I roll my eyes. “Don’t be gross.”
“I didn’t say anything!” he defends himself. “If your mind’s in the gutter, that’s between you and the Lord.” Then he grins at me, revealing one crooked canine tooth. “Hey, decent speech yesterday.”
“Uh, thanks,” I say, waiting for the inevitable punch line of whatever joke he’s setting up and raising an eyebrow when it doesn’t come. In fact, this is the closest to genuine I’ve heard him possibly ever, which is saying something. Miles and I literally grew up together; our grandparents were old family friends, and when my birth dad (or, as I like to refer to him, my genetic donor) took off, Miles’s mom insisted we stay in the apartment above their garage for a few months while my mom got her act together. A few months turned into four years, during which time there was ample opportunity for Nonna to snap a million blurry pictures of us in the bath together, a fact Miles loves to remind me about whenever he gets the chance.
“I’m serious,” he says now, setting the plate of mozzarella sticks in the window before turning and grabbing the next order slip out of the Micros printer. “Entropy, beating back chaos in the universe, all of that. I liked hearing about it.”
That stops me. “Yeah?” I ask, a little bit flattered in spite of myself.
“Yeah,” Miles echoes. Then, flicking an exaggerated gaze up and down my body: “All that nerd talk was kind of hot.”
And there he is: the real Miles. “Okay, then!” I say, pulling off my plastic gloves and tossing them into the trash can. “Enough, thank you. I’m going to go do my actual job now. Try not to light yourself on fire back here. You think you can manage that?”
Miles laughs, the deep rumble as always a little surprising—how grown-up it sounds, maybe, compared to the rest of him. “You know you love me, Rachel Walls.”
“I don’t, in fact!” I head through the swinging door into the dining room before he can answer, ignoring the arch, knowing look Nonna shoots me from her station behind the counter—the same look she gives me every time she overhears me talking to Miles.
And just like always, I pretend to retch.
To be fair, it’s not like Miles is objectively disgusting or anything—in fact, he’s got something of a fan club at DiPasquale’s, this group of sophomore girls who post up at the corner booth on the nights he’s working, drinking pop after pop and craning their necks for a glimpse at him through the service window. He’s just so completely obnoxious. He’s one of those guys who loves to play devil’s advocate for the sake of recreation. He wears the same Winter Is Coming T-shirt every single day. He’s smart—he literally built a whole computer in his basement last year—but he barely graduated because he couldn’t be bothered to do his work.
He’s also literally the only boy to ever pay any kind of attention to me in my entire life, but that’s neither here nor there.
Nonna ignores my Oscar-worthy mime skills and turns back to her conversation—she’s gabbing with one of our seasonal regulars, an older guy who spends a few early summer weeks here every year. He says something and Nonna leans in and giggles, her shiny gray hair swinging as she tilts her head to the side.
Giggles.
“Am I getting a new grandpa?” I tease her once the guy is seated across the crowded dining room. “Seriously, what was that?”
“Listen to you, Judge Judy,” Nonna says, swatting me on the butt with a laminated menu. “It was flirting. And you should try it sometime.”
“Why would I do that, exactly?” Who would I do it with, is more like it.
“It’s fun,” Nonna says simply. “And sometimes it’s good to know you’ve still got it.”
I’m about to reply when I’m cut off by a spray of raucous laughter. I glance across the restaurant, my heart falling all at once directly out of my butt. Clayton Carville is parked in an overflowing booth beside the window, Bethany squished in beside him and Spencer Thomas on her other side. The laughter was hers, blond head thrown back and one hand reaching out playfully to swat at Clayton’s cheek.
So. I guess they didn’t fight after all.
“Why don’t you head out?” Nonna asks quietly. She leans forward against the counter, nudging my shoulder with her own. “Mia will be here in twenty minutes to help me. Go be with your friends.” She glances toward the front booth.
I shake my head, my cheeks burning. “We both know they aren’t my friends.”
Nonna shrugs. “Things can change.”
I purse my lips but say nothing. It sounds ridiculous to say I didn’t have time for friends in high school. I made space for Ruoxi, didn’t I? Same as she made space for me. Still, more often than not, the idea of trying to widen my social circle seemed like a giant waste of energy. Why would I spend a perfectly good study hall period trying to make stilted conversation with someone who probably didn’t even want to talk to me when there were AP tests to take, essays to write, college admissions committees to impress? Why go through the trouble of putting myself out there—why risk the rejection, and the embarrassment, and the hurt—when I could already imagine exactly what it was going to be like? After all, I knew my classmates. I’d scrolled their Instagram feeds, heard them chat to one another in the bathroom at school, watched them fight and make up from the hidden comfort of my bedroom window. If I didn’t think about it too much, it was almost the same thing as experiencing them myself.
“Well,” Nonna says now, “if you’re going to stay, make a round, will you, Patatina?” She slides the Italian soda pitcher across the counter in my direction. “I’d do it myself, but my knees are giving me grief.”
She’s lying and we both know it—she ran three miles this morning, same as she has every day of her life—but she’s got it in her head that if I make the rounds and pour their soda, Bethany and her friends will miraculously become my bosom buddies, triggering a movie montage soundtracked to Sara Bareilles where we give each other makeovers and have pillow fights and reunite in ten years to hold each other’s babies.
Still, a thing about Nonna is that it’s generally less complicated to just do the thing she asks, so I grab the pitcher without complaint. I haven’t made it three steps when Bethany perks up like a prairie dog. “Excuse me?” she calls, waving one manicured hand in my direction. “Could we get some more of that?”
I turn toward their booth and see that Clayton is looking at me. He lifts his chin in recognition, though I’m not sure if the expression on his achingly symmetrical face is more Hey, girl whose graduation speech I enjoyed yesterday or Hey, creepy stalker lady, please don’t kidnap me and lock me in your basement. Honestly, it could be either one.