Meet Cute(71)

“Do I look okay?” she asks, suddenly self-conscious.

Her hair is perfectly straight and she’s wearing a pair of patterned leggings, a poufy black skirt, and an off-the-shoulder shirt that shows an inch or two of midriff. I want to make her go back upstairs and change. “You look great!” I choke out. “Can I take a picture and send it to Kailyn?”

She waves me off. “I already sent her a selfie. She said I looked great, but she’s a girl and she either dresses really formal but, like, pretty, but business-y, or she wears funky jeans and shirts from your show, so I wanted to make sure.” She blows out a breath. “Can we go? I told the girls we’d be there before seven and we’re kinda cutting it close, right?” She says this like it’s my fault. I’ve been ready for the past fifteen minutes.

As soon as we’re in the car, her phone starts going off. Boys’ names flash across her screen: Clark, Liam, Jimmy.

I need to have the boy talk with my little sister. I remember being in eighth grade, not quite sure what to do with my hormones yet, or girls, but still a little interested. “What’s going on there?”

Emme flips her phone over in her lap. “Oh, nothing.”

“You have boys texting you now?”

She sighs, as if she’s annoyed. “They all want to dance with me or something. I don’t know, it’s dumb. They stand on the other side of the gym and, like, wait for us to ask ’cause they’re all too chicken or whatever.”

“I just want to make sure you know that you can say no. Boys your age aren’t very mature, and sometimes they might do things that make you uncomfortable—”

“Oh my God, Dax! You are not trying to have the sex talk with me, are you?”

“You’re too young to have sex.”

“Um, ew. I know! Look, you can save us both the awkwardness. I already know all the technical stuff from the human anatomy and health class, and Kailyn and I have already talked all about this stuff.”

“Kailyn talked to you about sex?” When the hell did that happen, and why didn’t she ever say anything about it to me?

“Not like details or anything, just, like, the basics and how it’s my body and it’s special. Or something like that. She said it a lot better.” Emme’s cheeks are flaming and her eyes are on her lap.

I guess I’ll have to thank Kailyn for having the conversation with her. “Huh” is my stellar reply.

“Anyway, you don’t have to freak out, or worry, or anything. I’m not interested in, like, dating or anything. I’ve already had my first kiss and it was gross.”

“You what?” I can almost feel hairs turning gray.

“It was at the beginning of the school year. Chris Becker asked me to go steady and I said yes even though I wasn’t so sure I liked him like that. But then he kissed me and I was like no way ’cause he tried to put his tongue in my mouth.”

I’m white knuckling the steering wheel, and I have to clear my throat before I ask the next question. “What did you do?”

“I pushed him and he fell into a mud puddle. I told him not to talk to me anymore. Boys are weird.”

“Yes they are. I hope you feel like that about them until you’re at least twenty-five.”

“We’re down from thirty, so that’s an improvement,” Emme mutters snarkily.

I have a feeling the next few years might give me an ulcer if this is just the beginning. I pull into the driveway of her friend’s house. It’s a nice place in a good neighborhood—I looked it up in advance.

There’s a flurry of activity at the front door. Emme gets dragged upstairs to get rid of her bag but her backpack stays at the front door—I’m assuming makeup and hair stuff is in there. Lord knows she checked her reflection a million times on the way here. Her friends giggle and titter near the door, and Ainsley’s mom, Adele, fawns over me in a slightly awkward way.

Ten minutes later I’m in a car with four very loud girls who smell like they took a swim in a lake of cheap perfume. Emme blasts the music in the front seat and they all try to scream over it to hear each other. When the chorus comes on, they sing together completely out of tune, except Emme—her voice is eerily on key. I have no idea how teachers manage a whole class full of this.

I pull up to the school and the girls’ tittering grows louder. “Oh my God, Emme, look, Liam is waiting for you! Who’s with him? Oh! Oh! That’s Clark and Jackson and River.”

“Who the hell named these kids?” I mutter.

“Your name is Daxton,” Emme points out.

“But River? After the dead actor?”

“Who?” Emme asks. When I open my mouth to explain, she waves her hand around. “It doesn’t matter. Okay! Thanks for the ride. I’ll see you tomorrow!”

“Thanks for the ride, Mr. Hughes!” comes from the back seat as the doors open and the girls all pile out of the car.

Mr. Hughes? What the hell? The gaggle of girls meet up with the group of boys. They stand awkwardly with their hands shoved in their pockets, the girls looking over their shoulder at my car before they head into the school. I remind myself that it’s a school dance, chaperoned by teachers, and nothing bad can happen.

I call Kailyn on speakerphone to let her know I’m on the way to pick her up.