Frankly in Love (Frankly in Love, #1)(24)

Mom-n-Dad stand all smiles in the doorway, blocking me.

“Can I . . . ?” I say.

Finally they clear the way. “Okay, go,” says Mom.

I hammer downstairs and jump into Dad’s QL5, and by the time I’m backing out, Mom-n-Dad are already in position to wave me off like I’m going out to sea.



* * *



? ? ?

I get to the Songs’ insane beach cliff house and text Joy from the car.

Standing by

Roger, says Joy.

Joy comes exploding from the giant designer cherry front door, and as she whirls once to wave bye to her parents, I see her hair flash green in the blue light of dusk. She slams into the car.

“My dad used to have one of these,” says Joy, glancing around at the faded interior. She smells like rose, like an actual rose.

My heart is pounding. I can tell from a single pulsing sinew in her neck that hers is, too.

“Let’s do this,” I say with a grin.

As we drive away, I can see Joy’s parents waving and waving until we are out of sight.

“Do you know what my parents actually said just now?” says Joy.

“What?” I say, taking a turn a little too fast. The thrill of the caper is slowly ebbing to make way for another thrill waiting in the wings: Brit and I sitting close, dreaming together of love on a big screen.

“They said, ‘Don’t wake us up when you get home.’ Can you believe that? They basically just said I could stay out as late as I want.”

I nod and nod at her in happy disbelief. “My dad gave me his friggin’ car.”

“I bet we could go out every single night and they wouldn’t care,” says Joy with wonder.

“Dude,” I say, and highfive her.

“Whoa whoa whoa,” says Joy. “Got a visual on the package.”

We’re approaching her movie theater. In the distance stands Wu, the aforementioned package, before a Titanfist 3 poster, trying to imitate the crouched fighting stance of the twenty-story-tall robot depicted there. But he’s not satisfied with his pose, so he shakes it off and tries again.

“Go, go,” I say.

Joy releases her seat belt. “So don’t worry about getting me home, okay? Wu’ll give me a ride. He’ll insist.”

I imagine Wu pulling up to Joy’s doorstep, to the confusion of her parents. “But—”

Joy preempts my concern. “I always have him drop me off at the wrong house a couple doors down. It’s worked out so far.”

“Damn,” I say. “Poor Wu.”

“You mean poor Wu if he ever met my parents,” she says, and slams the door. She calls through the glass: “Go do you.”

“You too.”

And I’m off again.

Alone in the car, I take a deep breath, hold it for a second, and feel a calm silence seep into my mind. The handoff is complete; all that’s left to do is get Brit and enjoy the evening.

I let myself sink into the cracked leather seat. I roll down all the windows. I dangle an arm to catch scoops of dewy air outside, and my hand becomes the rudder of a boat cutting through a perfect sheet of water.

Brit’s house looks different during the day. There are jewel-colored succulents dotting a gravel yard like little sculptures; didn’t notice those the night of our calculus assignment. There is a mermaid carved from driftwood hanging over the front door. It looks historical and beloved. And the door itself, painted red—it looked brown that other night—has a small silver knocker the shape of a dog’s butt.

I can’t help but compare it with my house: a low-snouted cookie-cutter ranch house with a blank green lawn in front, all practical. My parents work too much to carve mermaids for the threshold. But they must be working toward that kind of stuff, right? Toward that time in life when the hustle eases up, the body relaxes, and the mind begins to contemplate the ideal door knocker.

Otherwise what is the point?

The dog butt jiggles. The door opens to reveal Brit.

“Dog butt,” I say, pointing.

“You like that, huh,” says Brit.

She’s changed clothes too, and now wears a tank top with a battleship bearing a bar code on its hull, with the caption LET’S SCANDINAVIAN.

“I love that shirt so hard,” I say.

She draws a hand down my chest to examine my shirt and says, “I love yours, too.”

Then something occurs to her. “I forgot my sweater. The movies are always so freezing. Come in and say hi.”

She runs upstairs and suddenly I’m in her house again, alone for the moment. I scan in all the details I can: a bouquet of old blueprints rolled up in a tall vintage milk can, a framed French movie poster the size of a bedsheet, a photo of Brit when she was little, tumbling around with her parents in a colorful ball pit. Everything in the room holds intent and emotion and significance.

I think again how different things are in my house. Mom collects chicken-shaped ceramics for no real reason, the cheaper the better. Dad likes souvenir hooks. Any kind of hook from anywhere, the cheaper the better: Hermosa Beach, Los Angeles Airport, Scotty’s Castle.

My parents’ house feels like it’s constantly on the way toward something. Brit’s parents’ house feels like it arrived there a while ago.

“We meet again,” says a voice, and it’s Brit’s dad, approaching in a gray hoodie.