I’m going to have to do this. I’m going to have to go on another dumb date with some random guy that I probably won’t like and hope it works out anyway. I have to do it for Kalani. Plus, I’m feeling vindictive about Jay thinking I don’t put myself out there. It’s basically the same thing Kalani and Emi have been saying, and that bothers me. I’ll show him; I’ll show them all.
“Fine,” I say, “I’ll go out with Arthur since you’ve already set it up.”
Emi huffs and crosses her arms across her chest while Kalani settles in her chair, seeming smug.
“But,” I add, pointing a nacho at Kalani, “if I find out you paid him too, I’ll kill you.”
She raises her hands innocently. “I promised I wouldn’t do that. I didn’t pay him. He’s really excited about Friday.”
“Who’s Arthur?” Daphne asks as Emi leaves the table to take her shot.
“He’s in my business class. You had math with him last year, Carina,” Kalani says, resting her head on Emmett’s shoulder. I look away quickly.
“Doesn’t ring a bell,” I say, thinking back to Mr. Fulconi’s grade eleven math class. I don’t remember there being an Arthur. If he was hot, wouldn’t I know who he was? But then again, I was so obsessed with Emmett, a team of male models could have paraded naked in front of me and I still wouldn’t have noticed.
“It doesn’t matter. You’re meeting him at La Mesa for dinner Friday. He picked the restaurant; he said it’s his favorite. I hope that’s okay,” Kalani says casually, clearly not caring if it’s okay with me or not since she already set everything up.
“We’ve been there before, haven’t we, babe?” Emmett asks, wrapping his arm around Kalani. I ignore the feeling of being kicked in the stomach. He continues, “It was fantastic.”
I force a smile, getting up to take my turn bowling as Emi returns. “Then I’m sure it’ll be great,” I say.
I wish I wasn’t in love with Emmett. I wish it didn’t kill me inside every time he calls Kalani “babe.” I wish my thoughts didn’t turn to him every twenty minutes. I wish my friends didn’t think I needed to go on dates in the first place. I wish they understood that I’m happily single and don’t care if I have a prom date or not. I wish a lot of things, but most of all, I wish this date with Arthur will go well, that he’ll be nothing like Jay, and that I’ll fall in love with him so I can stop having naughty thoughts about my best friend’s boyfriend.
Seven
As summer approaches, the days grow longer. The calm between day and night has always been my favorite, but today, on a Thursday evening, it signals the end of multiple soccer games, meaning the bakery is about to be swarmed with kids in uniforms and their parents wanting ice cream and various other sugary treats.
The park across the street has six fields, so there are a bunch of games going on. Kalani’s sister’s soccer game ended an hour ago, so she already popped in to say hi. We’ve had a steady influx of people as parents wait for their kids’ game to end, so I was too busy running around to talk to her or anyone else.
As I’m wiping down some tables near the end of the night, a large group of young girls come in, all ten or eleven years old, wearing matching pink soccer jerseys. They’re loud and excited, and from their laughter and cheers, it’s clear they’ve won their first soccer match of the season. I’m sure they won against the blue team, because there were some girls in here just a few minutes ago talking about how they lost to the pink team. One of the older girls was even talking about how the pink team’s coach was “hot.” I grimace as I picture Kalani’s sister’s soccer coach, a balding man in his fifties who spends the entire game blowing his whistle and yelling until the veins bulge in his forehead. I sincerely hope a bunch of preteens weren’t talking about a coach like him.
Kids usually go straight for ice cream over baked goods, so I take my position behind the ice cream counter and wait for them.
“Hi!” says a girl with blond braids. “We won tonight!”
“Congratulations,” I say to the entire team, who crowd around the ice cream counter looking at all the flavors and getting their sweaty handprints all over the glass.
I’ve always had a thing about handprints on glass; they drive me crazy. When I first started working here at thirteen years old, I’d clean the glass the second the customer left the store. I’m still obsessed with handprints, but now I wait for them to accumulate a bit before I clean, especially during soccer season when kids can’t order anything without smudging their sweat all over the glass. Even armed with the knowledge that I can clean the display when they leave, it still makes me shiver when the entire pink team presses their hands and noses against the glass.
“Our coach said he’s buying us all a scoop of ice cream to celebrate the first win,” the blond girl says.
“That’s very nice of him,” I reply, though I don’t see an adult with the group of kids. “Where is he?”
During busy times, we don’t start scooping ice cream until they’ve paid for it. Once, a new girl scooped ice cream for two soccer teams before realizing no one was going to pay for it, and kids were just ordering ice cream and walking out, assuming it was free. Now we charge before we scoop during soccer nights.
Jay walks into the bakery, his eyes meeting mine instantly. I resist the urge to groan. Why is he stalking me?
“Hey, Princess,” he says, cutting through the group of kids.
His face brings back fresh memories of our terrible date, and that’s the last thing I need right now considering I’m going on another blind date tomorrow.
“You can’t just cut in front of a bunch of kids, Jay,” I tell him, gesturing to the group of girls. But none of them are glaring at him for jumping the line. In fact, they’re looking at him with . . . adoration?
“Coach Jay, I want rocky road,” the same girl says, tugging on his hand.
“Not a problem, Celeste. Let me pay this grumpy lady first,” he says, gesturing at me.
My surprise is overshadowed by my annoyance, and my frown deepens. “I’m not a grumpy lady,” I say in a tone thatdoesmake me sound like a grumpy lady, which amuses him and makes the girls giggle.