The Way You Make Me Feel(29)
“Rose. Seriously, are you all right? Sit down.” I took her arm and pulled her over to the driver’s seat.
I crouched down by her and just watched her, unsure of what to do. She seemed seriously freaked out, and I knew friend duty involved making her feel better, but how? I was about to tell some terrible joke when she looked up at me.
“I’m fine,” she said, sounding embarrassed.
“Are you sure?”
She nodded. I wasn’t sure if she wanted to talk about it, but it seemed like we should. I filled a cup with water and ice and handed it to her. “What do you have to do tonight?”
She took a sip before answering. “Thanks. And it’s not a big deal.” Which was literally the opposite of what she had said to her mom.
“You seemed upset.” Understatement of the year.
Again, she didn’t answer right away, and I picked at a spot of dried sauce on the counter. After some silence, she said, “Well, it’s that we’re going to have a senator over for dinner.”
“What!”
“It’s really not a big deal. She’s friends with my dad and might write a letter of recommendation for me. I just, I didn’t know I had to have dinner with her tonight.” Rose picked at her nails again.
“Oh. I mean, for me, having dinner with a senator would be a big deal, but small potatoes when you’re a Carver, I guess,” I said.
She scoffed. “It’s not small potatoes. I have to impress her tonight is all.” Her voice was raised now. “This letter of recommendation is for an internship in the governor’s office next summer! Only the most important internship of my freaking life!” She got up and paced back and forth in the truck, fanning herself off with her hand. “And I’m about to get home and have about five minutes to get this nasty grease smell off of me and be prepared to be informally interviewed!”
I glanced at the clock in the truck. “Well, how about I drive you home instead of to the commissary? I can handle closing up alone today. That should buy you some time?”
Rose stopped pacing. “Really?”
“Yeah. This sounds like a ridiculous dinner, but important nonetheless.”
She laughed. “Nonetheless, huh? And you have the nerve to call me a dork?”
I started the truck. “All right, all right. Buckle up. We’re about to weave through the 110, baby.”
She opened the window and cleared her throat. “And thanks. I really appreciate it.”
I raised the volume on the radio. “What?!” I shouted.
She shook her head.
“TELL ME WHAT YOU SAID RIGHT NOW! LIKE SHOUT IT!”
“YOU ARE SUCH A LOSER!” she shouted back as we hit the road.
CHAPTER 14
On Saturday, my dad handed me a plate of eggs Benedict drizzled with a sriracha hollandaise sauce. “So, I have some last-minute plans. I’m going out of town. Do you think you can handle the truck all weekend?”
I shoved a forkful of runny yolk and English muffin into my mouth. “Sure. Wait, you’re leaving today?”
“Yup.” He glanced at the clock. “In like, an hour in fact.”
“Where are you going?” I asked as I added more sriracha to my eggs.
My dad plopped down on the stool next to me with his own plate of eggs. “Santa Barbara. Wine tasting.”
I almost choked. “What? Who are you? Diane Keaton?”
“Yeah, I’m Diane Keaton. Surprise.”
“Wait a second.” I looked at him suspiciously. “Who are you going with?”
He cut his egg in half, the yolk oozing out onto the wilted kale and muffin. A giant forkful of egg went into his mouth, and he didn’t answer.
“Pai!”
Many seconds later, he took a gulp of coffee and looked at me. “I’m going with Kody.”
My brain quickly flipped through the Rolodex o’ women from my dad’s life until it stilled on one. “Kody the…?”
“The drummer.”
Kody was a Filipino American babe with a Patti Smith haircut and a raspy smoker’s voice. My dad had dated her a couple of years ago, though, so I was confused. “Kody the drummer? Didn’t you guys break up?”
He expertly cut the rest of his eggs, crisscrossing his slices so that each piece was perfectly bite-size. “Yeah. But we grabbed coffee last week and…” He shrugged. “You know how it goes.”
“No, I don’t. I’m a child.”
A snort of laughter sent a piece of egg flying across the counter at me. I swiped it off my forearm. “Gross! If all these women only knew how disgusting you are at home.”
I said “all these women” because, well, my dad had all these women. Which I understood—he was thirty-four and not hideous. I never made a big stink about it. Even so, he tried not to introduce me to too many girlfriends. “Don’t want you to get attached,” he always said. I think he might have learned that from watching sitcoms about single dads or something. The only thing that annoyed me was when he made jokes about being a hot commodity at PTA meetings. You’d think he was Don Draper waltzing into classrooms full of harried mothers desperately feeding him baked goods. And in what universe did he go to PTA meetings? Please.
My dad shifted uncomfortably on his stool. “Well, to be honest. I’ve been seeing Kody for a couple of months now.”