Put Me Back Together(24)

Not that it bothered me.

The girl with the blonde hair was another thing that wasn’t bothering me. Nope, not in the slightest. I certainly wasn’t thinking of her as I sat through class on Monday, avoiding looking in Lucas’s direction—which wasn’t exactly easy, seeing as he was sitting directly next to me. And I certainly wasn’t thinking about how close together they were sitting on that bench or the emotions her words had brought out in him, or the intimate way he’d touched her face. Nuh-uh, I wasn’t thinking about that at all, just like I wasn’t thinking about how, an hour before, that same hand had been caught up in my hair.

Most of all I was pretending that whole night at The Limo hadn’t even happened.

While all this pretending was going on I was also on a healthy-eating kick, which was really my biggest delusion of all. Those three days of refrigerator-emptying madness were the last straw, or so I sternly told myself, and it was time to get smart about my diet. On a snowy Wednesday evening I went to the store and stocked up on veggies, fruit, whole-wheat pasta, and quinoa and bookmarked all kinds of good-for-you recipes on my laptop. I bought a soup pot; I bought beets; I bought another box of healthy cereal.

All this lasted for about a day and a half when I realized I had a fridge full of ingredients and no idea how to cook them. The recipes all required abilities I hadn’t yet mastered and cooking implements I didn’t own. (A cheese grater? A wok? A working oven?) Also, whole-wheat pasta tasted like cardboard. In an unprecedented moment of solidarity, the cat was completely rejecting the more expensive, vet-approved, healthy cat food I’d bought him. The stony eyed glare he gave me every time I opened the bag exactly matched the look I gave all the food in my fridge whenever I opened the door.

Which is why on Friday, after my economics class, I was at a diner around the corner from campus eating a cheeseburger with extra bacon and curly fries when Mariella sat down in the seat across from me.

“That’s right,” she said, fixing me with a try-and-stop-me look, “I’m rudely interrupting your lonely lunch by sitting down in your booth. I’m one of those people who can’t eat alone, so sue me.” She set her plate of food down in front of herself and began to unfold her napkin.

“Oh, hi!” I said, trying to sound simultaneously unalarmed and delighted to see her—pretend, pretend, pretend—while also quickly glancing around for a stray child. “Where’s Ethan?”

“Ethan is at school, and then he’s staying with his grandparents,” Mariella explained as she dipped her fries in my ketchup. “Thank God! I mean, I love the kid to death, but I feel like I haven’t sat down in about four years. He’s wreaking havoc on my figure! Look at how much weight I’ve lost in the last month because I’m running after that little munchkin all day!” She pulled her sweater away from her sizeable stomach and gave me a horrified look.

Oh, Mariella. Why do you have to be so awesome?

I could feel myself giving in to her undeniable charm and for once I didn’t feel like pretending I didn’t love her. Emily was in a three-hour film class, and I was in desperate need of some conversation. And if there was one thing I could count on Mariella for, it was conversation.

“Don’t you have work?” I asked as I picked up my burger with both hands and took an enormous bite.

Mariella nodded appreciatively and clinked my burgers with hers.

“Hell, no,” she said. “By some miracle I have the day off, and you’ve caught me during my free half-hour in between doing groceries, cleaning the entire apartment, going to the dentist, baking cupcakes for the bake sale, and folding all the laundry I did this morning. Aren’t you lucky?”

I was definitely feeling pretty lucky after hearing that list.

Mariella grinned. “So I’ve got all the time in the world to ask you which boy did what to put that sad look on your face. Did he run over your kitty with his car? Or was it just your heart?”

“Nobody ran over anything,” I said, though the strain of all this pretending kind of made me feel like I had been. “I’m just worried…about an assignment…for my art history class.”

She gave me a look. “Well, that was pathetic,” she commented. “Art history class? That’s the best lie you could come up with? Make up a fight you had with your sister or something at least. Put some effort in.”

“I am in a fight with Emily, actually,” I said. Truthfully, she was acting like there was nothing wrong and I was letting her do it, our spat over her abandoning me at The Limo disappearing as though it had never occurred, like always.

“What’s his name?” Mariella said, taking a bite out of a fry with each word. “You’re crying over a guy, so just tell me his name.”

“I am not crying!” I protested.

Mariella gave me that same look again, her jaw working as she chewed. I knew she’d wait me out all day if she had to, even if it meant missing her dental appointment.

“His name is…Lucas,” I said reluctantly, giving her a sour look. “And by the way, still not crying over here.”

“Lucas!” she cried, a little louder than I would have liked. “Oh yeah, Lucas. I like it. It’s a good name. It’s very…white boy. But that’s okay. That’s all right. We all have our weaknesses, myself included, obviously. So what’d white boy Lucas do to you?”