Tweet Cute(65)

Ugh. The taste of her Midterm Moon Pies from before the baking ban are still so fresh in my mind, I can’t even lie to myself about it.

“I’m not in a funk.”

“You are. Did uptown funk you up?”

“Mom.”

She nudges my shoulder with hers, which is no easy feat, seeing that Ethan and I dwarf her now.

“C’mon. Is it school?”

“No.”

“Dive team?”

“No.”

“Those big, scary college admissions interviews?”

I roll my eyes. “Definitely not.”

She hums in agreement. “You’re already locked and loaded after college, anyway. Who needs those stupid brand-name schools?” she asks, as if she didn’t go to Stanford.

I can tell she’s trying to be a Cool Mom, trying to take the pressure off me, but if anything, it makes it worse. It’s enough of a shift that, for the first time since I left Pepper on the pool deck, she and stupid Landon are not the most aggressive things on my mind.

“Do you ever regret that?” I ask.

I’ve caught her off guard. “Regret what?”

“Going to school. The big brand-name kind. And then ending up here.”

“I didn’t end up here, kiddo. I chose to be here.”

“But if you hadn’t met Dad…”

I’m expecting her to be defensive. In all the times I imagined asking her about this, it never ended well. But instead, she smiles and tilts her head at me.

“I’d probably be working at some law firm here or in DC or some other big city, married to some other guy, with completely different kids.”

I blink at her. “Oh.”

She leans forward into the register, musing so casually, I might have asked her if she thinks it’s going to rain tomorrow. “I knew that then, and I know it now. That’s the thing, though—I love your father. I love this deli. And you two punks, even if your antics have probably taken a dozen years off my life.” She puts a hand on my back. “I knew I’d never regret it. And you know what?”

I raise my eyebrows at her. “What?”

“I was right.”

I should choose my next words carefully, but I’ve never been very good at that. “Even though it made Gran and Gramps mad?”

She clearly already knew this question was coming because she doesn’t flinch. “They came around. It was my life, not theirs. I knew what I wanted. And that’s lucky enough by itself—not a lot of people do.”

I open my mouth and almost say it right then: I don’t want this. But the problem is I do, and I don’t, and my feelings are still way too tangled for me to be able to say I don’t want to spend my whole future in this place when I also can’t imagine a future without it. It’s dumb, but I wish for a stupid, childish second I could just stay like this forever, with Mom and Dad running things so I can still love this place without feeling responsible for it. So I can still let it define me without letting it own me.

But then another swell of customers comes in five minutes to close, and we’re all back in a flurry, the conversation over and the strudel long forgotten.





Jack


Later that night, I’m sitting on the couch with Ethan, both of us on our laptops. The fight we were in about the Twitter picture kind of ended by default, the way they always just seem to have expiration dates more than resolutions—when you’re packed in quarters as close as ours and working together in a deli, staying mad at each other is just plain impractical.

A ping comes in from Weazel.

Bluebird

So. We still on for tomorrow?

I can’t decide if whatever is churning in my stomach is relief or dread. Ever since this afternoon I’ve avoided getting on Weazel, even thinking about it. Usually I make a few sweeps during the day to make sure everything is kosher and to deal with any suspicious behavior the safeties in the app have flagged, but after that whole Pepper and Landon thing, I just want to wash my hands of it.

It’s just—I don’t know. It seemed like maybe we were having a moment. Like maybe we’d had a bunch of them, and they all kind of snuck up on me until they were right in front of my face, until she was popping out of the water with that full-wattage, ridiculous smile that made it feel like my blood changed its composition in my veins.

And weirdly, throughout this whole thing, Pepper and I have been … well, friends seems like a stupid word now. Like that doesn’t quite cover it. I’ve told her things I’ve never said to Paul, not even to Ethan—heck, not even to Bluebird, who until now was the only person I could come close to saying anything honest to. Close enough I can still practically see her texts to me about Ethan the other night like my brain has screenshotted them—close enough that she managed to call me out for things I haven’t fully understood myself.

She accused me of hiding. One straw short of accusing me of self-sabotaging. Well, then, this is the icing on the cake—I made this stupid app, and now this stupid app is the reason Landon and Pepper are going to ride off into the sunset.

I turn back to Weazel, to this weird beast of mine. I’ve never once regretted making it. With the exception of people occasionally being dicks the way dicks are prone to be, it’s helped set up study groups, and given people a place to vent, and accidentally started friendships—relationships, even. Gina and Mel. Pepper and Landon.