“This can’t be right,” I said, crossing out my total for the third time. “The packing slip says thirty boxes, but there must be, like, one-thirty here.”
“Let me see,” Dina said, coming around the cash. She started counting. “You’re right. One-thirty exactly. They overshipped.”
I sighed as I separated out thirty chocolates and started to pile the others back into the box. “Mr. Goodman will have to return the rest, I guess.”
“No. Wait,” Dina said. “I just had an idea.” She had a strange glint in her eye. “The slip says thirty, right? It’s not like the supplier is going to remember where the extras went. And, besides.” She picked up the packing slip. “They were shipped from British Columbia. If we sent them back now, they’d never get back to the warehouse in time for Valentine’s Day. And they’ll have gone bad by next year. They’d basically be wasted.”
“Dina?” I raised my eyebrows. “If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking . . .”
“It’s for a good cause,” she added, ignoring my warning tone. She grabbed the sample Cupid doll in one hand and the box of chocolates in the other. “Cupid and I will be out in the mall corridor,” she said, pressing his tummy to start him up. “I’ll send them in, you sign them up.”
I had to hand it to her. Legally speaking, what she was doing might have qualified as stealing—just a little bit—but it also worked. Because, as it turns out, free chocolate will make people do just about anything. By four o’clock that day, I’d signed up forty people for the customer loyalty plan. At four fifteen, number forty-one walked in, grinning at me. He took off his giant DJ earphones and set his box of free chocolates down on the counter.
“These are for you,” he said, sliding the box toward me. You’re so huggable. I left them sitting awkwardly on the counter between us. “I want to sign up, but I just have one question. Do pens count toward this customer loyalty thing, or just cards?”
Not that I had any reason to notice, but he looked great. Patrick was wearing a crisp button-down shirt and jeans that fell off his hips just a little. He seemed relaxed, and even more cheerful than usual—obviously his two-day bout of fake Lyme disease had given him lots of time to rest.
“Just cards,” I answered. “Sorry.”
“Too bad,” Patrick said, filling out the sign-up form I passed him, “because I need a new one. That pen you sold me last time—it really does make a crisp line, but now that I’ve had some time to think about it, it’s almost too crisp, you know?”
“Too crisp,” I repeated, trying to strike a professional tone. There was a playful look in his eyes I didn’t like. Now that the cookie had revealed all, I could plainly see that he was flirting with me and, considering that Dina was just outside, it made me more than a little nervous.
“Do you have anything that writes really smooth? You know those pens where the ink just kind of rolls out?”
“Rolly,” I said with a straight face. “Not sploodgy or crisp. I think we have just the thing.” He followed me to the pen section where we fell into our already familiar routine. I’d hand him a pen, he’d test it on the scraps of paper and make thoughtful faces, then I’d hand him another option.
“So?” he said kind of casually after a while. “How did I do?”
“Do?”
“You know, with the cookies?”
I gulped. This was the part of the day I’d been dreading—the moment where I’d have to tell him that, as delicious as the cookies had been, his crush was unrequited.
“Yeah. About that . . .” I started. “The cookies—the second attempt—weren’t bad. They were really good, actually. You obviously followed the recipe, b—” But my “but” got cut off by Dina’s excited voice coming down the aisle.
“Elyse!” she squealed. “I just counted the forms. I can’t believe it! Forty-one customer loyalty cards. That’s over two hundred dollars. We’re practically halfway there, and it’s only the first day.”
“Dina, that’s awesome,” I said, partly because it was true, and partly for Patrick’s benefit. “It’s all thanks to you, you know. You’re so charming and friendly. Between you and the chocolate, who could resist?” She beamed. “Hey,” I said, thinking on my feet. “You know what, Patrick? Dina here knows everything about pens. She can probably help you better than I can. Plus, I have that last box of merchandise to unpack before our driving lesson starts. So . . .” I trailed off, already walking away.
It didn’t take Dina long to shift into full-flirtation mode. “I love your hair,” I heard her say as I retreated down the aisle. “I wish I could get mine to go like that. Are those curls natural? For real? Okay, let me show you our best pens. If you promise not to tell anyone, I can even give you my employee discount.”
I exhaled heavily as I stepped behind the cash where Cupid was, once again shaking his diapered butt. A bunch of eleven- or twelve-year-old girls were standing near the card display, watching and gossiping.
“That doll is sooooo cute,” one of them said.
“I’m going to tell Nick G. that you want one for Valentine’s Day,” teased another, which made the first girl shriek and pretend-hit her friend.
“If you do, I’m killing you.”
“He’d probably buy it for you, too. You know he has a crush on you. Everyone can tell. You’re so lucky. Nobody ever has a crush on me,” the second girl whined dejectedly.
“Hey,” I said, joining their conversation, uninvited, from behind the cash. “Don’t stress about it. You’re probably just too smart. Guys get intimidated by that. Plus, there are worse things than nobody having a crush on you.” Like the wrong person having a crush on you, I thought. But instead of listening to the wise advice of their elder, a few of them just rolled their eyes. Then they all walked away—one giant cluster of sixth-grade giggles. I tried not to take it personally. When I was their age, I wouldn’t have believed me either.
Fifteen minutes later, as Patrick and I walked across the icy parking lot toward his red car, I mentally rehearsed what I was going to say: “You’re a great guy, don’t get me wrong . . . but I’m just not interested in dating. . . . We should still be friends/neighbors/people who work at the same mall. . . . It’s for the best. . . . You’ll find someone else—someone who cares as much as you do about the plight of homeless people . . . someone who looks out for the welfare of helpless animals, perhaps . . . someone who loves your hair. . . .”
Sure, it was probably going to make for an awkward driving lesson, but it was the kind of thing that was best done quickly—like ripping off a Band-Aid. He’d really only known me a week, anyway, and I hadn’t always exactly been nice to him in that time. How serious about liking me could he actually be?
Apparently, the answer to that question was about to be revealed to me in surprising detail.
“Wait, wait,” Patrick said as we walked around the column for parking row C-10. “Close your eyes.”
“Why?”
“Because I have a surprise for you.”
“Is it a unicorn?” I said sarcastically.
“No,” he answered.
“Okay. Then forget it. I’m not closing my eyes.”
“It’s better than a unicorn,” he tried. Now, that, I found hard to believe. Not that I’d been into unicorns since I was six or seven years old—but still, a real, live unicorn in the SouthSide Mall parking lot would be pretty unbeatable when it came to surprises.
“Even if it is better than an enchanted magical horse with a golden horn—which is impossible,” I countered, “it’s not safe to walk through a parking lot with your eyes closed.”
“I won’t let anything happen to you. I’ll hold your hand,” he promised, which, considering the situation, didn’t do much to make me feel better. The only reason I eventually gave in was because it was cold. I didn’t want to stand out there arguing all day.
“Okay. Fine,” I said, but I shoved both hands into my pockets, forcing him to hold my arm instead. I closed my eyes. “Thi
s’d better be good.”
He steered me carefully over the icy patches and around parked cars. I heard him fumble with his keys. “Okay,” he said as he opened the door. “You can look now.” There, stuffed into the cup holders in the front seat, were a dozen red roses—or, to be more exact—a dozen, red, dead roses. Each rose’s long stem was slumped over in a different direction—as if the weight of their big flowery heads had suddenly become too much to bear. On a scale of one to ten, with one being nothing at all and ten being the unicorn, they were definitely no higher than a two.
“Oh no,” Patrick said, diving past me into the car when he saw. “They weren’t like that this morning.” He tried to prop the floppy stems up against the dash but they just wilted over again. “I swear. The lady I bought them from said they’d probably last three days. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to leave them out in the cold,” he said, scratching underneath the brim of his blue and white hat.
I stood, shifting my feet in the snow. “Flowers like water, too,” I added unhelpfully. The exposed bottoms of the roses’ stems were sticking through the cup holders and resting against the floor mat.
“Yeah. I’ve heard people say that.” He sighed. “Okay, never mind. You must be freezing.” He climbed out of the driver’s seat to let me in. “There’s another surprise, anyway.” He ran around and got in. I shut the door, dreading whatever was coming next.
Patrick turned the key in the ignition and hit the power button on the CD player. Soft music filled the car. Even though I’d only heard them once—during our last driving lesson—I recognized the band as Surely Sarah. This was a slower song, though. A romantic song. Patrick turned to me.
“Elyse,” he started. I could tell he was nervous. “Since the very first time I saw you through your window, I’ve thought you were beautiful . . . not to mention a kick-ass interpretive chair dancer. I mean, that scuba move, c’mon. . . .” He just had to tease me about that, didn’t he? I gave him a look, but he just kept going, using a more serious tone now. “And, now that I’m getting to know you, I’m starting to really like you. You’re so smart, and so funny. And, this song kind of says everything I’ve been wanting to say to you for a little while now, so—”
I couldn’t let him go on. The smell of dead roses was overpoweringly sweet. The singer’s voice was sickeningly sentimental. The look in Patrick’s eyes was so intense it made me squirm. I reached over and hit the power button on the CD player. The car fell silent.
“Stop, Patrick,” I said. “Please.” He stared at me expectantly. “Look, I told you the other day. I don’t date. So . . .” I picked up a rose, then let it flop again. “While this is all really nice, really sweet, honestly, I’m not interested in having a boyfriend. If that’s what you were about to ask me.” He looked heartbroken. “It’s not you,” I went on, “it’s just, like I told you, I’m really focused on school right now. Plus, I’ve done the boyfriend thing before. It didn’t end well.”
“That’s because you dated one of them,” he said.
“One of who?”
“One of the ninety-eight percent. Look, when I was talking to Dina in the hallway today, she told me about what happened with your ex last year. She said you ran into the guy today at American Apparel. So, probably this”—he lifted a rose and let it flop, too—“wasn’t the greatest timing.” He squinted his eyes shut for a second. “When Dina told me what happened, I should have come out to the car and thrown the flowers out before you could see them. I could have bought more later. They were only twelve fifty.”
“Honestly, Patrick,” I said. “It wouldn’t have mattered. I’m just . . . off the market right now.”
“Right,” he said, staring out the windshield. “Okay. I get that. You can’t rush these things.”
I had a feeling this was going to be a long, long driving lesson. “But hey,” I went on as brightly as I could manage. “We’re still friends, right?” I waited anxiously for him to answer. It was weird, but in the week or so that I’d known him, I’d already gotten used to having Patrick around. I liked his sweet, yet sometimes annoying ways; his cool, mellow music; his quirky sense of humor. I was even starting to think his strange obsession with finding the perfect pen was sort of charming. I didn’t want to lose him altogether or have things be weird between us. “Plus, we’ve only got eight days left before my road test,” I went on, “and I can’t do a three-point turn to save my life. So what are we doing sitting around having awkward conversations?”
“Absolutely,” he said. “Still friends.” I breathed a sigh of relief. “And you’re right. We should get going. We need to make you into . . .” He paused, thinking.
“The Tchaikovsky of three-point turns,” I helped him out.
“Exactly.” He turned the heat up. “And when we’re done that, you can work on becoming the Hemingway of highway merging.” I let my head fall back against the seat. He knew I hated highway driving more than anything—more than parallel parking, even. Clearly, he was punishing me for not wanting to be his girlfriend.
“So, are we driving, or are we sitting here all day smelling the dead roses?” he asked.
I checked my rearview mirror. “We’re driving,” I said, backing oh-so-carefully out of the space.
Chapter 10
Having (narrowly) survived my high-speed highway merging lesson—not to mention the weirdness with Patrick in the parking lot, and the horror of running into my ex while wearing a see-through dress and reindeer bra—I was relieved to turn the key in the lock and step into my very quiet house that night. My very own, very quiet house. I hung my coat up and walked into the kitchen, flipping on the light and feeling free. What should I do first? Eat chocolate for dinner? Turn the stereo up so loud the walls shook? Close all the curtains and dance around naked?
In the end, I settled for heating up one of the microwave dinners my mom had stocked the freezer with, sinking down onto the couch, and reading the book I was assigned for English class. Yeah. I’m wild and crazy like that. The phone rang a moment after I’d finished chapter three and scooped the last bite of pasty mashed potatoes out of the plastic tray.
“Elyse! We just arrived at the hotel here. How are you?” My mom’s voice sounded crackly and far away. “Is everything all right with the house, sweetie?”
“Everything’s great,” I said, “except for this one wall that caved in.” Even from halfway around the world and over a bad phone line, I could hear the unmistakable sound of my mother not laughing. “It’s fine, Mom.” I tried to reassure her. “No problems. I just got home from my driving lesson. I merged.”
“That’s wonderful, honey.” I could hear music in the background now. And somebody laughing. “And how was work?”
“Great,” I lied. There was no point telling her I’d seen Matt and Tabby. I wanted her to enjoy her vacation, not worry about me having an emotional breakdown. “Dina and I are selling lots of stupid Cupids.”
“Oh. Just a second, Elyse.” I could hear Valter’s voice asking a question. “Yes! Why not? I’d love a margarita, thanks,” my mom answered. “Did you remember to double-check that all the doors are locked?” she asked me, coming back on the line. “And the windows, too?”
“I’ll do it before I go to bed,” I said.
“Oh, good. And you’re sure you’re okay? Because, you know that if you need anything, you can call Auntie Sarah, or Carolynn, or ask the neighbors.”
“I’m okay, Mom. Go. Drink your margarita. Don’t worry about a thing.”
“Okay, honey,” she said. The music was getting louder now. Maracas were shaking. Someone whistled loudly. Where was she, anyway? Some kind of nightclub? If so, it had obviously been Valter’s idea. My mom was usually in bed by ten. “I miss you,” she added.
“I miss you, too,” I said. “Good night.” I hung up the phone and sat back down on the couch. It was so quiet in the house now that I could hear the faint rumbling of the furnace cycling on in the basement; the creak of the sofa springs when I shifted my w
eight; the windowpanes rattling ever-so-slightly in the wind. I grabbed the remote and turned on the TV, flipping through the channels, past the crime-scene investigation shows that were guaranteed to freak me out. The only relatively nonscary thing I could find was American Super Model. The girls were wearing metallic bras underneath gauzy dresses that, come to think of it, looked a lot like the ones Dina and I had had on earlier that day. They were gluing peacock feathers to their faces for some kind of strange photo shoot in a rain forest. The models were all bitching and complaining about the mosquitoes, but I didn’t care. I just needed some background noise.
In fact, I turned the volume up high, filling the house with their whining (the girls’, not the mosquitoes’), before heading to the kitchen. When I got there, I washed my fork and drinking glass and set them in the drying rack, then swept the kitchen floor. See? I thought to myself as I emptied the dustpan into the garbage. Easy. I so had this running-a-household thing under control.
As a reward for being totally on top of everything, I took a bag of microwave popcorn out of the cupboard and popped it, breathing in the warm, buttery smell. I walked back to the living room where I ate the whole bowl by myself while the twiglike models made pouty lips and posed with chimpanzees.
The host and her assistant—that guy with the jet-black hair and scary-white teeth were critiquing the models on their poses. “She’s way too stiff,” Scary Teeth was saying. “She looks like a frightened sparrow, not a proud peacock. If she could just relax into the pose . . . own the outfit . . . really become the bird.” Easy for him to say, I thought. I’d bet a hundred dollars nobody had ever made him wear a see-through dress before.
I sighed and stared miserably at the TV, shoving handful after handful of popcorn into my mouth. It had been a long, strange day and, try as I might, I couldn’t get the image of Matt Love’s face out of my mind; or Tabby’s. I kept picturing the way she’d walked out of that dressing room. The way she’d reached for his hands and wrapped his arms around her waist, tipping her head back to look into his eyes—like it was the most natural thing in the world—exactly like I used to do.
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