by Amanda Abram
Rachel shook her head at me before turning her attention back to Abby.
My stepmother was hot. Well, at least she was before giving birth to my little sister six months ago. Don’t get me wrong, she still had a smokin’ body (she’d lost the baby weight in no time), but ever since Abby came along, Rachel always appeared tired and disheveled. Like right now, for instance, her dark brown hair was piled high on her head in a messy bun and looked like it hadn’t been washed in a couple of days. She had bags under her eyes from lack of sleep and her oversized, light gray t-shirt was stained with baby food, baby spit-up, and baby who-knows-what-else.
I wasn’t always a big fan of Rachel. She was nice enough. She was young—only twenty-eight—and because of that, she even bordered on cool sometimes. And she seemed to really love my dad, and vice versa.
But she wasn’t my mom. And she never would be.
She never tried to be, though. If anything, she tried to be my friend instead. My annoying friend who attempted to impart unsolicited advice on me at every opportunity she had.
I could feel some of that coming on right now, so I figured I needed to make a quick exit.
“I’m gonna head out,” I said. “Tell Dad I’ll be back by curfew?”
“Sure,” she agreed disapprovingly. For some reason, Rachel liked Grace—probably because she reminded her of herself when she was a teenager—and I could tell if anything ever went down between me and Grace, Rachel would be taking her side over mine for sure.
I walked over to the table and gave Abby a light kiss on the top of her peach-fuzzed head. “Be good, Kiddo,” I told her, even though she couldn’t understand words yet.
I said goodbye to Rachel and headed out the door. It was already after seven o’clock and the coffee shop was a few minutes away. In classic Logan fashion, I was going to be late.
Part of me wondered why I was even bothering to go. I wasn’t going to, at first. But then, the thought of Mystery Girl Number 7 sitting alone at a table all night, not realizing her prince would never come, just seemed…mean. So, soon after Grace left my house in a tizzy the other night (after claiming she was going to go meet her own mystery date), I decided the least I could do was meet this girl in person and let her down gently.
I was kind of a nice guy like that.
When I pulled up to the curb in front of the coffee shop, I was nearly thirty minutes late. After I turned off the engine, I sat there for a moment, debating on whether I should go in. Dream Bean was a pretentious coffee shop located downtown that had been serving hipsters and poetry nerds since it opened a couple years ago. I’d never set foot inside the place and I had no idea why the Computer Club chose that location for the meet-and-greet. Normally, I wouldn’t be caught dead there, yet here I was, about to enter its doors for the first time, to go break the heart of some poor, unsuspecting girl.
And half an hour late, no less.
Taking a deep breath, I exited the car and began my trek over to the door. Before I got there, I stopped to look through the large windows in the front of the building. I saw a lot of kids I recognized from school, most likely all there to meet their summer soulmates. Most of them seemed happy with their results—all except for one girl, the only one there who was sitting alone.
Most likely Mystery Girl Number 7.
I couldn’t see who it was at first. She was sitting so I could see her from the side, but her wavy, dark blonde hair was hiding her face. She was wearing a form-fitting light blue sundress, showcasing a modest rack and a set of long, lean legs—the kind of legs most guys wouldn’t mind having wrapped around them. She looked like she could be tall, which was a plus. I liked tall girls, although I’d never dated one. Grace was only five-foot-three with heels on. Without heels, I was about a foot taller than she was. Most guys liked petite girls—I was no exception—but there was something about a tall girl that was just…sexy.
Hmm. Maybe this wasn’t going to be as bad as I thought. I had yet to see her face, but if she was pretty enough, I could probably forget the fact she was apparently lame as hell, judging from her answers on that stupid test.
As I started mentally running through the list of blonde girls at school who were thin and tall, Mystery Girl ran a hand through her hair, brushing it away from her face and finally revealing her identity.
And I was hit with a feeling of dread as soon as I realized who she was.
Emma Dawson. Literally the last girl in the world I would want to be matched up with. This should have come as no surprise to me, though. I answered all the questions on that test like a total loser would and Emma was the biggest loser I knew. What did I expect?
Emma and I went way back, unfortunately. She was the girl next door, but not the kind you fell in love with. More like the kind you wanted to strangle because she was so annoying. She thought she was better and smarter than everyone else. She barely talked to anyone but her two best friends, but when she did, it was usually to correct grammar or to voice her opinion on something. My father adored her, because he and her father were besties, and he’d always tried to get me to be friends with her. But it was never going to happen.
Never. Never. Never.
For a moment, I stood there and observed her. She glanced down at her phone, took a sip of her drink, and glanced at her phone again. Now that I could just barely see her face, I could also see her disappointment. She knew she was waiting for somebody who wasn’t going to show.
And she was right, because there was no way I was going in there now.
I didn’t know for sure she was Mystery Girl Number 7, but I wasn’t going to stick around to find out. I knew how she would react to me being her “match”, and it would not go well. She’d probably yell and scream and throw a fit, and when she got angry, her voice was like nails on a chalkboard to me. This was not how I wanted to spend my Friday night. Not at all.
So, before she could turn her head and see me gawking at her, I quickly spun around and rushed back over to my car. I couldn’t get away from that coffee shop fast enough—especially after having basically checked out the girl I hated with a passion. This was a bad idea. What the hell was I thinking?
Emma Dawson was about to get stood up and I wasn’t going to lie—that put a smile on my face.
Chapter Four
EMMA
I was being stood up. It didn’t take a genius to figure that out. All it took was a time-telling device and the absence of a boy holding a card with the number 7 on it.
Well, wasn’t this ducky?
Glancing down one last time at my phone, I sighed. It was almost eight o’clock and Number 7 was a no-show. During the last hour, I’d watched several guys from school walk through the coffee shop’s door. I’d heard that bell above it ding so many times it’d become almost Pavlovian. Every time a boy would walk in, my heart would begin to race, thinking he was the one, but every time, he’d go to another table to meet with another girl. I saw couples meet, greet, and leave together, only to be replaced by another couple. Meanwhile, I’d been sitting here all alone, trying not to look like I was bothered by the fact my match decided he didn’t care to meet me.
But it did bother me. A girl wasn’t supposed to get stood up on her first date.
I was about to push my chair back to get up from my table when the young barista who’d sold me my iced tea earlier appeared suddenly at my side, wearing a look of pity on her face.
“Hey,” she said softly. The pity on her face had spread to her vocal chords. “I’m sorry to have to do this, but—”
“You want me to leave,” I finished for her. I wasn’t stupid. I’d bought one iced tea and had been hogging a table for nearly an hour, while more and more people had piled in. I was basically loitering at that point and I was surprised it had taken this long to get booted out.
I could tell the barista, whose nametag read Amelia, felt uncomfortable having to ask me to leave, and I couldn’t help but feel as sorry for her as she probably did for me.
“Her
e, I’ll tell you what.” Amelia removed the pen she’d had stuck behind her ear and grabbed the napkin that had been sitting under my glass of iced tea. She handed me the pen. “Write down your contact info and the number on your card, and if your match shows up looking for you, I’ll give this to him, so he can find you.”
It wasn’t a bad idea, but I knew it was pointless. He wasn’t going to show up looking for me. This had turned out to be a total bust. But to humor the girl and make her feel less bad about kicking me out, I jotted down all the information she’d requested and handed it to her.
“Thanks,” I said with a polite smile, before getting up to make my exit.
How humiliating. I got kicked out because my “soulmate” couldn’t be bothered to come meet me. Nobody else seemed to have that problem, judging from the fact every table in there was occupied by two people. Nobody else had been stood up. Just me.
I should have known this would happen.
I made it all the way home before I started to break down. I tried convincing myself that this was for the best—that I probably wouldn’t have been interested in this guy anyway—but it didn’t help to soothe the pang that had taken up residence squarely in the center of my chest.
With a deep breath, I entered the house quietly, hoping maybe my parents wouldn’t hear me come in. I didn’t want to explain to them why I was back so soon. I kind of wanted to go upstairs to my room and call Chloe and Sophia before crying myself to sleep.
But as soon as I shut the front door my parents rushed out of the living room to greet me.
“Sweetie!” my mother said in surprise. Her hair was disheveled, and her shirt was crooked. My dad’s hair was a little messed up too and both their faces were flushed pink. I suddenly wanted to barf.
I’d interrupted my parents’ make-out session.
Groaning inwardly, I greeted them with a mumbled, “Hey,” and made a beeline for the staircase.
“Wait, not so fast,” Mom said, grabbing the back of my dress to stop me mid-stride. “Why are you home so early? What happened?”
I didn’t want to discuss this with them, but I knew if I didn’t, they would harass me for the rest of the night until I did. “He didn’t show,” I said, my shoulders slumping forward.
Mom’s face fell while Dad’s face went into over-protective father mode.
“What do you mean, he didn’t show?” Dad asked between clenched teeth. This was why I didn’t want to talk about it. Dad was going to be angry that a boy stood me up and Mom was going to probably sympathy-cry for me.
“He didn’t show,” I repeated with a casual shrug. I wanted to brush it off in front of my parents to make them think I didn’t care. If they thought I didn’t care, then they wouldn’t worry about me and they’d let me go up to my room so they could continue where they left off on the couch…as much as the thought disgusted me.
“Oh, honey.” Mom pulled me into a warm hug and stroked my hair. She was acting like I was five years old and just fell off my bike and got a boo-boo.
“It’s fine,” I said, struggling to remove myself from her embrace. “I probably wouldn’t have liked him anyway.”
“I’m going to find out who this punk is and I’m going to make him regret standing up my baby girl.” Dad’s hands began to form fists at his sides and I had to refrain from laughing. My father, while tall and muscular from the few days a week he went to the gym, was all bark, no bite. He would never hurt a fly, let alone some “punk” teenage boy who let his daughter down. I had no doubt in my mind that he wanted to hurt him, I just knew he wouldn’t.
“Dad, seriously, it’s not a big deal. I’m already over it.” I sounded so sincere, I almost convinced myself.
He exchanged a glance with my mother and I could tell neither one believed me. But my parents were smart. They knew it was best to let me deal with this on my own.
“Okay,” Dad said, softening a bit. “You want to go get some ice cream or something?”
Going out on a Friday night with my parents to get ice cream, after being stood up on a blind date? No way. That would only add to my humiliation.
“Thanks, but I’m just gonna go upstairs and read a book. Maybe call Chloe and Sophia and see what they’re up to down in Florida.”
“Okay,” Dad said with a nod. “But if you change your mind, let us know.”
I gave him as much of a smile as I could muster. “I will.”
Once my parents finally let me go, I ran up to my room, shut the door, and let out a sob.
This was not going as planned. I was supposed to still be out on my date, getting to know Number 7, and starting to plot out our entire summer together. What went wrong? Did he not get the letter in the mail? Did they give him the wrong time? Did he forget? Did he get into an accident on the way to meet me? Or, worst of all, did he see me sitting in the coffee shop from afar and was totally repulsed?
I had to talk to Chloe and Sophia, and I hated that I couldn’t tell them to come over to comfort me. When I thought I was going to be potentially spending my summer with a boyfriend (or, at the very least, a boy who was a friend), I wasn’t as bothered by the fact that my best friends would be hundreds of miles away. But now, it was the worst thing ever.
Taking my phone out of my purse, I dialed Chloe’s number. Surprisingly, she picked up right away.
“Hey, Em!” she exclaimed. “How was your date? Oh, wait, let me go grab Sophia so you can tell us both!”
I opened my mouth to tell her not to bother, but she went silent for a moment while she went to find Sophia. Half a minute later, she returned.
“Okay, Sophia’s here and you’re on speaker,” she said. “Don’t worry, we went somewhere private so no one else can hear our conversation. So? Who’s Number 7? Tell us everything.”
That’s exactly what I did. I told them how I had no idea who Number 7 was because I never got to meet him. Because he apparently didn’t want to meet me. When I was done with the story twenty seconds later, I was met with total silence on the other end.
“Guys?” I said, wondering if maybe we’d gotten disconnected.
“Emma, we’re so sorry,” Sophia finally said. The pity in her voice sounded just like the barista’s earlier. “What a jerk!”
“Well, hey,” Chloe said, “we don’t know what his reason was for not showing up. He could have had a family emergency or something.”
“Family emergency my butt,” Sophia said. “The dude intentionally stood up our girl and he needs to pay.”
“Sheesh, you sound like my dad,” I said, playing with the hem of my dress. “Guys, it doesn’t matter if it was intentional, or if he had a family emergency. I don’t even know who he is.”
“The Computer Club does,” Sophia said. “You could ask one of those guys. Maybe bribe one of them to tell you.”
“Why does our school even have a Computer Club, anyway?” Chloe asked. “It’s just an excuse for geeks to sit around after school playing retro video games with their teacher, who’s still living in the nineties. I mean, that computer they used to get the test results is probably some piece of junk from the eighties and not all that accurate. So maybe you dodged a bullet, Em. Maybe you wouldn’t have liked who they paired you up with anyway.”
“Chloe’s right,” Sophia agreed. “Besides, when you think about it, do you want a romance based purely on an algorithm? We’ve seen the romance novels you have on your bookshelf, Em. You want the real thing. You want the natural progression of falling in love. You want it to be organic, not forced by some dumb computer. Maybe Number 7 not showing up tonight was a blessing in disguise. Now you won’t be tethered to some idiot all summer, which will be good in the event you meet the real love of your life.”
Suddenly, I really missed my friends. They knew exactly what to say to make me feel better in any situation.
“It’s not too late to come to Florida,” Chloe said. “You could fly down this weekend and we can spend the next month and half finding you a boyfriend. Emma, the
re are so many cute guys down here, you have no idea.”
“She’s not lying,” Sophia assured me.
It was a nice thought. Had it not been for my paralyzing fear of flying, I might have taken them up on it. My parents had been supportive of the idea of me joining the girls on their vacation, and even though a last-minute ticket would be pricey, I had no doubt in my mind Dad would pay for it without hesitation.
“Thanks, but no thanks. You’re forgetting one thing: I still need to organize my book collection.”
I could almost hear them rolling their eyes.
“Okay,” Chloe said. “Well, think about it anyway, will you?”
“Will do.” I wouldn’t.
After telling me to keep my chin up, the girls let me go to get back to their activities. As soon as I hung up with them, I heard a soft knock on my door.
“Emma, sweetie?” My mom opened my door just enough to poke her head in. “Are you okay?”
I set my phone down on my nightstand and rested my hands on my lap. Staring down at them, I whispered, “Not really.”
Mom let herself into my room and came over to join me on the bed, throwing an arm around my shoulders and pulling me close. “I’m so sorry, Emma.”
“It’s fine,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant, but the break in my voice gave away the lie. With a shaky sigh, I rested my head on her shoulder.
“You know you don’t need a boyfriend, right?”
“I know that. I just…I want to know what it’s like. I want to know how it feels to have a boy look at me the way Dad looks at you. I want what you guys had—what you still have.”
Mom blushed slightly and smiled. “Honey, your Dad and I are a special case. Not everyone finds the person they’re going to spend the rest of their lives with when they’re in high school.”
“Yeah, but I can’t even find the person I’m going to spend the day with. Is that too much to ask for?”
She chuckled as she tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “Someday your prince will come. It may happen when you least expect it, and it may happen with whom you least expect. But it will happen, I promise.”