, you know you can always go into the living room,” she said.

Piper humphed and stayed put.

“And?” Sammy asked.

Gael winced. “I gotta say, it was kind of contrived.”

She laughed loudly. “So you were just eager to tell me that I have terrible taste in movies?” She leaned back in her chair at the dining room table, folded her hands in her lap. Gael pulled a seat out for himself and joined her.

“I didn’t say it was bad,” Gael argued. “But why wouldn’t they have gotten together in all those years? It makes no sense. Obviously just a way to draw the movie out.”

“But the dialogue!” Sammy exclaimed. “Nora Ephron’s writing is so smart!”

“The whole let’s take forever to be together thing just really got me,” he said.

Sammy rolled her eyes. “But that’s the point! Sometimes the right people are always getting the timing wrong.”

Piper looked up: “Yeah, sometimes people don’t even realize they like each other.”

(Here here, Piper!)

Gael ignored her. “I thought you said that timing was everything, that sometimes it just doesn’t work out,” he chided Sammy.

She crossed her arms. “Well, I guess sometimes it actually does. Anyway,” she said. “I may have skipped my French reading to stay up and watch Eternal Sunshine.”

“Did you like it?” Gael asked.

Sammy took a deep breath. She pressed her lips together, suddenly serious. “I’m sorry I ever doubted you, Gael Brennan.”

Gael burst into a grin. “Isn’t it amazing?”

“The scene with the rain in the living room. And when they break into the house. And when he’s a little boy again. And Clementine’s amazing one-liners.” She stopped for breath. “I never should have underestimated it.”

Gael shrugged. “What can I say? I have good taste.”

Sammy ran her fingers through her hair. “Totally. And I’m supposed to watch Being John Malkovich next?”

Gael nodded. “You have to. And report back.”

That’s when his mom walked in the door.

“Mom!” Piper called, rushing up to her before she could so much as put her purse down. “You have to hear everything I learned about Marie Antoinette!”

His mom leaned down and gave Piper a kiss on the cheek and then stood up, gazing at Gael and Sammy with a funny look in her eyes.

Sammy scooted out of her chair and stood up. “I guess I should be going. Gael, weren’t you going to show me that thing outside?”

“Huh?” Gael said.

Sammy raised her eyebrows.

“Oh,” he said, standing up quickly. “Yeah. That thing.”

Both his mom and Piper sported matching smirks, but Gael ignored them.

He followed Sammy out the door, taking in her oversize button-down, shorts over tights, what looked like a backpack from her dad’s college days, and lace-up red boots. Anika would be horrified by how little her clothes matched. Cara would probably wonder why anyone would wear shoes less comfortable than Birks. And yet, for Sammy, it worked somehow.

Gael shut the front door behind them, and Sammy turned around to face him.

It was almost dark, the sun setting, turning the sky a purple color that matched Sammy’s eye shadow.

She tugged at the bottom of her shorts with one hand, then looked up at him. “Sorry for being awkward.” She laughed. “I just wanted to talk to you without the whole Brennan brigade in tow.”

Gael hesitated, wondering what she was going to say.

“I guess I just still felt a little weird for lying to you about John. I don’t want you to think I’m some freak who can’t face reality or something.”

Gael shook his head quickly. “I didn’t. At all. And if anyone can’t face reality, it’s me. You saw me the week after Anika dumped me.”

“Well, it’s been a little longer for me,” she said playfully. Then she averted her eyes to a point about five inches to the left of Gael’s head. “But anyway, as long as you don’t think I’m insane, I was wondering if you maybe wanted to see the new Wes Anderson this weekend? I know I already teased you about him, but A, as you may have guessed, I kind of like to go against the grain with pop culture, and B, well, I do owe you something in your genre of choice, even if the genre is whimsical male fantasies . . .”

(Sammy’s eyes being on that point five inches to the left of Gael’s head, a tiny chip in the exterior paint, to be exact, she couldn’t see the progression of Gael’s emotions as I could. She couldn’t see the way his eyes lit up when she started to ask him to hang out, and the way they instantly clouded when she said Wes Anderson. Instead, by the time she did venture a look, she only saw the sour expression of someone conflicted.)

“I mean, you don’t have to, really. I’d probably hate the movie, anyway,” she said, trying to save face.

“No,” he said. “It’s not that I don’t want to . . . it’s just that I already asked Cara if she wanted to go see it with me on Friday.”