Kissing Ted Callahan (and Other Guys)(18)

“Still! I could never do that. I am not That Guy.”

“No one said you were.”

“If I were That Guy…” Reid shakes his head. “Everything would be different.”

“Okay,” I say because Reid is making this all about him, and I do not like it. “Anyway—”

“Like, how did he do it?” He grabs my hand and scrutinizes the ink that lightened but didn’t disappear in the shower this morning. A scientific person might hypothesize I covered it with a shower cap, but luckily Reid is, in addition to not being That Guy, not a man of science.

“I literally just told you how he did it.” I wait for him to ask if I’m going to call him, if I’m interested, if I safely wrote the number down already, how it made me feel to have That Guy show me he’s interested.

“I would already be going out with Jane if I was That Guy,” he says.

“Maybe Jane’s not into That Guy.” I’m not sure I’m into That Guy, after all.

“No, every girl’s into That Guy,” he says, as if he speaks for all of womankind.

“What guy?” Lucy walks up to us like she’s been part of the conversation all along.

“I have to go,” I say, even though Reid and I are walking to the same place. I walk past Garrick, but I don’t know what to say thanks to Sydney Jacobs, so I just fake a smile and keep moving.

“Hey.” Reid catches up with me. “What’s up?”

“You devoted, like, a fifth of the pages in the Passenger Manifest to one interaction with Jane,” I say. “And you can’t even pretend you’re interested in this?”

It’s a way more honest thing than I planned on saying.

“Shit,” he says.

It makes me giggle because Reid hardly ever curses.

“Sorry,” he says.

“No, it’s okay. Do you think I should call him?”

“Yes,” he says, with conviction.

“Really?”

“Ri, yes. Even if he’s the worst person ever, you get to call That Guy.”

He’s right, and I know it, so after a respectable wait after school (two hours and twenty-seven minutes) I call.

“Hello.”

“Hi, is this Milo?” It’s kind of a dumb question because I can tell it’s him and also who else would it be?

“Yeah, who’s this?”

“This is, um…” And if you’re going to stumble over anything, really, your own name? “Riley. We met yesterday at—”

“Giving up that album that easy?”

“No way,” I say really quickly.

“I didn’t peg you as a girl who would hand over an awesome album. So, you maybe want to hang out sometime?” he asks.

I try to think of a subtle way to ask how old he is.

“Maybe,” I say, stalling. Also because it’s true. Maybe I do, maybe I don’t. Crap, I sound like the Riddler. Only in my head, but that is bad enough. “How old are you?”

That is the least subtle way possible.

“Eighteen,” he says. “You?”

“Sixteen and a half,” I say, because totally mature people still use halves.

WHY DID I SAY THAT?

“Okay then,” he says.

“You can laugh,” I say. “That was weird.”

“We should hang out,” he says. “What are you doing Thursday?”

“Band practice,” I say. “Friday?”

“Band practice,” he says, and my heart blossoms into ten million vases of the most beautiful daisies. “What do you play?”

“Drums.” I picture us loading up our music-playing babies into an old VW bus and touring the country like the Partridge Family, which I definitely don’t watch on TV Land whenever it runs, no way, not me.

“Yeahhh,” he says, like an endorsement.

I decide it can only mean that he too had flashes of 1970s musical-family togetherness.

“What about you?”

“Tuba.”

What is he talking about? “What?” The idea refuses to gel in my head.

“Marching band practice,” he says.

“Oh.” I try my best not to say it like a beloved family member just kicked the bucket.

“Marching band’s cool,” he says. “C’mon. The tuba is awesome.”

I laugh before I can stop myself. Milo, don’t think I’m a jerk! It’s just that you look way more like a guitar than a tuba!

“You just have no idea,” he says.

I can tell through his voice that he’s smiling, so I guess he doesn’t mind that I laughed. “How about I call you on Saturday, see how the weekend looks. Cool?”

“Yup,” I say, which means we’ve spoken twice, and I’ve yupped twice. Guh-reat.

But it’s not like Milo’s exactly as cool as he seems, either.





CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE



Reid’s Advice for Girls on How to Get Guys to Like You


Listen to good music.

Don’t be ugly.

Don’t spend a lot of time complaining publicly. It’s grating.

Flirt with me, but not too much or it’s suspicious.