Kissing Ted Callahan (and Other Guys)(42)

“Okay,” he says, “cool.”

“I want to taste Bootylicious.” I grab the lollipop out of his mouth and swap it with Passion Purple. Oh my god, wait, is this crazy? Sure, we’ve kissed several times, but maybe it’s more intimate to switch lollipops. And Ted raises his eyebrows at me like he knows it’s a little strange. Ted, I know it’s a little strange, too! I just got all caught up in the asking out and the random flavors, and also I guess I am a little strange!

“Bootylicious is better,” he says.

“Is that your professional opinion?” I ask. “As a lollipop expert? Because I totally think Passion Purple is better.”


“You don’t have to be an expert to recognize its superior quality.” Ted swaps the lollipops back. Now we’re both weird, so it feels even-grounded, and I’m pretty sure Ted did that just for my benefit.

*

Reid comes over after school because he claims he needs to talk. I need practice time, but I manage to get in some work on my hand control before Reid lets himself into the guesthouse with Peabody.

“Madison is going to break up with me,” he says.

“She isn’t.” I switch off to a more impressive technique for public consumption. Reid and Peabody count as the public. “She probably thinks you’re going to break up with her, because you’re being such a freak.”

“‘A freak’? Did she say that?”

“God, NO. Stop it, Reid. She’s pretty and popular and apparently good at crafts or at least feather arts so just ACCEPT IT.”

He stares at me for a solid minute. “What are feather arts?”

“Never mind, just, Reid, she’s into you.” My phone buzzes, again, from the floor. I grab for it and grin at the screen. Ted Callahan calling.

“Who is it?” Reid asks. LIKE HE KNOWS.

“No one,” I say. “My dad.”

Why did I say that! It is so clearly not my dad from the goofy face I’m making. But I don’t want to take a potentially romantic call with Ted right in front of Reid, so I do something tragic: I send Ted to voice mail.

“Ted was cute to me earlier,” I say, testing the topic.

“How?”

I tell him about the lollipops because this is news I want to share with someone. To be honest, the best audience for the story would be Lucy, but that isn’t an option right now.

Reid makes a face. “That seems unhygienic.”

“It’s no more unhygienic than kissing,” I say, even though that’s just a guess and not a scientific fact.

“I guess not.” Reid shrugs. “Just tell me what to do about Madison.”

“Just be happy. Can’t you do that?”

He stares at me, and I realize maybe he can’t. There’s a cool and pretty and potentially-actually-interesting girl who likes him, and he’s all caught up in disastrous possibilities instead of the awesome reality right in front of him. But even though I’ve now at least sort of dated three guys, and the whole romance world seems less foreign, I don’t know how to fix this for him. Instead I invite him to stay for dinner because it’s really the only thing within my power right now.





CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN



The Madison Thing, Continued, by Reid


Madison’s hanging out with me after school near my locker, like, almost every day, and she asks if she can come over after school and hang out.

I don’t know what to do because:





PROS:


Obviously a girl wanting to come over to your place is a good sign about sex or at least sex-related things.

Our house is pretty nice and Mom has all these impressive awards on the mantel in the living room.

Probably if she wanted to dump me she’d have no problem doing it in public or over the phone or something, so I have at least another day of dating her I figure.





CONS:


If I had known a girl was going to be in my room later, I would have cleaned it entirely, like a spring-cleaning-level cleaning, with fresh sheets and a new Glade PlugIn in my outlet.

Also obviously I would have put away some of the board games on my shelf and maybe a third of the framed animation cells Mom got me when I was younger that are still pretty freaking awesome and will be worth a lot of money someday.

Peabody’s still getting used to living in a house and occasionally has an accident. It’s not a big deal, but it doesn’t seem very romantic to walk a girl into a house where a dog just pooped.

As Riley is well aware, Mom has all these childhood photos of me littered throughout the house like I’m a saint or celebrity (of Michael, too, but the ones of me are objectively more embarrassing), and I’d like to remove at least 60 percent of them.



But I really can’t say no to Madison (seriously, I’m not sure it’s possible scientifically) so she follows me over to my house. Peabody earns extra treats because there aren’t any accidents anywhere in the house, and it turns out Madison actually really likes dogs and we head out on the longest walk I’ve ever taken with Peabody so far. We try and stop at one point that’s on kind of a secluded stretch of sidewalk to kiss, but apparently kissing makes Peabody bark so we give up on that. (Thanks a lot, Peabody.) When we get back to the house, for some reason Mom is home weirdly early but it’s cool because I’ve already told her all about Madison and she doesn’t act embarrassing, though Madison does ask a lot of questions about the worst of the pictures of me. Mom answers all the questions and she and Madison are developing, like, this witty banter thing. I haven’t been able to relax enough around Madison to develop anything like that so it’s really frustrating that my mom is so cool.