We planned to give my fake ID some exercise tonight. Lydia’s Dream was great, and they were playing an eighteen-plus show at the Varsity. Despite the real threat of being busted if we met up with the wrong bouncer, I was more concerned that I had missed out on my chance with Kyle, and I might not get another.
I wallowed in a haze of self-recriminating thoughts. I didn’t know that Kyle was asking me out. I didn’t know what Leah and Aimee were spreading about Helen. I didn’t know anything.
Melissa said I’d definitely get other chances with Kyle, and whatever Leah was up to with Helen was probably something my sister could take care of herself, or else she’d have asked for help. But I’d felt like a zombie all afternoon to the point where I let Melissa pick out my outfit, and now I was wearing a skirt far too short and too tight. Riot grrrl preached body confidence, but I was most confident in slightly looser clothes.
“It’s not a big deal,” she said, for at least the hundredth time. “I’m sure he’ll ask you again. Trust me.”
Melissa didn’t look at me while she said that, so I had no idea if I should believe her. She sat on the edge of the driver’s seat of her car, buckling the high-heeled platform boots she’d bought in New Orleans. The buckles went the whole way up her calf, so she was taking forever. She couldn’t drive in the boots, and she couldn’t quite walk in them, but she was determined to wear them. She’d paired the boots with a blue minidress and fishnet tights, which was actually an understated look compared to the metallic boots.
“Besides, you won’t get another chance to see Lydia’s Dream,” she said. “They’re going on tour soon. And you seriously need to break in that fake ID of yours. But first, I need coffee.”
Melissa hobbled in her doom-boots and I walked like a normal person past the darkened shops on Chimes Street toward Highland Coffees.
Under normal circumstances, I loved Highland Coffees. It was better than the rest of Baton Rouge’s coffeehouses, if only for the number of cute college boys studying in its corners. But not even the promise of significantly above-average eye candy could make me feel better after the lunch disaster.
Melissa pulled open the door to the coffee shop with a sweeping gesture. A gust of espresso-scented air greeted us from the giant roasters near the front door.
“After you,” she said. “What do you want? It’ll be my treat.”
“I want to restart this entire day,” I said. “And not make an ass out of myself in front of Kyle.”
“Stop being so negative,” Melissa scolded, steering me into the coffee shop. “The night is young. You need to open up to its possibilities. Look around you. And I mean, really look around you. Now, what do you want?”
“Ye olde iced mocha, I guess.” My enthusiasm should have been at an all-time high: Lydia’s Dream, good coffee, cute boys. But I felt deflated. I’d landed Melissa in detention, messed up with Kyle, and let Leah get to me. The day had been an utter disaster.
Melissa marched toward the counter. “Open up to the possibilities,” she repeated, and I really wished I could, if only to get her to quit with the self-help talk. “Really look around you.” As if any of the college guys here would look twice at me.
Past the counter where Melissa was ordering our drinks, Highland Coffees opened up into a large room filled with tables and couches, sprinkled with the occasional solitary armchair perfect for reading. During the day, light flooded the seating area through enormous windows that looked like they belonged in an old-fashioned library. At night, cozy and welcoming lamps gently lit the room. Tonight, the coffee shop was crowded with couples on dates and students with statistics and chemistry textbooks working on problems in their notebooks. A cluster of writers occupied one corner, loudly and pretentiously critiquing each other’s work.
As I looked for an empty table, I suddenly realized I knew what Melissa had meant by “really look around you,” because there was Kyle, sitting alone at a table, waving me over. He looked almost as enthusiastic and dorky as I must have, and it only took me a second to figure out why. His smile wasn’t the half smile he’d given me on his way back to his seat in class, but a full-on grin. I suddenly felt way more at ease, a considerable feat since I was wearing Melissa’s super short skirt.
I could feel Melissa standing next to me, radiating victory.
“You noticed.” She was grinning, too.
“Yeah. Did you have something to do with this?” I gestured toward Kyle, slightly afraid that he was a mirage.
“Sort of,” Melissa said. “Well, yeah, I totally did. It was kind of a gamble. When you darted off to class, Kyle asked what you were doing tonight. So I told him to meet us here.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? I was so miserable all afternoon!”
Melissa raised her eyebrows and tilted her head.
“I didn’t know if my plan would work out exactly as I wanted,” she said, the tiniest trace of smugness in her voice. “If I’d told you, you would have freaked out the minute anything went wrong. So I didn’t say anything. Now, go over there before he starts waving like an air traffic controller to get your attention.”
Melissa gave me a thumbs-up before she darted toward one of the shop’s cushy chairs, as far from Kyle’s table as possible.
I took a deep breath to calm my eager pulse. I had a do-over, a chance to redeem myself as someone who could hold a conversation. I would remember the things that had flown out of my head earlier: music, books, where had he been all my life? Maybe not the last one, which was super over-the-top, but I would for sure ask him what he’d been up to before moving to Baton Rouge.
I sat down in the chair across from Kyle. He immediately closed his paperback—J. D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey, one of my favorite books. I was impressed. Most of the boys I knew didn’t read—well, not anything approaching literature anyway. I almost wondered if Melissa had tipped him off to my reading taste. After all, she had planned all this without telling me, so why not work his side of the equation, too?
“I guess Melissa broke it to you that you weren’t going to the show,” he said, smiling.
“No,” I said. “But that’s okay. I kind of want to kill her for lying to me, though.”
I wasn’t really mad at Melissa—she was an amazing best friend for setting this up. But somehow, pretending to be annoyed with her made talking with Kyle a little easier, since the part of my brain that kept questioning everything I said and what to do next had something to focus on.
“It could be worse,” he said. “I thought I’d check out the show before coming here, but the bouncer took my fake ID. Now I’ll never get into shows for the rest of my high school career, all for a show I was only going to spend a half hour at.”