Afterparty(47)

Dylan: Griddle at 7

Me: Junior assembly vs pancakes?

Dylan: Say pancakes

Siobhan: Do it.

Me: wtf?

Siobhan: Don’t be a baby.

Me: What did you just do?

Siobhan: Whatever do u mean my pretty?

Me: Do you know what just happened?

Siobhan: He called me up to rant before his nanny took the phone away. That’s what.

Me: Not enlightening.

Siobhan: So I told him you and French face were over. No reason one of us shouldn’t get some use out of him.

Me: You told him to take me to the Griddle! You told him I went after Jean-Luc with a machete! Does Kahane think I flew to Kampala and cut out the guy’s liver?

Siobhan: OK Jean-Luc is doing some kind of medical shit in Uganda. And I said if I wasn’t geeky enough for him he should buy you pancakes.

Me:!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Siobhan: He’s just a check mark not a row of exclamations.

It is difficult to hate her for long.

Griddle.

Tomorrow.

Seven.





CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO


IT’S 7:05 AND I’M WALKING toward the griddle. My car is parked in the lot behind Rite Aid on Fairfax, and I’m walking along, sucking on Tic Tacs. I am counting the squares in the sidewalk between the corner and the restaurant. I am attempting to calm down.

Dylan is sitting at an outside table, facing west. I’m walking toward him from behind. I have half a block to change my mind as long as he doesn’t turn around.

Although my mind has been made up since that first minimalist semi-smile.

I get to the table, and I lean down to him because apparently I’m incapable of seeing him without starting a slow descent into his arms. He turns to me, resting his hands on my shoulders. I smell his shampoo. Almonds.

“You came,” he says.

“You wanted me to, right?” In the spirit of not crawling into his lap and moaning Take me! which I’m pretty sure boys don’t find that appealing.

He says, “Friends?”

There is something open-ended and inviting there, in that long, single syllable that suggests maybe something more than friends. And I’m thinking, take it. Even if he was your best friend’s boyfriend five minutes ago; even if she tossed him to you four minutes ago; even if he doesn’t know the first true thing about you: Take it.

I say, “Of course, friends.”

“Apologies for yesterday. Making fun of your breakup with that Canadian guy? F in commiseration.”

I say, “French,” completely without thinking. As if my not-thinking default position now is lying. And I think, He is being so nice, he is comforting me for something that never happened. This is bad.

“You’re not heading off to drink poison, are you, Jules?”

I say, “I’m fine! It was nothing.” God, he has no idea how much nothing. “Listen, Dylan—”

A waiter drops a pot of coffee on the table, takes our order, and disappears into the restaurant.

I say, “I’m sorry. This is nine ways complicated. You and Siobhan and the whole thing about the French guy—”

And I swear, I am absolutely on the verge of explaining that Jean-Luc never existed. I am sipping my coffee and trying to pull sentences out of the air that are true that I can nevertheless bear to say out loud to him, when he reaches across the table, and he puts his index finger to my lips, and he says, “I don’t need explanations. I’ve got a handle on it. I know you don’t ever fool around except when Gart fell in your hair—”

“I did not fool around with Gart!”

He says, “I know. And I know you don’t like high school guys and I know your dad has warden-like tendencies.”

“Siobhan told you all that?”

“You overlook my powers of observation. Emma. I’ve been borrowing your notes and staring at you all year, and you never once gave a sign that you were interested. Everybody knows you go for older guys. And you don’t flirt. Not even close.”

“Maybe I just didn’t flirt with you. Given that you were with my best friend.”

“No. I’d know. Latimer’s a cesspool of gossip. So unless you’re secretly getting it on with Siobhan, we should probably do this.”

“Don’t go casting aspersions on Siobhan! Siobhan was your girlfriend until yesterday! If not for her, we wouldn’t be together!”

“She was not my girlfriend yesterday. My new thing is, girls who go down on other guys and lie to me about it aren’t my girlfriend.”

“Don’t tell me this!”

“I’m done with the bullshit,” Dylan says. “No one who’s seeing someone else. Or in love with someone else. Or engaged to someone else. No one who’s touched my brother, is with my brother, or wants to be with my brother. Just so that’s clear.”

I say, “Completely clear.”

He tilts his head. He looks at me with the trademark intensity. He leans forward, his fingers hooked over the edge of the table. He says, “So. We’re together?”

I can hardly hold my voice together. I can hardly hold myself together.

I say, “And by ‘together,’ you mean—”

Dylan shakes his head slowly. “Come on, Seed.”