Tweet Cute(75)

She pulls out her phone to text me, and I let out a loud whistle, raising my hand to get her attention. Her head snaps up, and her face bursts into this wide, blinding kind of grin, the same one that nearly knocked the air out of me when she jumped off the high dive for the first time.

“Hi,” she says, running up to me. And then we’re hugging, because I guess that’s just a thing we do now, and it’s great and it’s awkward, but it’s terrible because as soon as it happens, I don’t want to let her go.

“You did it!” I say, at the same time she says, “You’re here.”

I shrug, glad it’s cold enough now that my cheeks are already red from the wind. “I figured I’d give you a quick walking tour of the ’hood.”

It’s strange, seeing her in her everyday clothes instead of her uniform or her swimsuit. I mean, I guess I did on Friday, but the upchucking distracted from it pretty fast. We’re both in jeans and coats, her hair tucked up into a bun with loose ends all sticking out of it, and the whole thing is just so relaxed and normal, it’s like the usual thirty seconds or so it takes for us to fall into a groove together just falls away.

She sticks close to me on the short walk to the deli, close enough our hands brush a few times, and I have to fight the impulse to take it. It’s weird—unlike Ethan, I’ve never actually dated anyone beyond the occasional awkward kiss with girls in our class at school dances. I always thought the motions of it would be so strange, like something that had to be learned and practiced. But it’s the opposite of that—it would be too easy to grab her hand, to reach up and tuck her bangs behind her ear, to stop and stare at her and see if that moment from the pool was just a moment or something that led to a much bigger one.

I show her the ice cream shop, the little bookstore, the food cart where I sometimes get coffee even though it drives my dad nuts.

“You’re so popular,” Pepper notes, when the third person waves at me from behind a window or a cash register.

“Hah. No. They’re all just scarred for life from me and Ethan running buck wild around this block as kids.”

“I bet you guys were cute.”

“Yeah, it’s a shame what’s happened since.”

She ribs me, just as Annie, the bookshop owner, pokes her head out and says so loudly half the street can hear, “Jack Campbell, are you on a date?”

I freeze in my tracks, hoping lightning will miraculously strike me down where I stand.

“Let me guess,” says Pepper, without missing a beat. “You bring all the girls to the deli.”

Annie’s grin is merciless. “He woos them with ham slices.”

“Hey!” I protest, finally finding my voice. “I’m so clearly a cheese guy! I’m offended.”

“And I’m intrigued. Come into the store on date two, and I’ll tell you all the embarrassing stories about baby Jack you want to know.”

Pepper laughs, and I’m expecting it to be one of those self-conscious laughs she muffles with her wrist, the kind that ends with, Oh, this isn’t a date. Because it’s not, really. It’s just some pseudo-flirty, post–Twitter war, pre-baking thing I’m not sure how to—

“I’ll swap you for the embarrassing dive team ones,” Pepper promises.

Annie’s eyebrows shoot up. “Ooh, I like her.”

“C’mon, c’mon,” I mutter through a smile, hooking my elbow with Pepper’s and dragging her away as she waves goodbye to Annie.

The deli’s in full Sunday afternoon swing when we arrive, the line not quite out the door but only because people have packed themselves inside to avoid the November cold. The woman who always comes in with her five grandkids waves at me, one of the line cooks who’s on her break tweaks my shoulder when she walks by, an NYU professor who comes in from time to time nods from his coffee cup and turns his attention back to some book about seafaring.

Pepper stops just out of the doorway, staring with an inscrutable look on her face. It didn’t occur to me until this moment to be self-conscious about showing her this place. I’ve never had to give the grand tour of it to someone whose opinion actually matters, because the people who are close to me have known this place as long as or longer than I have.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Then she shakes her head to retract it. “It just reminds me of … well, the first Big League Burger.”

“Oh my god. Are you Patricia?”

A moony-eyed middle schooler has approached, a group of her friends lagging about a foot behind her. They’re all so pint-sized that Pepper and I tower over them, and I have an unfamiliar shift of feeling like—well, like an adult.

“Um, yeah?” says Pepper.

The girl’s face lights up like a Christmas tree. “From the Big League Burger Twitter!”

“No way!” one of her friends crows. They’re looking at me now. “You guys are dating?”

“Would you sign my backpack?”

“Let’s get a picture!”

Pepper and I exchange mutual looks of red-faced bafflement, but end up submitting to the overexcited whims of our apparent fan club. We pose for a picture with them, and sign one of their cell phone cases, and by the time they’re done, my mom is staring at us from her perch behind the counter with an eyebrow cocked like she’s just waiting to make fun of us.