I slice one sandwich in half and stick our trademark mini-pickle-on-an-Italian-flag-toothpick in each half before setting the red-and-white paper boats in the window. “Order up!” I call just as Miles finally shuffles in through the back door to the kitchen, grabbing his apron off the hook and squashing his DiPasquale’s baseball cap down over his tangle of dark, curly hair.
“About time,” I tell him, nodding with my chin at the deep fryer. “I thought I was going to be stuck back here covering for you all afternoon.”
“Sorry,” he says, lifting the basket out of the hot oil and dumping the mozzarella sticks onto a plate. “Got held up.”
“Uh-huh.” I brush some stray lettuce off my station. “Doing what, exactly?”
Miles looks at me sideways as he ladles a cup of marinara into a plastic ramekin, his olivey face all suggestion. “You really want to know?”
I roll my eyes. “Don’t be gross.”
“I didn’t say anything!” he defends himself. “If your mind’s in the gutter, that’s between you and the Lord.” Then he grins at me, revealing one crooked canine tooth. “Hey, decent speech yesterday.”
“Uh, thanks,” I say, waiting for the inevitable punch line of whatever joke he’s setting up and raising an eyebrow when it doesn’t come. In fact, this is the closest to genuine I’ve heard him possibly ever, which is saying something. Miles and I literally grew up together; our grandparents were old family friends, and when my birth dad (or, as I like to refer to him, my genetic donor) took off, Miles’s mom insisted we stay in the apartment above their garage for a few months while my mom got her act together. A few months turned into four years, during which time there was ample opportunity for Nonna to snap a million blurry pictures of us in the bath together, a fact Miles loves to remind me about whenever he gets the chance.
“I’m serious,” he says now, setting the plate of mozzarella sticks in the window before turning and grabbing the next order slip out of the Micros printer. “Entropy, beating back chaos in the universe, all of that. I liked hearing about it.”
That stops me. “Yeah?” I ask, a little bit flattered in spite of myself.
“Yeah,” Miles echoes. Then, flicking an exaggerated gaze up and down my body: “All that nerd talk was kind of hot.”
And there he is: the real Miles. “Okay, then!” I say, pulling off my plastic gloves and tossing them into the trash can. “Enough, thank you. I’m going to go do my actual job now. Try not to light yourself on fire back here. You think you can manage that?”
Miles laughs, the deep rumble as always a little surprising—how grown-up it sounds, maybe, compared to the rest of him. “You know you love me, Rachel Walls.”
“I don’t, in fact!” I head through the swinging door into the dining room before he can answer, ignoring the arch, knowing look Nonna shoots me from her station behind the counter—the same look she gives me every time she overhears me talking to Miles.
And just like always, I pretend to retch.
To be fair, it’s not like Miles is objectively disgusting or anything—in fact, he’s got something of a fan club at DiPasquale’s, this group of sophomore girls who post up at the corner booth on the nights he’s working, drinking pop after pop and craning their necks for a glimpse at him through the service window. He’s just so completely obnoxious. He’s one of those guys who loves to play devil’s advocate for the sake of recreation. He wears the same Winter Is Coming T-shirt every single day. He’s smart—he literally built a whole computer in his basement last year—but he barely graduated because he couldn’t be bothered to do his work.
He’s also literally the only boy to ever pay any kind of attention to me in my entire life, but that’s neither here nor there.
Nonna ignores my Oscar-worthy mime skills and turns back to her conversation—she’s gabbing with one of our seasonal regulars, an older guy who spends a few early summer weeks here every year. He says something and Nonna leans in and giggles, her shiny gray hair swinging as she tilts her head to the side.
Giggles.
“Am I getting a new grandpa?” I tease her once the guy is seated across the crowded dining room. “Seriously, what was that?”
“Listen to you, Judge Judy,” Nonna says, swatting me on the butt with a laminated menu. “It was flirting. And you should try it sometime.”
“Why would I do that, exactly?” Who would I do it with, is more like it.
“It’s fun,” Nonna says simply. “And sometimes it’s good to know you’ve still got it.”
I’m about to reply when I’m cut off by a spray of raucous laughter. I glance across the restaurant, my heart falling all at once directly out of my butt. Clayton Carville is parked in an overflowing booth beside the window, Bethany squished in beside him and Spencer Thomas on her other side. The laughter was hers, blond head thrown back and one hand reaching out playfully to swat at Clayton’s cheek.
So. I guess they didn’t fight after all.
“Why don’t you head out?” Nonna asks quietly. She leans forward against the counter, nudging my shoulder with her own. “Mia will be here in twenty minutes to help me. Go be with your friends.” She glances toward the front booth.
I shake my head, my cheeks burning. “We both know they aren’t my friends.”
Nonna shrugs. “Things can change.”
I purse my lips but say nothing. It sounds ridiculous to say I didn’t have time for friends in high school. I made space for Ruoxi, didn’t I? Same as she made space for me. Still, more often than not, the idea of trying to widen my social circle seemed like a giant waste of energy. Why would I spend a perfectly good study hall period trying to make stilted conversation with someone who probably didn’t even want to talk to me when there were AP tests to take, essays to write, college admissions committees to impress? Why go through the trouble of putting myself out there—why risk the rejection, and the embarrassment, and the hurt—when I could already imagine exactly what it was going to be like? After all, I knew my classmates. I’d scrolled their Instagram feeds, heard them chat to one another in the bathroom at school, watched them fight and make up from the hidden comfort of my bedroom window. If I didn’t think about it too much, it was almost the same thing as experiencing them myself.
“Well,” Nonna says now, “if you’re going to stay, make a round, will you, Patatina?” She slides the Italian soda pitcher across the counter in my direction. “I’d do it myself, but my knees are giving me grief.”
She’s lying and we both know it—she ran three miles this morning, same as she has every day of her life—but she’s got it in her head that if I make the rounds and pour their soda, Bethany and her friends will miraculously become my bosom buddies, triggering a movie montage soundtracked to Sara Bareilles where we give each other makeovers and have pillow fights and reunite in ten years to hold each other’s babies.
Still, a thing about Nonna is that it’s generally less complicated to just do the thing she asks, so I grab the pitcher without complaint. I haven’t made it three steps when Bethany perks up like a prairie dog. “Excuse me?” she calls, waving one manicured hand in my direction. “Could we get some more of that?”
I turn toward their booth and see that Clayton is looking at me. He lifts his chin in recognition, though I’m not sure if the expression on his achingly symmetrical face is more Hey, girl whose graduation speech I enjoyed yesterday or Hey, creepy stalker lady, please don’t kidnap me and lock me in your basement. Honestly, it could be either one.
Pull it together, Walls. “Sure thing,” I mutter, hefting the pitcher a bit higher and heading over. My heart is beating too fast and my face is too warm. I reach toward the first glass I see, which is Bethany’s, but the angle is weird with the booth so crowded and my arm tenses and shakes. Be careful not to—
The pitcher tips and, before I can right it, spills.
An entire pitcher of ice and soda.
Onto Clayton.
Carville’s.
Lap.
Bethany shoves Spencer out of the way before leaping from the table with a shrill, piercing squeal. Shock gives way to anger as her gaze settles on me. Meanwhile, the others—Tricia Whitman, I register dimly, and Trevor Cheng—react just as quickly, scrambling up with a series of expletives and shouts.
Clayton’s face twists and contorts, his green eyes widening. But he can’t stand up because he’s too far into the booth next to the wall.
“Oh shit! I am so sorry.” I turn and grab a stack of napkins off a neighboring table, not bothering to ask permission from the people sitting there. “That was totally my fault. I just…” I come at him with the napkins, trying to help soak up the worst of the damage.
His eyes widen further.
A beat too late—way, way too late—I realize I’m now clutching a fistful of soggy napkins in the very near vicinity of Clayton Carville’s junk.
“Oh my God.” This cannot be happening. It just…I refuse. “I’m…” I pull my hand away like it’s on fire, except it’s actually the rest of my body that’s burning. “I was trying to…I…”
The usual hum of voices, the jostling of ice cubes in glasses, the scrape of knives against plates, all of it has stopped. It’s a silence that’s only broken by the sloppy thud of soggy napkins when they fall from my hand. “I’m just going to…” I gesture vaguely in the direction of the kitchen. “Yeah. Okay.”
I don’t bother waiting to watch his expression change—I don’t think his eyes could get any bigger now, lest they fall out of his head entirely and go rolling across the linoleum—before I turn around and book it toward the relative safety of the bussing station. Never have I been so grateful for that cheap polyester tablecloth hanging from its three-dollar tension rod. The smell of stale garlic and olive oil is permanently infused into the fabric, but for the moment, it offers a spot to disappear.
I lean on the narrow counter next to a tub of dirty dishes, digging the heels of my hands into my eyeballs. I can probably hide out back here until Clayton and his friends leave, right? They can’t possibly stick around that much longer. I dig my phone out of my back pocket and text Ruoxi about what happened, but I can tell by the way there’s no delivery confirmation that she’s got her phone turned off already.
And just like that, I am officially out of friends.
Finally I hear Bethany’s voice up at the register.
“We’ll, ah, comp you those sodas,” Nonna assures her.
Then I hear the jangle of the bells over the door as they all head out into the parking lot. I let out a long, shaky breath, scrubbing my soda-sticky hands through my hair before finally pulling back the curtain—
And nearly crash right into Clayton, who’s just coming out of the bathroom with an enormous wet stain covering his entire crotch.
“I’m sorry,” I say immediately, holding both hands up to show I’m unarmed. “Really. For spilling on you and for”—What, Rachel? Nearly jumping to third base in your place of business with a stack of Sysco two-ply napkins?—“all of it.”
“It’s fine,” Clayton says with a shake of his head. “Really, don’t worry about it.”
“Oh, I’ll worry about it,” I assure him. “Like…for the rest of my life, probably. I’ll be moldering away in the nursing home, and I won’t know my own name or how to feed myself, but I will remember this.”
Clayton laughs, though I’m not actually joking. “Honestly,” he says, “I’ve had an entire cooler of Gatorade dumped on me at games before. This was nothing.”
“Well.” I duck my head, wiping my palms on my cheap black work pants. God, why does he have to be so gracious? Why can’t he just be a dick so I can move on with my life? “Thank you.”
I’m expecting him to go, but instead he looks around the restaurant for a moment, taking in the dessert case full of tiramisu and cannoli, and the black-and-white photos of Venice, and the community bulletin board in the foyer with its flyer for dog walkers and a local kids theater production of Fiddler on the Roof. “So you work here, huh?” he asks.
“Yup,” I say, leaving out the part where this isn’t actually the first time I’ve been his waitress. He came in with his parents and sister one Sunday night halfway through junior year, all of them sitting at a four-top near the TV and ordering a plain pie and Caesar salads. They fought, I remember suddenly, his mom and dad hissing at each other in low voices I couldn’t totally make out no matter how long I lingered, wiping and rewiping nearby tables. Somehow I’d totally forgotten that until right this minute, like it never properly synthesized with all the other information I carry around about Clayton inside my head. “My parents own it.”
Clayton nods. “That’s cool.”
“It has its moments,” I agree. “I mean, today I dropped a full pitcher of Italian soda on a guy from my high school, so…”
He laughs again then, his voice gravelly and the tiniest bit hoarse; that’s two genuine laughs out of Clayton Carville in one conversation, for those of you playing along at home. I’m feeling pretty freaking pleased with myself until he opens his mouth again. “You know,” he says, and his tone is so, so easy, “next time, you should think about coming to the party instead of watching it from across the creek.”
Oh, just kill me. I open my mouth to deny it even as I’m flushing red and blotchy all over, but what the hell am I going to say? He saw me. “Busted,” I admit, covering my face with one hand. “I’m sorry. God, you must think I am such a basket case.”
“Nah.” Clayton shakes his head. “That’s not what I think.” Then, before I can even begin to try and figure out what that means: “Hey,” he says, “you know my buddy Spence? The guy who was just here with me?”
“The one who’s probably waiting for you outside right now?” Wondering why you’re wasting time talking to Westfield’s most awkward recent graduate?
“Yeah, him.” Clayton smiles. “He’s actually having some people over tonight, if you want to stop by.”
My eyebrows almost evacuate my face entirely; I can literally feel them packing their bags and hitting the road. “You’re inviting me to a party?” I can’t help but ask.
Clayton tilts his head to the side, looking at me a little oddly. “I mean, why not?” he asks, like it’s just that simple. “Is that okay?”
“Yeah, no, it’s fine, I just—” I break off, imagining it in spite of myself: the crush of people and the sour reek of beer, the noisy assault on my nervous system.
The weight of Clayton’s arm slung around my shoulders. The press of that soft, plush-looking mouth against mine.
I’m about to tell him maybe—holy crap, am I really about to tell him maybe?—when the glass door to the restaurant opens, the chimes above it breaking a spell like a hypnotist pulling a volunteer from a trance. “Clay,” Bethany calls—her tone impatient as she leans in through the doorway, slinky as a wildcat in a white T-shirt that makes her peachy skin look impossibly tan. “You coming or what?” Her gaze flicks to me, back to Clayton. “Everything okay?”
“We’re good,” Clayton promises. “I’ll be right there.”
Bethany eyes us for another minute, unconvinced. “Okay, but hurry up,” is all she says.
Once she’s gone again, I shake my head, good sense flooding back in all at once like a dam breaking. What exactly was I about to get myself into?
“I have to work tonight,” I lie, shrugging and crinkling my nose like I’m disappointed—and I am, a little bit, though I don’t know if I could explain exactly why. “Thanks for the invite, though.”
“Yeah, no problem,” Clayton says, like it’s no skin off his back either way—and it isn’t, most likely. He probably walks around inviting people to parties everywhere he goes. He probably invited his mailman. It doesn’t
mean anything. “He lives on Lilac Court, if you change your mind.”
“I know,” I blurt out, then shake my head. God, could I be more of a weirdo? “I mean—”
“It’s cool, Rach,” Clayton says, shaking his head and smiling again, saving me from myself. “Have a good night.”
“You too,” I manage—at least, I think I do; I’m too distracted by that Rach to know for sure. I stand in the doorway of the restaurant for a long time after Clayton heads out into the parking lot, watching the summer breeze rustle the leafy green trees on the other side of the glass.
* * *
Here is what I know: Clayton is, at the very least, still hanging out with Bethany. There’s a very real possibility that they’re together. But also, Clayton definitely invited me to Spencer Thomas’s party. Right?
My plan was to spend tonight Netflix and chilling—there’s a documentary about rescue workers in Syria that’s been on my radar forever—but even propped up in bed with a to-go container of leftover garlic knots, I can’t relax. My bedroom feels overstuffed all of a sudden, the various flotsam of my life closing in and making me claustrophobic: the first-place science fair ribbon pinned to the corkboard. The National Honor Society T-shirt slung over the chair. Evidence of everything I’ve done—and everything I haven’t—surrounding me on all four sides.
All at once, I climb out of bed and start pulling every piece of clothing I own from the closet, sorting it all into two giant keep-or-toss piles on the carpet. I do school papers next, then makeup. I’ve just started on books when Mom taps two fingers against my doorframe, an expression on her face that suggests she’s been watching me for a while. “I hope you’re thanking everything for its service,” she teases, coming into the room and surveying the damage.
Say Yes Summer Page 3