“Clearly,” Gray says, grinning back. I can’t tell if he’s flirting with me or not. Even if he is, I know it doesn’t mean anything. Gray is notorious for flirting with everyone.
“So what were you really doing in there, huh?” I can’t resist asking, nodding my head back toward the building. “With the book club, I mean.”
Gray makes a face. “College apps,” he admits. “I need to bulk up extracurriculars.” He tilts his head to the side. “I thought it was ballsy how you fought with Mr. Beckett though. So I came to support. Or like—” He frowns. “I guess ballsy isn’t the right word, huh?”
“Ballsy is fine.”
“Brave is what I meant.”
I smile again, more slowly, and this time nothing about it is a tease. “I’m sorry I gave you a hard time in there,” I tell him.
“It’s cool,” Gray says. “I get it.” The strangest part is how it seems like maybe he does. I think of his serious expression when Jacob made that stupid joke at Emily’s party, the way he always sort of seems to keep his distance from the rest of the lacrosse guys. Just for a moment, I wonder if possibly there’s more to Gray Kendall than I thought.
My phone rings inside my backpack—the kicky little trill that means it’s my mom—but when I go for it the busted zipper on the bottom pouch catches again. I swear quietly, yanking with absolutely no success whatsoever.
“It’s just stuck,” I explain, a little awkwardly. “I probably just need a new one.”
Gray shakes his head. “You got ChapStick? Actually, you know what, never mind. I do.” He digs a tube of it out of his pack pocket and uncaps it with his teeth, rubbing the stick along the zipper until it slides open without a problem. “There,” he says, dimple flashing as he hands it back over. “Good as new, right?”
“Yeah,” I say, smiling back in spite of myself. “Good as new.”
Thirteen
“Hey there, Marin,” Chloe’s dad says, grinning at me from behind the bar when I come into Niko’s that night. “I read your editorial. Very good.”
I grin back, rolling my eyes a little. “Thanks.”
“I’m serious,” he says cheerfully.
I’ve always liked Steve, with his thick eyebrows and beer belly and incessantly corny dad jokes.
“You go, girl.”
“Oh my god,” Chloe says, brushing by behind me and heading for the kitchen. “Dad, can you stay out of feminist politics for today?”
Steve frowns, rubbing a hand over his bushy beard as he watches her go. I just shrug.
I catch up with her back by the wait station, where she’s tying on her apron.
“Hey.” I offer a sheepish smile. “I hardly saw you today. Everything okay?”
“I’m fine,” Chloe says immediately, offering me a quick smile back. “It’s just been super busy.”
I feel my lips twist; I’ve never not spent so much time with Chloe as I have this past week. “You sure?”
“Totally,” she says. “How was your book club?”
“Good!” I say, surprised to find that I mean it, and launch into a detailed description of our meeting. I’m telling her about our plan to make Nolite te bastardes carborundorum T-shirts for next week’s dress-down day before I realize she isn’t listening at all.
“You should think about joining,” I finish weakly. Then, “Chlo, what’s wrong?”
Chloe sighs. “Look,” she says, “this is probably going to sound bitchy, and I honestly don’t mean for it to, but like. You’re just so different lately. Like, where’s Marin? My fun, cool best friend Marin?”
She holds her hands up, glancing over her shoulder toward the dining room. “I know you’ve had some . . . stuff . . . ,” she says meaningfully. “But I thought you were going to put all that behind you. And instead you’re just like . . . rolling around in it, I don’t know.”
I blink. “Rolling around in what, exactly?”
“Don’t get mad,” Chloe says. “I just—”
“Ladies!” Steve calls, deep voice booming from behind the bar. “Tables, please.”
We don’t talk for the rest of the night, orbiting around each other like two competing moons. Yes, I’ve had some stuff, I think to myself, a little bitterly. And I have put it behind me, obviously. I didn’t tell anyone. I’m still doing everything I was doing before. But I’m also thinking about things a little differently. Is there something wrong with that?
By nine thirty, I’ve had enough. This is ridiculous, I decide finally. Where’s Marin? I’m right here. I drop the check for the last of my tables, two middle-aged guys I’m pretty sure were celebrating their anniversary. It’s me. It’s Chloe. I’ll see if she wants to get a late-night Starbucks on the ride home. We’ll listen to the new Sia album on Spotify and talk it out.
When I stow my apron and head out into the parking lot though, I look around for a long moment before I frown. Chloe has driven me home from every shift since she got her license last summer, but I don’t see her SUV—a tan Jeep with a cartoon sloth bumper sticker affixed to the back window—anywhere.
I yank my phone out of my backpack. Did you leave? I text.
Her reply comes thirty seconds later. ACK I’M SO SORRY! Asked my dad to tell you, but he must have spaced. Kyra’s having a boy crisis so I said I’d go see her. Can you find a ride???
If I think too much about the likelihood that Chloe has really ditched me for her dorky cousin Kyra, I might lose it, so instead I sit down on a bench outside the restaurant and consider my options for getting home: it’s too far to walk. My parents are at a scholarship fund-raiser Grace’s chess teacher throws every year all the way in Burlington. And I sure as shit can’t call Jacob. I scroll through my phone, trying to figure out which of my friends I haven’t alienated recently who might also have access to a car. Nothing like standing alone in the parking lot of a strip mall outside a Greek restaurant at ten on a Friday night to put your life choices in glaring perspective.
I’m about to go back inside and throw myself on Steve’s mercy when a thought occurs to me. I bite my lip, swiping through my contacts until I find Gray’s name. He put his number in there himself after the book club meeting today, then texted himself so he’d have mine: “In case I need help with the big words,” he explained, handing my phone back to me with a flourish.
Hey, I text now, hitting send before I can talk myself out of it. Are you busy?
He shows up fifteen minutes later, pulling up to the curb outside the restaurant in a ten-year-old Toyota with a bobblehead dog affixed to the dashboard. “Somebody call an Uber?” he asks as I climb in.
“Hey,” I say with a grateful grin. “Thank you. You’re totally saving me right now.”
“No problem.” His car smells like cinnamon Altoids and a little bit like a gym bag; his phone is upside down in the cupholder, Kendrick Lamar echoing quietly from the tinny speaker. “No Bluetooth,” he explains, a little sheepish.
“I’m going to have to dock you a star,” I tease, nudging aside a half-dozen empty Pepsi bottles and setting my backpack on the floor between my feet. “Seriously, though, I mean it. Thanks. I didn’t think you’d be around.”