“Excuse me?” I asked.
“I started to make some, but I killed it and I dunno, I need someone’s opinion.”
And she was asking me. “The thing is, I don’t know anything about curry.” That wasn’t entirely true. I did know that was it was usually way too spicy for me.
I mean, not spicy enough. I can totally, without a doubt or my eyes watering, handle absolutely whatever food is being served. No problemo.
So.
Yeah.
“You know what tastes good,” she argued, “Never mind. Calling you was kind of a shot in the dark. I’d ask Carter but he has tutoring, and Hannah has too much homework or something. You were the next person on my go-to list. I’ll get someone else.”
The tallest guy on the football team, who was an inch taller than Carter, saluted me as they skedaddled. The stench of stale soap remained, however, especially with my mouth hung open, in pure amazement. She was simply going to hand me this opportunity?
“I never have too much homework. It’ll take more than that to get rid of me, O’Connor. I’ll come.”
“Really?”
“No. I was talking to someone else. Yes, really. Need me to pick up anything?”
“Funny. Maybe some chicken? I kind of undercooked mine and, like, freaked out and burned the backups . . .”
“Chicken?” My pulse quickened, like I’d been informed about a pop biology quiz, where the questions were pictures and the answers had to be made from silly putty. “Like what kind, are there different kinds of chicken? How does one pick out chicken . . . ?”
“Just get a pound of whatever’s cheapest. It’s chicken. Bawk bawk.” She hung up.
I paused over the locker room sink, reflecting on what was happening. Lukewarm water (the hottest the sink would go) helped me get my game face on. I was going to cook with Eliza O’Connor. Cooking. Eliza.
I couldn’t tell which of those made me more nervous.
Twenty minutes and one successful quest for chicken later, I found Eliza O’Connor fretting about her kitchen as if the queen of England were coming over. She flipped between three pans on her stove and two cutting boards with a mismatched array of tomatoes and white vegetables I didn’t recognize. Later, when they left a sad, forgetful impression on my taste buds, I discovered it was cauliflower.
“Thanks for coming,” she said.
“Cooking together? This is a big step in our relationship.”
“I’m impressed you know the r word.” Eliza stirred a sizzling pan, which smelled like too much garlic and watery tomato sauce.
“Really? See, I know two.” I set the grocery bag on the kitchen island.
“Olivia’s catering some fancy thing at a law firm,” said Eliza, “And apparently got four new clients out of it. They make her ninety-seventh, ninety-eighth, ninety-ninth, and—”
“She got her hundredth client?”
“Hashtag girl boss.”
Eliza wanted to celebrate in style.
“Is this chicken okay?”
“It’s great,” she answered without looking. Eliza flitted around the room, throwing ridiculous amounts of vegetables into one pan and slicing her newly acquired chicken for the other.
“How can I help, Chef? Usually the parentals have me stand out of the way.”
“Don’t think you’re getting off that easy. This recipe is a monster. I need like ten extra hands.”
She passed me her huge, plastic cutting board with the chicken, gesturing for me to continue.
“Okay. Here I go. Cooking. Yup.”
“Nick Maguire, intimidated. And by a breast no less . . .”
I wagged my eyebrows. “What’s this? Smack talk from Eliza O’Connor?”
She cranked open a can of tomato sauce, tossing the top towards the sink, where two more empty cans sat, patiently waiting to be rinsed.
“Third time’s the charm, huh?” I said.
Her pan hissed with the addition of the sauce, its odor going from old onions bad, to old onions and old tomatoes worse.
“I needed that chicken yesterday . . .” She clomped to the other side of the table, leaving her concoction to start boiling out of the saucepan.
“Oof. Bossy too.”
“Hey, thanks.” She stretched towards me, her torso longer than I’d imagined, and grabbed the chicken.
“Don’t mention it. Now what?”
“You can make the rice.” She rescued her pan with a stir, just in time.
“Yes. I’ll make the rice.” The cat-sized bag of rice perched securely on top of Ms. O’Connor’s massive cupboards. “How can two thousand tiny grains take up this much space?”
“Want me to do the rice? You can stir the pan.”
“And concern yourself with this trivial task? Not today, Chef.” I made a show of how easy it was for me to carry the giant, enormous, heavy (seriously cannot overstate how big it was) bag of rice.
“Hey, these are things you’re gonna have to know next year. When you can pull off a three-course meal for your college girlfriend, you’ll have me to thank.”
My mouth went dry. In my experience, girls mention the existence of a bro’s real or future girlfriend for two reasons: one, they want to pry into the relationship, look for flaws, and find a way to feel like the superior female; or two, the girl wants you to subconsciously link the word “girlfriend” to them instead.
Eliza’s comment gave me further proof that I had a fighting chance here.
I leaned against the marble island, trying to look as suave as possible. “Yup, I’ll call you up in the middle of my date to let you know.”
“You’d better.”
“Can’t wait to tell you all about the meals of your sweetest dreams.” She kept her back turned to me, and my head started to spin. Before this year, things with Eliza had always felt easy. Why was I now overanalyzing everything she did? Every stupid thing I said back to her? Was I being? No. Definitely not. Pathetic?
“Be right back.”
Trying not to panic, I bolted to the O’Connors’ downstairs bathroom and paced between the shower and the cupcake-shaped hand towels. Maybe Madison was right, and I’d need more than my charm for Eliza. Perhaps, an honest-to-gosh real connection?
Speaking of Madison, a solution to my troubles was a text message away.
Am I really going to do this? Yup. This is happening.
I grabbed my phone. Ready for advice, I sent, ASAP plz, making dinner with her now.
Time to wait for a response. For how long? I didn’t want Eliza to think I’d abandoned helping her, but I couldn’t read Madison’s answer in front of her. I decided to count to one hundred and then go back.
Sixty-three . . . sixty-four . . . the phone buzzed in my hand.
I’m sad you never made me dinner , Madison had texted. Hope you lovebirds are having fun. What you want to do is . . .
I skimmed the rest. Madison’s Eliza tips were things I’d never have thought of and made me uneasy, like there was a tarantula in the bathtub I didn’t know about. Then again, maybe a new approach was what I needed.
You’re the man, Maguire. You got this. You can do it. Go talk to her. Come on. Go go go go.
Recovered from my trip to Losertown, I found Eliza exactly where I had left her: throwing the last ingredients into the saucepan and making a sizzling sound that was less like cooking and more like burning.
My stomach growled. Uh-oh. No one in the history of forever has performed well when they were hungry (maybe food-eating-contest winners, but we all know those people are really glitches in the Matrix).
I sat at the island in a tall bar stool. It matched the other counters in the room, which were now filled with either Ms. O’Connor’s mixers and decorating tools or elements of Eliza’s curry production. All around, this was a very creative family. Minus Carter.
“Everything okay?” she asked.
“Yeah, thanks. Oh hey, um . . .” Heat caught in my throat as I tried to keep this casual, “How’s Hannah doing?”
Eliza shook a green spice jar into her concoction. “Robert can’t ask her himself?”
I studied my hands. Here comes the hard part. “Not asking for Robert,” I said.
“Nick . . .” she warned.
Well you’ve certainly got her attention. “Can’t I ask how Hannah’s doing without it being a whole big thing? She likes me more than him anyway.”
Honestly me dating Hannah would have been a service to both of them.
“Are you serious? You’d really do that to Robert?” She gave me the kind of stare my mom had trademarked. As if I had let her down, but she wasn’t invested enough to be disappointed.
“Do what?”
“Okay then.” Her cooking was no longer the spiciest thing in the room.
“Is there a problem?” I said. Madison had instructed me to make Eliza jealous by asking about her best friend. Which upon further consideration, might have been backfiring.
“No.” She turned off the stove and threw a cover over her pot, steam pouring out from under it. “I didn’t expect you to break the Bro Code for Hannah Green.”
“The Bro Code?”
“Yeah, like how Robert has dibs on Hanns and stuff. Not that any guy ever, like, has dibs on a girl. And it’s not as if your guys’ holy commandments are some big secret.”
She still wouldn’t look at me.
“What’d you think I would break it for, then? Someone one of my buddies had already hooked up with? Someone’s sister?”
Come on, Eliza. I could not have been more obvious, right?
“Whatever,” she said.
Without Carter as a buffer, her forced indifference felt like flames without a heat shield. Carter always mediated between our differences of opinion, and I always mediated between theirs. So far, Carter and I hadn’t needed a mediator. Hopefully we never would.
“Now you have to tell me,” I pushed.
Eliza sighed. “I don’t have to do anything, Nick. That’s the difference between you and me. You play with your friends like you’re an All-Powerful Bro-Emperor, and I just . . . get to be Carter’s kid sister and watch it all unfold.”
The table between us suddenly seemed like Antarctica, but in size and climate, and without the cute penguins.
“You know you’re more than that,” I said.
“Leave me out of it.”
I remained seated, dumbfounded, completely losing track of this conversation. The subtext, or lack thereof, or some combination of hidden meanings made it seem like we were speaking in different languages.
“Any girl would love to date me.” That made her look at me.
“Why? Whenever you wanted, you’d find someone else.”
“What do you mean?”
She folded her arms across her chest, with her back against the sink. “I, for one, would be scared. Dating you. Like you hooked up with Madison last week and are now suddenly into Hannah? That’s not just kind of rude. It’s a selfish way to treat people.”
Her words washed over me like I’d found the Antarctic penguins and was playing on their favorite waterslide.
“Thanks for the help,” she continued, starting to tackle the stacks of dirty pans and cans. “I can take it from here.”
I didn’t move, my legs weighing like bricks on the floor. “You do know I care about my friends, right?”
And you.
“Sure you do. Today.”
“Then I look forward to proving you wrong tomorrow.”
I left her house with the aroma of burned garlic on my clothes. Whatever. If Eliza wants to be honest with me, let her. Although I hadn’t exactly been honest with her.
Something had to be up. Her attitude about this wasn’t really about me, was it? My AP psych readings about Freud said that strong emotional responses were conflicts you were having with different parts of yourself. (Would you look at that, I learned something!) Maybe, on some level, it was about her dad leaving them for a new family. About anyone except for me.
My phone buzzed for the millionth time that day.
How’d it go?
“Go ’way,” I muttered. Madison could go fall off a bridge. Did she give me bad advice on purpose? I should have known, that would be a total Madison move.
I’m going to take the silence as a good thing , she pinged.
Stomping hard on the brake pedal, I wrote back, Go fall in a river.
I forced the car into gear and blasted the country radio station. Maybe the drive would help me forget my idiotic decision-making skills.
A second later, my Mission: Impossible ringtone sounded. Incoming call from Madison.
I tossed my phone onto the passenger seat, and the screen lit up. What happened????
When I didn’t reply, Madison called again.
“What, Madison?” I yelled as the phone slid on the seat.
“What a way to greet someone,” she sounded as silky as ever. “Did you do exactly what I told you to?”
“More or less.”
“And she isn’t fawning all over you?”
“Why are you messing with me? I got you a ‘date’ with Carter, Madi. I thought we were square.”
“Yeah . . . I know. This was supposed to work, though . . . .”
I swerved around a tight corner, narrowly avoiding colliding with a cop car. Holding my breath, I waited to see if they’d pull me over . . . nope.
“How?” I shouted, “When has making people jealous ever worked?”
“Usually in that sweet spot where they might barelyyyy kind of like you and then see you’re actively looking for potential new friends, shall we say?”
“She obviously doesn’t barelyyyy kind of like me. Kinda the opposite now. Actually.”
“I’m sorry, Nick, this never happens, swear to God.”
“Thanks.” I practically spit onto the steering wheel, braking hard into the standstill traffic. “I’m gonna go—” The light we’d all been waiting for finally turned green, and the cars in front of me were off to the races.
“Unless,” she cut me off, “she . . . okay, Nick. Imagine this: suppose you are minorly into, like Taylor Swift.”
“Why would I be minorly into Taylor? She’s a straight-up babe.” I tried to keep up with the cars in front of me. Ignoring Madison made it easier.
“Bear with me. You’re minorly into T-Swift, and she tells you she likes Justin Bieber. How do you feel?”
“Taylor would never go for the Biebs,” I said, “but fine. I’d want to do everything I could to turn her off Justin. I’d want to spend more time with her and gradually fulfill her wildest dreams. Which I would, because I’m more of a man than Justin will ever be.”
“There’s the Nick we all know,” she teased me. “Right. Okay. Now imagine you’re like, super, secretly in love with Taylor Swift and she tells you she likes Justin. Now how do you feel?”
“After everything I’ve done for her?” I joked. “She goes and crushes on Bieber?”
“Exactly,” said Madison. “Nick. We’re talking your top-secret crush like from when you were a kid. Like honest-to-gosh, ride or die.”
I finally reached my driveway, the stones gently rolling as I turned in. Shutting off the engine, I slumped down until my legs were on the dashboard.
“How’d you know I feel that way about Tay?”
“Nick, what would you do?”
I’d pretend I’d never liked her in the first place. I’d overcompensate as hard as I freaking could.
“Crap.”
“If she more than barely liked you, which I had no way of knowing, then what happened makes sense.”
“And if she didn’t
like me at all?”
Madison paused. “Then why would your Hannah comment bother her?”
I considered this. Whether to trust or distrust Madison was still a coin flip—either way, this was interesting.
“Now what am I supposed to do?” I asked.
“What you do best,” said Madison, “Go get the girl. Oh, and tell Carter to meet me again tomorrow. Thanks, Nicky.”
“Madison—” I started. She hung up before I could ask anything else.
I punched the steering wheel, feeling as if I were at the center of a female-revenge plot. That’s what was happening here, right? The girls were trying to teach me a lesson for being a player?
If only. Because then I’d at least know what to do: an Instagram story and livestream of some Lloyd Dobler–level apology. When did girls get complicated? It wasn’t like all of them were easy . . . but Eliza was next level.
My neck ached with stiffness and pent-up stress. You need to get out of your head, dude. The best way to do that?
Every bro’s favorite pastime: video games.
RULE NUMBER 9
A bro shalt not shop.
Eliza ignored me for the rest of the week, and even for a few days into the next week.
Not that I was keeping track.
Things weren’t going much better in the Carter/Madison fantasy land either.
I heard about it from Carter as we camped out in our regular booth at the back of Straight Cheese ’n’ Pizza. Last year, going there had become a regular Wednesday night thing. It served the dual role of a top-notch, greasy dinner, and a place where we could swap homework answers inconspicuously. Gone were the days of being able to use the library—ever since Austin sent a virus through their computer system after illegally downloading World of Warcraft, he was on some unofficial library watchlist. The librarians had it out for him, and any less-than-savory activities he participated in there would be reported to the school. Austin being Austin, he wouldn’t have minded trying to pull off a homework heist under their noses. But Carter wouldn’t take the chance.
Straight Cheese ’n’ Pizza’s bursting booths and little kids playing in the arcade made a great cover for our homework swap—we looked like students studying, and there were too many screaming children for anyone to detect otherwise.
The Bro Code Page 10