The Summer of Jordi Perez (And the Best Burger in Los Angeles)(9)

Maliah pokes me in the shoulder. “’Cause you’d look smoking and maybe this is how you find a girlfriend, finally.”

“I don’t want a girlfriend,” I say, because it’s what I always say. It feels good and consistent and right to stick to a story. After all, it’s not embarrassing not to have something you don’t even want.

The thing is, even if I wasn’t already doomed to never know love, it would still seem impossible. I don’t know how to find girls—Lyndsey is proof of that—and I don’t know how, if I managed to, one of them would be even interested in me, and then even if all of that magically happened, I don’t really know what it would be like. Watching Maliah with Trevor is a little like watching my best friend but also a little like spying on a stranger.

“My dad’s on his way home,” Trevor yells. “Everyone clear out.”

“Can you give me a ride?” I ask Maliah as I chug the last of my beer.

Trevor pops up next to us and slings his arm around Maliah’s shoulders. “‘Everyone’ doesn’t mean Mal.”

“I’m sorry,” she says. “You’ll be okay, right? It’s still light out.”

“I’ll be fine,” I say, because it’s not about safety! I just wanted to hang out with my best friend. “What are you doing tomorrow? I don’t work on Tuesdays or Thursdays.”

“Maybe Thursday, then? I already have plans tomorrow.” She looks so cozy wrapped up in Trevor’s bicep.

“Okay, Thursday then.” I wave and walk toward the gate.

Jax jogs up beside me. “Did I hear you need a ride?”

“I guess you did,” I say. “Which is weird because I thought you were all the way over there.”

“I have excellent hearing,” he says. “Ask doctors.”

“Which doctors?” I ask. “Any doctors?”

“Any doctors that have tested my hearing,” he says. “They’re always impressed. Come on. Where do you live?”

I barely know him, of course, but when you don’t drive, you get used to jumping in cars with friends of friends. I give Jax directions to my house and follow him out to his silver BMW. Boys from Westglen Preparatory High School always have nicer cars than my parents do. At this point, I expect it.

“So you like burgers, right?” Jax asks me.

“What? Burgers?” I shoot him a look. “Because I’m fat?”

“No! You’re not—”

“I am,” I say. “It’s fine. Being fat isn’t bad. Acting like fat’s an insult is, though.”

“Uh, okay then,” he says, though pleasantly. Of course, then he cuts off two cars as he swerves around a line of traffic backed up to turn on Riverside Drive.

“You’re terrifying,” I tell him.

“Just answer the question, Abby.”

“Yes,” I say. “Like most intelligent people, I like burgers.”

“I have to do this project,” he says. “It involves burgers. You in?”

“Am I in? To a project you haven’t explained at all? And also, I barely know you?”

“We’re like, friends-in-law,” he says with a grin. “The couple’s two best friends.”

“That’s not a thing.”

“It’s completely a thing—”

“You missed my street,” I say, and he screeches the car around in almost a U-turn. Somehow we’re both still alive as he pulls up to my home. I haven’t seen Jax’s house—I mean, why would I?—but I assume it’s like Trevor’s, tucked into hills with its own gate. Our bungalow is all but mere inches apart from the houses on either side of it. It’s the sort of difference I didn’t know was a thing for a long time, but then you’re in a BMW post-private pool party with a lacrosse player, and your house that you very recently thought was normal is actually a teeny toy home.

“Thanks for the ride,” I say. “Though it nearly killed us both.”

“That was nothing,” he says. “I’ll text you more info later.”

“I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I gotta get home,” he says. “But time will answer all questions, friend-in-law.”

“Seriously,” I say as I get out of the car. “That’s not a thing.”





CHAPTER 4


The house smells delicious when my beeping phone wakes me the next morning. By now I know not to expect breakfast in the kitchen, but a food photographer. When I tiptoe out in my pajamas, I see that I’m right.

“Look how great your mom’s burgers look,” Dad tells me. Until last year, Dad worked at a media agency, but now he’s managing all the non-Norah Eat Healthy with Norah! business, like scheduling and publicity and accounting. He used to come home and tell us funny stories about the grumpy old executive vice president he reported to. Now he reports to Mom, so even though I’m sure there are funny stories, he’s stopped sharing them.

“Sure,” I say, but for two big reasons they don’t at all. Mom’s food always sounds like a good idea, if you don’t hear the details. It’s a cheeseburger! What could go wrong? Well, first, there are no buns but fake “bread” made out of grilled mashed cauliflower. And it seems unfair to call it a cheeseburger when instead of cheese, the ground turkey meat is sprinkled with nutritional yeast.