But then, in his usual, overly blunt way, Noah says, “Whoa, you look hot.”
He doesn’t mean anything by it.
Well, he means it, but Noah would say the same to Emma, or our friend Yaz, or even Boris (Emma’s boyfriend, and my ex—long story) if Boris ever managed to look hot, versus wet-behind-the-ears cute. Noah tends to be a bit filter-less, but he’s also annoyingly honorable and would never cheat on Ava, so it’s not a come-on.
Still.
“Thanks,” I say, then finally look over at him, and in an effort to be casual add, “And you look . . . a tad scruffy, hair verging on a mullet, but clean.”
“You don’t like my almost-mullet?” he says, putting the truck in reverse.
I do like it. He could do whatever he wanted with his hair—dark brown, straight with tips that start to curve up at the ends when it gets long—and I would like it. Just like I like his soulful brown eyes, aquiline nose, winter-pale skin, narrowish face, and all the other features that somehow over the last couple of years transformed (in my eyes anyway, and unfortunately while I was supposed to be in love with someone else) from ordinary to remarkable.
“I’m just bugging you,” I say.
“Ya gotta try harder than that,” he says, starting off down my street. “Like, attack my character, or argue that Georgian architecture is better than Gothic.”
“Oh, I would never!” I say, feigning shock.
We lapse into comfortable silence—well, as comfortable as it can be when I’m breathing in the cinnamon soap/beautiful boy smell of him and having visions of leaning over and kissing his neck, and then mentally slapping myself for the thought.
We turn out of my neighborhood toward the highway. I watch the big, fluffy snowflakes land on the windshield, each one just starting to melt before the wipers dispatch them, and try to chill out. It’s not too far to the Goat. Close enough that as soon as the snow melts I’d be able to save money by riding my bike there. If they hire me, that is. And that’s a big if.
“You nervous?” he says.
“Huh? Oh, yeah, a bit. I’m just hoping they’ll give me a chance.”
“Want me to come in and vouch for you? I happen to know you’re a very upstanding human being.”
“No, but thanks. Any idea why this place is called the Goat? I don’t go out much these days.”
“Apparently the goat used to be a donkey—”
“I remember the donkey.”
“Yeah, it’s memorable. And because it was so visible from the roof, the new owners didn’t want to take it down. But apparently, the old chain restaurant owns the right to the image of that particular donkey, so they couldn’t keep it as is. Instead, they decided to modify it. Had someone come in and add horns and turn it into a goat. It’s pretty funny, actually, though I dunno if the funny part is intentional. We’ll be able to see it in a minute or two.”
The goat on the roof comes into view soon, and it is indeed funny—kitschy and weird and rather endearing.
We make up a series of names for it, laughing all the way down the highway and into the parking lot, where Noah wishes me luck and waits while I go in.
And finally something good happens: They do not know my dad at the Goat, and they don’t mind my lack of experience.
Noah and I go to Just Coffee to celebrate (Reg was so horrible to me that I’m actually considering following in my dad’s footsteps and boycotting Fancy Lattes), and I start working two days later.
5
KYLE
Within a week I’ve memorized the menu, done my three shadow training shifts, and am working as much as they’ll let me.
The job is challenging, but mostly in a good way, and my coworkers are friendly enough once I start to prove myself. The only minor annoyance is Kyle, whom I start out disliking on principal after he tells me he’s only working “for fun” and for extra cash to “pimp” his “ride”—i.e., the perfectly good truck his parents bought for him.
Kyle is, overall, just too carefree for his own good, walking around the Goat with his shaggy, bleach-blond hair and ocean-colored eyes, looking for all the world like a surfer who’s lost his beach. Nobody should look like that in the middle of winter.
But . . . there’s nothing actually wrong with Kyle as a person, and despite my overall feeling that he’s too attractive/privileged/charming/chill to be real, he starts to wear me down. He works hard, he’s fun, he busses a lot of my tables in his capacity as host, and he saves my butt on multiple occasions by delivering food and drinks when I’m in the weeds.
And then I take as many extra shifts as I can get during the March Break, and lo and behold, so does Kyle.
“Most of my friends are on vacation somewhere,” I say to him the first Friday night as we sit in a booth doing the last batch of cutlery roll-ups. “How come you’re not?”
“Eh,” he says with a dismissive wave, “my mom and sister went to Florida to see my grandparents, but I didn’t feel like it. I’ve been a bunch of times.”
“Poor you.”
“No, no,” he says, missing or ignoring my sarcasm. “I just wanted to stay home with my dad this year. We leave our dirty socks everywhere, eat pizza, binge-watch bad TV, act like bachelors. That’s its own kind of vacation.”
“Dirty socks on the floor equals vacation? Sounds stinky.”
“Exactly.” He gives me a dazzlingly unapologetic grin. “How ’bout you?”
“No vacation to beg off from and I need the money from the extra shifts for school next year—tuition, books, housing. Or, failing that, for the year after. Turns out I have, uh, less money saved than I thought and now I’m scrambling.”
“You shoulda told me! I can hook you up!”
“With what?”
“The best tables, obviously. I am the host,” he says the way someone else might say, “I’m the king!”
“You can’t do that,” I protest. “Other people need the money too.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to shaft anybody,” he says, twirling a roll-up in one hand like a mini baton. “But I’m starting to know who the big spenders are, and I can send some your way.”
“Thanks, but I’m good.”
“Okay, I won’t,” he says, and then winks, looking ridiculous in a baseball hat with goat horns seeming to grow out the top of it.
He does, though. He gives me fewer kid birthday parties, more couples on dates, more thirsty postgame sports teams, and lots of men, including Perry Ackerman.