by Sandy Hall
“Um, nothing,” Jane said, closing tabs and blushing furiously.
“Were you writing a story? I didn’t know you did anything creative.”
“Um … well, yes.”
“What was it? What kind of doctor? Now I’m curious.”
“We should concentrate on your thing. I’m sure you have plans tonight. Going out, picking up some hotties.”
“I have nothing to do,” Teo said, leaning back in the chair and lacing his hands behind his head casually. “I want to hear about your creative streak.”
“Gah. Fine. I write Doctor Who crossover fan fiction.”
“I don’t know what any of that means.”
“Do you know what Doctor Who is?”
“Some British TV show?”
“It is way more than that, but yes. It’s a TV show. Do you know what fan fiction is?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. So I write Doctor Who fan fiction mixed with bits and pieces of other TV shows or books or movies.”
“So what’s that one a crossover with?”
“Veronica Mars.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Do you live under a rock?”
“I don’t watch much TV.”
“You need to watch TV! And you definitely need to watch both of these shows. It is a requirement for being my friend.”
He held up his hands in surrender. “You’re very serious about this.”
“I am! We would put on an episode right now if we didn’t have other things to concentrate on.”
“I promise to watch at least one episode of both of those shows with you.”
“Thank you,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s a shame what this world is coming to.”
“Aren’t there, like, a billion seasons of Doctor Who?”
“Not quite.”
“I still don’t get it.”
“Then stop bothering me about it, and let’s talk about your dad search.”
“I guess. But I’m going to get to the bottom of this crossfit fanover thing.”
“You sound like my grandmother.”
“She’s a lovely woman. How is she these days?”
“She died three years ago.”
“Oh. Wow. I do remember that. Sorry for your loss.”
Jane rolled her eyes. “Thank you. Now can we get down to business?”
“Yeah. Just tell me whether he’s really in Illinois. I know you’re right, that I have a lot of other things to deal with first. But if I know where this guy is, he might seem more real.”
“You can’t run off and find him—you know that, right? Like, no matter what we learn right now, you should think about it a little. And definitely contact him before you do anything.”
“What would the Magic 8 Ball say?” Teo asked, picking it up off the shelf above Jane’s desk.
“Give it a whirl,” Jane said.
“Should I find my dad?” Teo asked.
“What does it say?” Jane asked.
Teo showed her the window, carefully turning it so the answer wouldn’t change or disappear. Ask again later.
Jane shrugged. “We’ll have to keep going without the wisdom of the Magic 8 for now.”
By the time Teo left, he had learned that Mateo Rodriguez definitely worked at the University of Illinois and was teaching a literature class five days a week over the summer. And Teo was going to track him down.
Chapter 17
On Teo’s day off, which happened to be Wednesday that week, Jane mentioned that she wanted to take the girls mini golfing before the summer ended.
“There’s another month until school starts.”
“Yeah, but I’m done babysitting in two weeks,” she reminded Teo.
“All right. Let’s take them mini golfing today,” he said, standing up from the sofa.
“Right now?”
“Sure.”
“You don’t mind spending your day off like this?”
“Hell, no. I love those little weirdos.”
“Awesome. I really appreciate your going with me. I foresee a long afternoon of fishing their balls out of water features.”
“You’ve never seen my sisters golf. They’re actually really good.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it.”
Jane and Teo rounded up the girls and got them settled in the van.
“Are we going to the good golf course at the boardwalk?” Keegan asked as she was buckling her seat belt.
“Yes,” Jane said.
“Yay!” all three girls yelled.
Teo put his hands over his ears. “You guys are so loud.”
He should have known better; acknowledging their loudness just made them yell louder.
Teo had not been kidding—Jane couldn’t believe what good golfers the three girls were. They were leagues ahead of her, getting bored when it took Jane six strokes to sink the ball.
“I hate to admit how much better they are than I am,” Jane said after she shooed them on to the next hole. “Why are they so good?”
“When my mom and Buck go on vacation, they always golf, so they made sure the girls love to golf, too.”
“I’m totally slowing you guys down. You can go ahead, too,” she said.
“Nah, I’m good.”
“I feel like you’re paying too much attention to me. I’m getting all nervous.” She wiped her palms on her shorts.
“I’ll distract you. Did you write any new fan stories lately?”
She rolled her eyes and smiled over at him. “You know, if this was fan fiction, you would try to show me how to adjust my hands on my club to make my swing more potent.”
“You know, Jane,” Teo said, “I could give you some pointers to make your swing more potent.”
Jane laughed, figuring that Teo was teasing her, until he actually stepped toward her and her breath caught in her throat.
“Unless you don’t want me to,” Teo said, backing off when he sensed her tension.
“No, no. I could probably use some pointers.”
Teo stood behind her, leaning in close, unnecessarily close. He felt like he was playing a part, but it was a part he liked, a part he wasn’t used to playing. It wasn’t anything he’d ever felt comfortable trying before, but it was different with Jane.
“So you put your hands like this,” Teo said, manipulating her thumbs and fingers. “And loosen up a little. You’re too stiff.”
Jane tried to loosen up, but she seemed to have forgotten how movement worked and instead kind of wiggled her butt and kept her legs completely straight.
“Jane,” Teo said, stepping to her side, figuring he might as well take the opportunity to teach her a better stance. “Like this.” He bounced a little, loosening his joints and holding his hands the way she should.
“Okay, I think I get it,” Jane said.
Teo wrapped his arms around her again, and she closed her eyes, allowing herself to relax against him. But as they were about to take the stroke, they heard a big splash up ahead.
“Hey, you two lovebirds!” A guy who worked at the mini golf course was calling to them. “I think one of your kids fell into the pond.”
“Oh my God! Keegan!” Jane cried, tearing herself out of Teo’s arms and running across the greens and through other people’s shots. She paid no attention to the path—she just wanted to get to the poor little girl sitting in the too-blue water.
Teo ran a few steps behind Jane, kicking off his flip-flops, preparing to go in and rescue his sister. But when he and Jane reached Keegan, she was already standing up and walking toward the bank.
“What happened?” Jane asked.
“I was trying to see if the water felt as blue as it looked,” Keegan explained. Teo lifted her out of the water, and she wrapped her legs around his waist. Teo hugged her close, not caring about the blue water staining his shirt.
“It’s okay,” he said.
“Oh, I know,” Keegan said, leaning back. “And it didn’t feel as blue as it
looked.”
Piper and Rory trotted over then, and the group got ready to leave.
“But we didn’t finish playing!” Rory complained.
“Keegan needs to change,” Jane said.
“Fine,” Rory grumbled.
“Next time I want to go in the pond!” Piper said.
Teo shook his head.
Before he and Jane got into the car, he pulled on her arm to stop her. “Do you want to hang out sometime without my sisters? Someplace besides your house or my house or the town pool?”
“Um, definitely,” Jane said, biting her lip to keep from smiling too much.
“Maybe this weekend?”
Jane nodded. She wished she could speed things up and get to that point where she was allowed to kiss Teo. She had a feeling it was coming, but they weren’t there yet.
Which didn’t mean she could stop thinking about it.
By Saturday afternoon, Jane felt like she couldn’t hold it in a second longer. She and Margo lounged on the sofa, watching TV.
“Teo asked me to go on a date tonight,” Jane whispered to her sister. She hadn’t even really meant to say it. It was as if the words overflowed from her mouth.
“Really?”
“Yeah, he asked me on Wednesday.”
“No way!” Margo said. “I can’t believe you held it in that long.”
Jane smiled. “I didn’t want to jinx it by talking about it too much. I think it’s a date. I mean, maybe it isn’t. But I think it might be.”
“I figured you’d made up when he stopped by the house the other night, but I never got a chance to ask you about it.”
“I think something’s happening,” Jane said.
“I can’t believe you’re the same person who, mere weeks ago, refused to even admit that she liked Teo.”
Jane sank deeper into the cushions. “I really, really like him. I don’t even know when it happened. But this week has been downright magical.”
“How?” Margo asked.
“Oh, just with him asking me out. And he’s around more. After last week I was starting to worry that we’d never talk again, and then he finally came around.”
Their mother called them for dinner.
“Where’s Dad?” Margo asked as she sat down.
“Working late,” their mom said.
They were barely two bites into the meal when she started nagging Jane. “We really need to talk about college,” she said.
“I know,” Jane said. “I’ve been working on a plan.”
“Really?” her mom asked.
Jane took a deep breath. “Yeah, I’ve been thinking about it, and even though I’m still not completely sure that college is for me, I know I need to at least apply to keep my options open. But I’d really like to get a job and maybe a couple of roommates after graduation. I don’t know what I want to do with my life. It seems like a waste of time and money to go to college without a purpose.” Jane sat up straight, proud of herself for having something prepared this time.
“And what would you do for health insurance?” her mother asked.
“I don’t know. Can’t I stay on yours? Or if I find a full-time job, won’t I have insurance?”
Her mother rolled her eyes. “And what about utilities and paying for your car?”
“I’d have a job. Therefore, I would have money. And remember the part about roommates?”
“And who are these hypothetical roommates? Where would you find them?”
“I don’t know. Craigslist?”
“You will not live with anyone you meet on Craigslist,” her mother said, slamming her fist on the dining room table.
“Lots of people find roommates on Craigslist.”
“Not my seventeen-year-old daughter.”
“For starters, I’ll be eighteen then, and you won’t have as much say in the matter. But I know how to find a roommate responsibly.”
“You will end up living in a crack den.”
Jane shook her head. “You have no faith in me.”
“I want what’s best for you! Why is this so hard for you to understand?”
“I want what’s best for me, too. I’ve come up with a plan that I’m comfortable with. And in six months, or two years, or ten years, maybe I’ll decide I do want to go to college, but I need to make my own decisions about my life right now.”
“This is unacceptable.”
“You told me I needed a plan, and I laid one out to you. A completely reasonable plan.”
“How is it reasonable?” her mother asked, shaking her head.
“I’ll have money, food, a place to live.”
“It isn’t what I want for you.”
“Why won’t you listen to me? This is what I want for me,” Jane said. “You never listen.”
Without another glance, Jane pushed herself away from the table and ran upstairs. She hated herself for it. That wasn’t how a mature adult would behave. But she hated her mother more.
She paced her room, tossing her Magic 8 from one hand to the other until there was a knock on her door and Margo peered in.
“That sucked,” Margo said.
“Tell me about it.”
“What does it have to say about this?” Margo asked, gesturing toward the black ball.
Jane tossed the Magic 8 to Margo.
“Will our mother ever listen to Jane?” Margo asked. She checked the answer and smiled.
“What? What did it say?” Jane asked.
“I’m sure if you asked it nicely, it would tell you itself.”
“But it always works better when you’re asking on someone else’s behalf.”
“You make up the weirdest superstitions, Janie.” Margo tossed the ball back.
“Will Margo and Kara get married?” Jane asked.
“Don’t even bother with that question. The answer is no.”
“Does Kara like Margo?”
Margo looked at her sister threateningly and ran over to her side so she wouldn’t lie to her about the ball’s answer. Jane flipped it back over before Margo saw it.
“What? What did it say?”
“Ask it yourself,” Jane said with a smirk.
Margo grabbed it back. “Is Jane going on a date with Teo tonight?”
Jane’s eyes went wide. “Holy crap! I forgot about Teo!”
Chapter 18
Jane was waiting on her front steps that night when Teo pulled around the corner. She skipped over to the passenger-side door and hopped into the car.
“Hey,” Teo said.
“Hey. So what movie are we seeing?” Jane asked as he pulled away from the curb.
Teo looked confused. “I guess we never decided that detail.”
“I do this thing where I just go to the movies and see what’s playing next. Sometimes I end up seeing a movie I might not have seen otherwise, and it might have more meaning in my life than I could have imagined.”
“Sounds like fun,” Teo said.
“I like to call it cinematic serendipity. Or at least that’s what Margo calls it, since she’s the one who named it. I’m the one who had to look up the word serendipity.”
“But you’re the one who made it up,” Teo said. “And it’s genius.”
“I’m really glad you wanted to hang out tonight,” Jane said, smiling.
“I don’t know why we don’t do this more often. It’s weird.” He stopped there, not wanting to say exactly what he wanted to say—at least not so early in the evening.
“It is weird,” Jane said. She didn’t say any more, either.
Cinematic serendipity meant that they ended up seeing an action thriller. The plot wasn’t bad, but it had way more sex than either of them could have predicted. And not fade-to-black sex. Butts, boobs, and even some side penis. They were both thoroughly embarrassed by it, and their discomfort was only made worse by the main male character’s penchant for really loud orgasm noises. Teo couldn’t even bring himself to look at Jane.
“Oh my God,” Jane gasp
ed as the movie couple started kissing again.
“I guess they feel like they have to take every chance they can, in case it’s their last,” Teo said in a decent impression of the main character.
“But, like, how do they even do it so much? Don’t they get tired after a long day of chasing bad guys?” Jane asked, laughing.
If there had been a lot of other people in the theater with them, they would have totally gotten shushed, but thanks to some bad reviews that Teo and Jane hadn’t read and because the movie had already been out for a month, there was only a sprinkling of other people in theater.
“That does not seem like appropriate work wear to me,” Teo said.
“I mean, to each his own, but assless chaps in public are so last year,” Jane said.
Acknowledging what was happening on-screen made both of them feel less embarrassed about it. Teo kind of hoped that would translate into real life.
“So,” Teo said as they were walking out of the movie, “you know how things have been a little, um, awkward between us lately, beyond the obvious dad stuff? Like that time I tried to kiss you and I fell on my face?”
“Yeah,” Jane said, glancing over at him as though he was about to pummel her with a truth she didn’t want to hear. “I was wondering if we were ever going to talk about that.”
“Did that movie make it better or worse?”
Jane stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, and Teo was worried that she was going to run away. But instead he noticed she was laughing so hard she couldn’t walk.
“Oh my God,” she gasped, putting her hands on her knees.
“So, better?”
“Yeah, you know, I think it did make things better. Perhaps that was the serendipity of it.” Jane stood up and smiled, looking across the parking lot. “Is it weird that the movie made me crave frozen yogurt?”
“Maybe a little,” Teo said. “But I really want some now, too.”
The frozen-yogurt place was bright and cool compared with the parking lot, which still held on to the heat of the day.
“So do you have a theory on fro-yo, too?” Teo asked, bumping his hip playfully into Jane’s.
“I have lots of theories.”
“But are any of them as awesome as your cinematic serendipity theory?”