Cece flies out to the sidewalk as soon as she sees the dog. “Juno! Who’s a pretty girl?” She crouches to pet Juno, heedless of getting white dog hair all over her black dress. “Who’s a good floof?”
Vi hides a smile. “Hi, Cece.”
Cece looks up as if she’s only now noticing that a person is attached to the dog. “Vi! Hey!”
The butterflies in Vi’s stomach do cartwheels when Cece says her name. Like, of course Cece knows her name. They were best friends in preschool. They have been in the same grade, with more or less the same hundred people, since kindergarten. They don’t have the same friends—Cece is popular and Vi is not—but last year, they were in the same algebra and government classes.
Still. Cece said her name.
“How do you know Juno?” Cece kneels on the brick sidewalk and pets the dog’s big furry head. Juno wags her tail happily and licks Cece’s cheek.
“Juno!” Vi chides. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t mind.” Cece laughs and rubs her hand over her cheek. Her nails are painted a bright bubblegum pink. She wears pink a lot, Vi has noticed.
“Juno lives next door. I’m dog sitting.” Vi feels almost unbearably awkward in her own skin. She doesn’t know what to do with her hand that’s not holding the leash. It’s just sort of hanging by her side, clutching the book that Cece hasn’t noticed yet. What do other people do with their hands? She tucks the book against her chest.
“She’s adorable. I’d rather babysit her than my brothers.” Cece pouts, and Vi tries—and fails—not to stare at her pink-lipsticked mouth. “I love dogs.”
“I know,” Vi says, then grimaces. She doesn’t want to sound like a total creeper. “I mean…me too.”
“When Remus died last year, Mami said we couldn’t get another dog. She said we’re here all the time and it’s not fair to them.” Sirius and Remus were the Pérezes’ Great Danes. “She said it’s hard enough for her to manage the restaurant and the boys without worrying about giant dogs.”
“Des is super allergic to dogs, so we can’t have one either,” Vi explains. “But I watch Juno whenever the Mitchells go out of town. This summer, I’m walking her at lunchtime. I’ve been walking the Chans’ new puppy sometimes too.”
“Athena? Oh my gosh, she’s the cutest!” Cece squeals.
Vi loves that Cece knows all the neighborhood dogs’ names.
“Yeah, she’s such a puppy still. She has so much energy. She and Juno are kind of a handful together. Actually…if you ever wanted to walk them with me…I could use the help,” Vi says. This is going so well! Is she being too obvious, though?
“That would be so fun.” Cece stands up, bouncing a little on her toes. “If I don’t have to work, I’d love to. Will you text me next time?”
“Sure. Yeah. Let me get your number.” Vi hands Cece the leash while she fishes her phone out of her back pocket. She’s getting Cece’s number!
Cece rattles it off, and Vi adds it to her contacts. When she looks up again, Cece is staring at her chest instead of the dog. Vi looks down, self-conscious. Her Empowered Women Empower Women T-shirt does have a lower neck than she’d usually wear. Is her bra showing?
Wait, no. Cece is reading the back of the book in Vi’s hand. The book Vi brought specifically to lend her. Right. Get it together, Vi. Cece passes the leash back to her, and their hands brush. Vi hopes she isn’t blushing.
“Is that the new Nina LaCour book?” Cece asks. “I tried to buy it today, but Arden was out. Des said it’s your fault ’cause you’ve been recommending it to everybody.”
“It’s so good. Here.” Vi hands Cece the book, trying to sound casual, as though this hasn’t all been carefully orchestrated. Cece immediately flips the book open and reads the flap copy. “Do you want to borrow it?”
Cece looks over her shoulder, like she’s suddenly remembered she’s supposed to be working, but there’s no one waiting at the hostess stand. “Oh. Thank you, but…Des said she’d order it for me. I mean…aren’t you reading it?” Cece flips to the first page and sighs. “She’s such an amazing writer. Everything Leads to You is one of my all-time favorites.”
“Mine too. And I love the book she cowrote with David Levithan, You Know Me Well. Have you read that?”
Cece nods. “I read in the foreword they were writing it when the Supreme Court ruled on marriage equality.”
“I wasn’t out yet then. I was still kind of figuring out that not everybody was that into Clexa, but…” Vi trails off, flushing. Cece isn’t going to have any idea what she’s talking about. Nobody in Remington Hollow ever knows what Vi’s talking about. Not even her sisters.
“Clexa?” Cece echoes.
“That’s, uh, the ship name for Clarke and Lexa. They were a couple on the TV show The 100 in seasons two and three?” Vi has to stop herself from rambling. Clarke and Lexa’s slow-burn romance—and the fan fiction that Vi devoured about it—led to her joining Tumblr and starting to write her own fanfic.
Cece smiles. “I’ll have to check it out.”
“It’s on Netflix,” Vi says, before she realizes Cece is probably only being polite.
“Cool. I’ll have to sneak-watch it on my tablet.” Cece stares at the brick sidewalk, her brown skin flushing a little. “Abuela Julia is Catholic, so…I mean…we’re all Catholic, technically, but she’s really Catholic. She thinks marriage should only be between a man and a woman. If she saw me watching something with two girls kissing, she would probably turn it off and tell me it was a sin.”
“Oh.” Vi’s face falls.
“Yeah. I love her, but… Things were different when she was young, I guess.”
Vi wants to point out that not everybody from their grandmothers’ generation is homophobic, but she doesn’t want to make Cece feel bad, like she has to defend her abuela. Vi doesn’t know what she’d do if Gram thought her crush on Cece was a sin. That being gay was a sin. That would be awful.
“It’s okay if you want to borrow the book,” she says finally. “I’ve already read it. But I don’t want to get you in trouble.”
“I can hide it. Mami doesn’t really care; she just doesn’t want to fight with Abuela,” Cece says. “Are you sure? I won’t cancel my order. I like having all my favorites so I can reread them.”
Vi smiles. Something else they have in common. “Okay. No rush.”