Kissing Ted Callahan (and Other Guys)(22)

Milo laughs, and I know I haven’t convinced him. It’s fine; I don’t need a frigging tuba player to back my music opinions.

“What kind do you want?” Milo asks me, stepping up to order.

“Two bean and cheese.” I don’t love the thing where because Milo’s a guy he’s supposed to pay, so I get a five out of my purse and hand it to him. He doesn’t act like that’s odd, so points gained for Milo.

We take our food and strawberry lemonades to the nearby picnic tables and, thanks to the crowd, end up sitting side by side.

“So what’s your band like?” Milo asks me.

“Kind of sixties garage pop is the best description, I guess,” I say. “I don’t always like saying who we’re like, since I hope we’re our own thing? But when I do, like, Smith Westerns, Best Coast, maybe, like, Rilo Kiley before they sold out.” I reach into my bag and take out one of our buttons from the Ziploc baggie that’s always with me. “This is us, if you want to go to our website; we have some demos and stuff.”

“Cool,” he says, examining the button and putting it into his pocket. “You guys need a tuba?”

“Not so much.” I take a sip of my lemonade. “Why did you get started playing the tuba anyway?”

“Some guy came to our school when I was in fifth grade or whatever with all these instruments and talked them up, and I thought the tuba was the shit. And I just kept playing. I’m good at it, so…” He laughs and shrugs.

“Is your band marching?” I ask.

“Yeah, I’m in marching band, and I’m in orchestra, too.”

“Do you want to, like, play professional tuba someday?”

“I don’t know.” He takes a few huge bites of pupusa, which is liberally drenched in salsa. “I’m not really thinking ahead to that point yet. My teacher wants me to apply to Juilliard and all.”

“Seriously? You’re all blasé about applying to Juilliard?”

“I don’t think we should be making life decisions now,” he says.

I shrug. “Unless you know. I totally know what I want to do with my life.”

“Be a drummer?”

“Be a rock star,” I say. “I mean—you know, be in a band, be a serious musician, whatever.”

“You mean be a rock star,” he says with a huge grin.

I decide he isn’t patronizing me, and grin back.

“You ready to go sample some fruit?”

“No, hang on, I’m still eating,” I say with a nod to my paper plate.

“Are you going to the Vanderbilts show on Tuesday?” he asks.

“It’s not an all-ages show,” I say, my least favorite sentence about concerts, ever. Right before There’s a Ticketmaster charge. “Are you secretly twenty-one?”

“No, but I have ID that says I am.” He looks at me like I’m an idiot. “You’re this into music and you don’t have an ID? We have to take care of that,” he says. “You miss out on way too much otherwise.”

“I KNOW!” I say more loudly than necessary. Take it easy, Riley. “I’m always missing amazing shows.”

“I know a guy,” he says, which I love, because isn’t that always how shady stuff goes down. “We’ll take care of it.”

“OH MY GOD!” My volume is turned up way too loud again. “In time to see the Vanderbilts on Tuesday?”

“Yeah, we’ll make it happen.”

After I finish my lunch, we toss our trash and wander around the tiny farmers’ market, sampling strawberries, plums, peaches, and passion fruit, before heading down Glendale Boulevard to Jacknife Records.

“Whoa,” Milo says when we’re prowling around Jacknife. “Check it out.”

It’s a copy of the Sandwiches album. “You’d better get it before another person moves faster than you do.”

“Then I guess I’ll have no reason to talk to you again,” he says with a grin. It’s such a good grin.

“I guess not,” I say. “It’s all I have to offer to the world.”


He buys the CD and texts the guy who apparently has the fate of my seeing the Vanderbilts in his hands. And we get coffee—well, chai—at Kaldi, and I find out we have seemingly countless favorite bands in common. Milo tells me about the time he met Kim Deal of the Breeders and the Pixies at a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. I tell him about the time I tripped down the sidewalk because Dee Dee Penny of Dum Dum Girls walked by, but it’s not nearly as good a story, and we both know it.

And hopefully I’m not being unfair to Ted—or Garrick—to think that this is actually how a rock star should fall in love.





CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE



The Sad Animal Project, Continued, by Reid


I stop by Paws again, but it seems okay and not like I’m a stalker because the dad-type guy says something about how people always want to hang out with their dogs once they’ve picked them. Also it’s really late, almost time for them to close, and I act distracted like I don’t know what time it is. Jane giggles like it’s cute that I didn’t know. So I hang around until they have to close up, and I guess when her boss is there I can’t help her, so I tell her I can wait for her if she wants.