After a couple of long sighs, I mumbled, “I met a boy.”
“O-o-h,” she murmured. “A boy, you say? A genuine member of the human race?”
“Possibly. He’s really beautiful, so he may be a space alien or a clone or some kind of android.”
“Mmm, sexy boy robot,” she purred. “Tell me everything.”
“There’s not much to tell. He’s a year older than me—nineteen. And a magician.”
“Like, Las Vegas performer or Harry Potter?” she asked.
I huffed out a soft laugh. “Like card tricks and making a napkin with his phone number written on it appear inside the book I was reading.”
“Wait. You met him here? At the diner?”
In answer, I held up a limp fist and mimicked a head nodding.
“Was this when you were interviewing last month?”
“For that part-time library job.” That I totally thought was a sure thing . . . yet didn’t get. Which was doubly depressing when I later realized that my misplaced confidence was one of the factors that led me to get carried away with “the boy” on that unfateful day.
“And you didn’t tell me?” Aunt Mona said. “Birdie! You know I live for romantic drama. I’ve been waiting your entire life for one juicy story, one glorious piece of top-notch teen gossip that will make me swoon, and you don’t tell me?”
“Maybe this is why.”
She pretended to gasp. “Okay, fair point. But now the cat’s out of the bag. Tell me more about this sexy, sexy cat—meow.”
“First, he’s a boy, not cat or a robot. And he was charming and sweet.”
“Keep going,” she said.
“He showed me some card tricks. I was feeling enthusiastic about the library job. It was raining pretty hard. He asked if I wanted to go see an indie movie at the Egyptian, and I told him I’d never been to the Egyptian, and he said it was in a Masonic Temple, which I didn’t know. Did you? Apparently it was—”
“Birdie,” Aunt Mona said, exasperated. “What happened?”
I sighed heavily. My cheek was sticking to the linoleum. “So we ran through the rain and went to his car, which was parked in the garage behind the diner, and it was pretty much deserted, and the next thing you know . . .”
“Oh. My. God. You didn’t.”
“We did.”
“Tell me you used a condom.”
I lifted my head and frantically glanced around the diner. “Can you please keep your voice down?”
“Condoms, Birdie. Did you use them?” she said, whispering entirely too loudly.
I checked to make sure Ms. Patty wasn’t anywhere in sight. Or any of her nieces and nephews. There were almost a dozen of those, a couple of whom I’d gone to school with when I was a kid. “Do you really think that me, a product of unsafe teen sex, whose mother later literally died after getting pregnant a second time, someone who had to listen to a thousand and one safe-sex lectures from her former guardian—”
“Once a guardian, always a guardian. I will never be your former anything, Birdie.”
“Her current guardian in spirit.”
“That’s better.”
“I’m just saying. Yes. Of course. That wasn’t the problem.”
“There was a problem? Was he a jerk? Did you get caught?”
“Stop. It was none of that. It was me. I suddenly just got . . . weirded out.”
One moment I was all caught up in feeling good. This beautiful, funny boy whom I’d just met was kissing me, and I was kissing him, and I think I may have just possibly suggested we get in the back seat instead of going to the movie theater. I don’t know what I was thinking. I suppose I wasn’t, and that was the problem. Because once we got back there and clothes started getting unbuttoned and unzipped, it all happened so fast. And in the middle of everything, I had a startling moment of clarity. He was a stranger. I mean, a complete stranger. I didn’t know where he lived or anything about his family. I didn’t know him at all. It got way too real, way too fast.
So when it was over, I bolted.
Ditched him like a guilty criminal fleeing a botched bank job.
Then I headed to the ferry terminal and never looked back.
“Oof,” Mona said in sympathy, but I was pretty sure I heard some relief in her voice too. “Did he . . . ? I mean, was he upset about it?”
I shook my head and absently rearranged the salt and pepper shakers. “I heard him calling my name. I think he was confused. It all happened so fast. . . .”
“Maybe too fast?”
“He wasn’t pushy or anything. He was nice, and I’m such a dud.”
Mona made a chiding noise and quickly held up three fingers in a mock Scout salute. “On my honor—come on. Say it.”
“Trying to be an adult here.”
“Trying to help you be an adult. Say our pledge, Birdie.”
I did the salute. “On my honor as a daring dame and gutsy gal, I will do my best to be true to myself, be kind to others, and never listen to any repressive poppycock.”
When my grandmother was alive, she forbade swearing, cursing, and anything resembling rebellion under her roof. Adjusting to her rules after my mother died had often been draining. Aunt Mona had helped me cope by coming up with the Daring Dame pledge . . . and secretly teaching ten-year-old me a dozen words that contained the word “cock.”
Aunt Mona and Grandma did not get along.
Satisfied with my Daring Dame pledge, she dropped her fingers. “I know it’s hard for you to get close to people, and I know as much as you and Eleanor disagreed, she was still your grandmother and it hurts to lose someone. I know you must feel like everyone you love keeps leaving you, but it’s not true. I’m here. And other people will be too. You just have to let them in.”
“Aunt Mona—” I started, not wanting to talk about this right now.
“All I’m saying is that you didn’t do anything wrong. And maybe if this boy is as awesome as you say he is, he could be understanding about how things ended if you gave it another chance. You said he gave you his phone number. Maybe you should call him.”
“Must have fallen out of my book when I was running,” I lied, shaking my head. I actually tossed if off the side of the ferry on my way home that afternoon when I was still freaking out about what I’d done. “But maybe it’s for the best. What would I say? Sorry I bailed on you like a weirdo?”
“Aren’t you sorry you bailed on him, though?”
I wasn’t sure. But it didn’t matter. I’d probably never see him again. And that was a good thing. It was one thing to say the Daring Dame pledge and a whole other to live it. Maybe I needed to build up some real-world experience before I braved dating. Perhaps I needed to put on my detective glasses and figure out where I went wrong.
But after all the mystery shows I’d binged, I should’ve known that detectives never investigate their own crimes.
“I worry. I mean, little things bother me.”
—Columbo, Columbo (1971)
2
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The Cascadia was a five-story historic brick building on the corner of First Avenue in downtown Seattle near the waterfront. It was a luxury landmark hotel built in 1920 and was recently restored to showcase its Pacific Northwest roots while offering thoroughly modern amenities—at least, according to the website.