by Nicola Yoon
He grins at me. “Maybe I should try that again,” he says.
I laugh. “That was tragic.” I shake my head. But secretly, I’m kind of thrilled to have an excuse to get closer to him and fix his form.
I think of every straight rom-com I’ve ever watched with a pool-hall scene. Usually going to play pool is the guy’s suggestion, because:
he can show off his skills.
and
he can get up close and personal with the girl under the guise of showing her proper technique.
I reset the rack. “Here, let me show you,” I say. I stand right next to him, lean over the table and demonstrate the proper hold.
He tries again. This time the cue ball does hit the rack, but with so little force the balls barely even move.
I slap my hand over my mouth to cover my laugh.
This time after I reset the rack, I scoot around the table, lean over and put my arm on top of his so I can adjust his hold.
He turns his head. Suddenly his face (and lips) are just right there.
“Thanks for helping me,” he says.
“You’re welcome,” I say back.
His eyes drop to my lips and stay there.
“The sign outside says Wilshire Billiards, not Wilshire Make Out,” says a voice—Julio—from somewhere behind us.
I practically leap away from X. “I was just teaching him how to play.”
X stays where he is, laughing down into his outstretched arm.
Julio smiles and shakes his head. “Call it what you want, but keep it PG-13 in here for me. I know your dad, for Jesus’s sake,” he says as he walks away.
X just laughs some more.
I poke him with my cue and tell him to be quiet.
“All right, let me see if I got this,” he says, looking back down at the table. Suddenly, his body transforms itself. His stance goes from sloppy to perfect. He’s holding the cue exactly right, and his head is lined up perfectly.
He breaks with a loud smack and sinks one solid. Then he proceeds to sink four more in a row before just missing the sixth. He turns around, catches my eye and gives me the cockiest grin I’ve ever seen.
“Guess you were right about there being nothing to do in Lake Elizabeth,” he says.
I’ve. Been. Had.
I thump my cue on the ground. “Why’d you pretend you didn’t know how to play?”
“Maybe I wanted you to teach me,” he says with a wink. “Or maybe it’s because you made fun of my hometown. Let’s see what you got, city girl.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Oh, you’re going down, country boy,” I say. I shoot the nine but miss. I’m still flustered by his trickery and by how good he is. I don’t get another shot to win, because he sinks his remaining solid and then the eight ball to win.
I swear louder than I should and he just laughs at me. “I like this side of you,” he says.
“Don’t try to distract me.” I pretend-scowl at him, but I’m actually happy that he’s as good as he is. Pool is a lot more fun when you have actual competition.
I win the next two games, but he wins the fourth and fifth. I take the sixth when he misses an easy bank for the eight ball. We’re tied at three games all.
“Should we just leave it tied?” he asks.
“Why? Are you afraid to lose?”
“Yeah, don’t say I didn’t give you a chance to get out of this with your dignity,” he says.
I roll my eyes. “You let me worry about my dignity,” I say. “But can we eat something first? I’m starving, and their burgers are really good.”
We order at the bar and then sit at one of the small tables up front.
X takes a look around. It’s more crowded now than when we first got here. One of the old-timers is at the jukebox, no doubt putting on a country-western song from sometime in the last century. I look over at Julio, who laugh-shrugs at me. He’s been promising to get better songs for the jukebox for years.
“So you and your dad used to come here?” X asks.
“Every Sunday morning. He and Julio would trade off giving me lessons, and then we’d just play for hours.”
“Man, your dad sounds great,” he says before remembering that I don’t think he’s so great. “Sorry, I forgot about—”
“No, it’s okay,” I say. “I mean, I used to think he was great too. Honestly, it’s part of why this whole thing sucks so much. It’s one thing that he cheated on Mom, but I feel like he betrayed my idea of him too. And now he’s getting remarried and there’s no going back to the way it was before. I dunno. I’m not making sense.”
“Shit, Evie, I didn’t realize he was getting married again.” He puts his hand on top of mine for a few seconds. “I get what you’re saying, though. It’s like he’s not who you thought he was.”
“Yeah, like in the movies when there’s a twist and it turns out the person you thought was the good guy is actually the villain.” My heart feels tight in my chest. I don’t want to make things so heavy between us, but I feel like I need to tell him the truth about how I’m feeling about the world.
“I wasn’t always like this,” I say.
“Like what?”
Julio comes by with the burgers right then, which is good, because it gives me some time to figure out what I’m trying to say.
X bites into his burger and then makes a happy, that’s so delicious sound. We eat for a little while before he prompts me again: “You weren’t always like what?”
I lean forward. “I don’t know if I believe in this stuff anymore.”
“What stuff?” he asks, chewing slowly.
I wave my hand between us. “Dating.”
He puts down his burger and his eyes are steady on me as he waits for me to go on. “Remember at the bonfire you asked me if Sophie and Cassidy ever dated?” I ask.
“Yeah, why?” I see the moment he figures it out. “They hook up or something?”
I nod.
His eyes roam over my face. “How come you’re sad about it?”
I don’t want to tell him about our fight and how I haven’t seen them all week. “I don’t think they’re right together, and when they break up it’s going to ruin our friendship.”
“Who says they’re gonna break up?”
How do I explain this to him without telling him about the visions?
“Nothing lasts,” I say. “My parents used to be so happy. If you’d met the Evie from a year and a half ago and told her that her dad would cheat on her mom and they’d get divorced and her dad would be getting remarried, she would’ve made merciless fun of you.”
“Well, I don’t know what the old Evie was like, but I like the new one a lot,” he says. “It’s okay you’re feeling cynical these days. It’s okay if you don’t trust the world so much right now. You have good reasons.”
And just like that, I like him even more than I already did. He’s so surprising, this boy, swagger and insight and gentleness all mixed up together.
We finish our burgers and head back to our pool table. “Ready to lose?” he asks, picking up his cue.
I don’t even bother to narrow my eyes at him. As soon as he’s done racking, I break, sinking two solids. After that, I proceed to run the table like it’s my job. Only the eight ball is left. I turn and give him the cockiest grin I know how to.
“I deserve that,” he says as he busts out laughing.
“Maybe I’ll sink it with my eyes closed,” I say.
“No way,” he says. “No way you’re gonna take that kind of chance.”
But it’s an easy shot for me. I’m not taking much of a chance at all. I sink it with my eyes closed. When I open my eyes again, he’s right there next to me.
He takes my cue from me and lays it on the table. “Nice game,” he says, pulli
ng me into his arms for a hug.
I wrap my arms around his waist and press my face against his chest.
We stay that way for a little while, until he says, “We can go slow if you want.” He pulls back a little to look down at my face. “I mean, assuming you want to do this again. With me.”
It’s sweet how nervous he is. I smile up at him. “Okay, let’s go slow.”
“Does this mean we can officially call this a date?” he asks.
I laugh and put my head back on his chest. “It’s definitely a date,” I say.
CHAPTER 32
Let’s Taco ’Bout It
MOM HAS HER very first app date tonight. His name is Bob. He’s a pediatrician. An oncological pediatrician. When I asked her why she thought a handsome doctor had never been married at age forty-seven, she looked at me and said, “He saves the lives of children, Evie. Children with cancer.”
I’m not supersure what one thing has to do with the other, but I let it go.
“Trust me, you look beautiful,” Danica says to Mom as they come downstairs.
How Danica talked Mom into shimmery gold eyeshadow and red lipstick, I don’t know. But she’s right. Mom looks gorgeous. She’s wearing a dark-blue midlength dress that flares at the hips with her favorite pair of practical-but-still-sexy heels. The last time I saw her wear those shoes was out to dinner with Dad.
She checks her face in the vestibule mirror and turns to Danica. “You sure about this lipstick? You don’t think it’s too—”
“Come hither?” I fill in for her. Fire engines are less red.
“Yes, that,” Mom says.
Danica waggles her eyebrows. “Getting him to come hither is the point.”
“Ha!” says Mom. She checks herself in the mirror again, trying out different smiles. I’m happy she’s excited and stressed that she’s excited.
The doorbell rings.
“Is that him?” I ask, getting up from the couch. “Shouldn’t you meet him at the restaurant so he doesn’t know where we live in case he turns out to be a serial killer cancer doctor?”
“I am meeting him at the restaurant,” Mom says, frowning at the door.
Danica looks through the peephole. “Oh, it’s Dad,” she says, voice bright and happy. She throws the door open.
From the look on Mom’s face, I can tell she’s just as surprised as I am.
Mom walks to the door. “I didn’t know you were coming over this evening.” Her voice is hard, harder than I expect, like she’s scolding him.
Dad hears it too and wipes his palm across his mouth. “Grace,” he says. “You look nice.”
At the compliment, Mom takes a step back. She folds her arms across her chest and waits. “What’s this about?”
“Sorry about this,” he says. “I was trying to surprise Evie.”
“Safe to say you’ve surprised us all,” says Mom. Her Jamaican accent is slight, but it’s there. She steps aside and lets him in.
I haven’t seen him in six months, not since the night he took Danica out to dinner to meet Shirley and I refused to go.
He looks the same, and he looks not the same. Like, I’ve never seen him in that green shirt before. And his Afro has some gray in it. Even his mustache has some gray in it. And is he thinner? I don’t know. It might be one of those things where you only notice the changes in someone after you’ve been away from them for a while. Probably he was gray before he left us. But the green shirt is new. New to me, at least.
“Evie,” he says. “It’s Taco Night.” He says it like it’s sacred. Like we’re in church and a corn tortilla taco is the sacrament. Which, okay, yes. Taco Night is a religious experience and missing it is definitely a sacrilege. But it’s his fault we’re missing it.
He reaches into the pocket of his blazer (new) and takes out his glasses (also new).
“Look,” he says. “I got us Front of the Line tickets for Mariscos Chente.”
I stand there, mute. All six of their eyeballs eyeball me. Dad’s are hopeful. Danica’s are watchful. And Mom’s are…hard to read. No one has a better poker face than her. It’s part of being a nurse, I think.
Mom takes my hand. “Let’s go upstairs and talk.”
She closes the door once we’re in her bedroom. “I want you to go with your father.”
A thing I never noticed before: she only refers to him as “your father” these days instead of “your dad.”
“Mom, I don’t want to—” I start to protest.
She talks over me. “You’re already not going to his wedding.”
“You know why I’m not going,” I say.
“We’re not talking about that.” Her voice is firm. She meets my eyes and holds them steady. “You know what one of the hardest parts of being a mom is?”
“What?”
“Watching your child do something you know they’ll regret.”
And that does it. I agree to go. I don’t want anything to be harder for her, especially when it comes to Dad.
I get back downstairs in time to hear Danica telling Dad about her new boyfriend. “His name is Archer,” she says.
“Archer is a profession, not a name,” he says, in typical Dad fashion.
Before I can stop myself, I’m playing along. “It’s more of an Olympic sport than a profession, really.”
“Summer or winter?” Dad asks.
“Summer, for sure.”
Dad and I smile at each other until I remember I’m not supposed to smile at him anymore. It would be so easy to slip back into this rhythm with him.
Danica rolls her eyes in our general direction. “Anyway, Archer is his name, and he’s great.”
I walk to the door, ready to leave. Danica and Dad hug and say goodbye. Mom and Dad just nod at each other. And we’re off.
* * *
——
It’s only a fifteen-minute walk from our apartment complex to where we’re going. Here’s how we spend the first five minutes:
Dad: How’s school?
Me: Fine.
Long, awkward silence.
Dad: I heard from Danica that you’re ballroom dancing. How’s that going?
Me: Fine.
Longer, more awkward silence.
Dad: How are your friends?
Me: I think you can guess the answer to this one, right?
He stops walking.
I stop too. “It’s not like you can bribe me into forgiving you with tacos, anyway,” I say.
He throws his hands up. “What can I bribe you with, then?”
I fold my arms tight across my chest and stare down at my shoes. Decaying jacaranda leaves, more brown than purple, litter the sidewalk. It’s funny how they’re so beautiful on the tree and such a nuisance off of it.
“Can we call a taco truce for the night?” he asks.
The last time I heard him sound like this was when he promised me and Danica that he didn’t love us any less just because we wouldn’t be living together anymore.
I sigh and agree to the truce with a nod.
He smiles like I’ve told him he’s best dad in the world or something.
I really miss thinking that he was the best dad in the world.
We start walking again. “Should we devise a conquering strategy?” he asks. At my confused look, he goes on: “We need to decide which trucks to partake of and in what order.”
I can’t help smiling. “You mean because of the great chimichanga incident of yesteryear?”
“Those who don’t learn from history—”
“Are doomed to repeat it,” I finish for him, with pretend seriousness.
Last time we started with the fried meats, which was a mistake. Too heavy. By three chimichangas in, we were full.
“Let’s start with the ceviches,
” he says.
We agree and spend a few more minutes deciding which trucks to hit and when. Once that’s settled, we move on to talking about our favorite sport, the National Spelling Bee. I used to argue that it wasn’t a sport, but then Dad convinced me it is. “Have you seen how much those kids sweat while they’re thinking?” he asked.
We talk about last year’s winning word—prospicience—which, weirdly enough, given my current predicament, means “foresight.”
We don’t talk about how we missed watching it together.
We don’t talk about how this year’s competition is only two months away and how we probably won’t watch that together either. Maybe he doesn’t watch it at all anymore. I wonder if Shirley is a word geek.
We cross Sixth Street and cut through Pan Pacific Park until we’re finally on Wilshire Boulevard. Taco trucks gleam in the distance.
“I smell my future,” Dad says.
“It smells like salsa,” I say back.
He laughs and I laugh too.
We eat until our stomachs hurt. It turns out it doesn’t matter if you start with the lighter foods if you still eat too much of them.
On our way back, he tells me terrible Mexican food jokes:
Q: What do you call a nosy pepper?
A: Jalapeño business.
and
The first tortilla asks the second tortilla: “Do you want to taco ’bout it?”
The second tortilla says: “No. It’s nacho problem.”
They’re such bad jokes that I can’t help laughing. I think the phrase dad joke was invented because of my dad.
We move on from bad jokes to talking about our favorites from the evening. Tacos al pastor for him. Shrimp ceviche for me. It feels like every other Taco Night, except we’re both going home to someplace new.
We’re just a couple of apartment buildings away from home when he says he has something to tell me.
“Shirley and I are thinking about postponing the wedding,” he says.