Smart Mouth Waitress (Romantic Comedy) (Life in Saltwater City)

by Dalya Moon

  Feeling calmer than I'd been in years, I decided I wasn't going to care what people thought of me. My famous musician mother was obsessed with reading reviews of her work and analyzing articles about herself, and I was definitely not going to be like her.

  I accepted the cardigan from Halyee, but I didn't wrap it around myself. I folded it over my arm and held it in front of me as I unzipped my pants and marched out of the bathroom.

  I marched right up to where Scott Weaver and his pals were hanging out in the hallway eating their chili dogs, and I said, “Hey, Scott. I understand you were trying to read something today.”

  He made that jerk face that jerks always make when someone talks back to them. He said, “What, like a book?” He looked to his friends, who laughed, because I guess the idea of Scott reading a book was hilarious.

  “Yeah, you were trying to read a word. Here, let me give you a better look. Just sound the letters out one by one.”

  I turned my back to the boys and whipped down my pants, revealing the word Wednesday.

  “Can you say that word, Scott?” I called back. “Try sounding it out. The first d is silent.”

  The boys were all quiet.

  I pulled up my pants and did up the button, then turned around and said to their stunned faces, “Wednesday.”

  As I walked away, I knew I had discovered something powerful.

  In fact, I had all the power, because I wasn't afraid to shock people. Saying outlandish things, shocking people and tipping them off balance makes everyone a lot easier to deal with.

  Which brings me back to the text conversation I was having with Marc.

  After a big pause, getting back to me on the spider-smashing topic, he typed: Yes, with my big, strong, arms. Tell me there's a spider there right now and I'll come over.

  What I did next was attempt to tip him off balance so I could regain the power. It wasn't intentional so much as it was a pattern—something I always did.

  Me: My parents are out of town and I'm naked and horny. Why don't you drop what you're doing and come over this instant?

  As soon as I clicked the Enter button to send the message, I regretted what I'd said, but it was too late; the message had been sent. I considered typing j/k along with a charming emoticon or two, but I didn't.

  I was proud of myself.

  Marc had been keeping me off-balance for weeks, with his friend-zoning, then talk of kissing, then flirty messages. I'd given him the mighty shove he deserved.

  In the seconds before he responded, I realized something.

  Have you heard about the coin-toss thing? It's what you do when you can't decide between two things. You take out a coin and decide if it lands Heads, you'll do one thing, Tails, the other. In the time it takes for the coin to flip up in the air and come back down to your hand, your heart speaks to you.

  Your heart speaks.

  And you know what you want the outcome to be.

  Chapter 25

  As I waited for Marc to respond, I knew I wanted him to refuse my offer. I would then say I was joking and tell him I really liked his friend Cooper. I could even ask him things about Cooper, like what bands he liked.

  What Marc said next was not that he was coming over to smash spiders or do other things. No, it was much worse.

  Marc: Cooper came down to hang out and he's reading our messages over my shoulder. What a perv.

  I slammed shut the top of my laptop and jumped off my bed. I flailed around my bedroom, only stopping when I banged my foot against the frame of my bed, possibly breaking the middle toe on my right foot.

  I grabbed the laptop, opened it again, and hastily typed in: I hope Cooper knows I was just joking!

  Marc's green light was off; he'd logged out.

  So, after I finished (metaphorically) pooping my pants, I changed out of my pajamas (I'd lied to Marc about being naked) and threw on some clothes from the floor.

  I had the address of the house where the Cooper family and Marc lived, thanks to Marc's business card.

  In my mother's Land Rover, I pulled up to the house, which was only thirty blocks or so away from my place. It could have been built by the same builder who'd constructed our house back in the early 1900s. The house was even the same color as ours, an earthy shade of green, with cream trim. We don't have a basement suite, though, so the extra door at the bottom of the house jumped out at me. That was Marc's place, where Cooper was—or at least where he had been a few moments earlier.

  I jumped out of the Land Rover and dashed across the street, my heart pounding.

  Crap! I really liked Cooper, and I'd screwed up everything.

  Timidly, I knocked on the door.

  From the other side, a guy yelled, “Go away Sunshine, this is a boys-only party,” followed by laughter.

  I knocked again and someone yelled for me to come in, so I turned the handle and slowly pushed in the door.

  Marc looked surprised to see me. Cooper seemed surprised, and happy.

  Breathlessly, I said, “Cooper, did you see what I wrote to Marc on the computer? Just now?”

  Marc grabbed his laptop from his bed—the entire suite seemed to be one open room, with the kitchen sharing the bedroom—and invited Cooper to come look.

  “No!” I charged them and grabbed the laptop away.

  Cooper's expression changed, and it was clear to me he'd figured enough out to be hurt.

  “Can I talk to you, privately?” I said to Cooper.

  Marc shook his head and commented on how messed-up things were whenever I was around. I didn't argue, but grabbed Cooper's arm and pulled him toward the door.

  “I do stupid things,” I said when we got outside. He didn't respond so I pulled him further away from the warm house and down the wet sidewalk, under the streetlamps.

  “I do stupid things too,” he said. “Taking my clothes off for that drawing class was pretty high up there.”

  I was still holding his arm, and I slid my hand down to his and squeezed it. “I thought that was amazing. Crazy, but amazing.”

  His voice serious, he said, “Yeah, but when I saw those drawings you did, I didn't feel so amazing.”

  I stopped and pulled him to a halt. “Cooper. I've never drawn a person who wasn't a stick figure. Don't tell me you were bothered by my drawings of you. I'll die. I'll just die if you were.”

  He didn't look me in the eyes, but turned his face toward the hedge we stood near. “People draw what they see. And you made me really fat.”

  “You were offended. No! Don't be offended! I'll die!”

  He looked around to check that nobody was listening. “And you made my dick really small and shaped like a boomerang. That's how you saw me, wasn't it?”

  I put my hands over the lower half of my face to cover my smile, but I couldn't stop the giggles.

  He lightened up, and with a hint of a smile, said, “Guys have feelings too. Like, about their bodies.”

  “Cooper! I'm bad at drawing. No, I'm the worst! Plus I was nervous. Your mother was right there next to me. Besides, didn't she say the model shouldn't look at the drawings unless invited to? I never said you could look at them.”

  He crossed his arms and put his chin on one hand. “I guess I should know better.”

  “Yeah, you're the artist,” I said. “I thought you looked really good naked, and I'm sorry my drawings didn't do you justice, but you can't hold that against me.”

  “No.”

  “I'm glad we're being honest,” I said. “Now, what else?”

  “My feet are cold.”

  I looked down and saw he wasn't wearing any shoes or socks.

  I knelt down and put my hands on the tops of his feet.

  He laughed. “What are you doing?”

  “Warming your feet? I'm so sorry. Ugh, I do everything wrong.”

  He reached down and helped me up from kneeling. “Do you want to go somewhere and talk?”

  I pointed to the Land Rover, just down the street. “We can sit in the truck.�
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  He felt he'd be warm enough once he had his feet off the cold concrete, so I clicked the doors open and we climbed into the front seats.

  He said, “I know today was a bit of a crisis for you, but I had a nice time driving to New Westminster, spending quality time with your family, and the Chinese food was okay.”

  “Cooper,” I said. “Oh, Cooper.”

  “Yes?”

  “I have to confess that I did have some feelings for your friend Marc. Not anymore, but I did. He was being weird tonight, on the computer, and I said some things to him. I didn't mean the things, but sometimes I say stuff to people as a sort of defense mechanism.”

  “What, like you push people away? No … I don't think you do that.”

  “No, I don't push away, exactly, but I do shock people sometimes. I guess … it's easier to give people a real reason to not like you, instead of having them not like the real you.”

  He looked at me sidelong. “This is sounding rather philosophical.”

  “Maybe it is. Maybe I'll never understand why I sent Marc that message, but after I did, I knew I didn't want anything to do with him.”

  “He's a great guy,” Cooper said.

  “Are you trying to sell me on him? Don't you like me for yourself?”

  He flashed a big grin and popped open the glove box nervously, then shut it again. “Marc's not that great.”

  In the pause that followed, I remembered my night drinking with Haylee, and the drunk dialing. I asked Cooper what I'd said to him that night, or if he knew what I'd said to Marc.

  He said that neither of them had talked to me, but I'd left them both pretty much the same voice mail. “Here, I'll play the message for you,” he said, pulling out his cell phone.

  With Cooper's phone held up between us, we both listened to my message, which was incomprehensible babbling and giggling, followed by what sounded like “Happy New Year!”

  The message was familiar. Ah! I was the crazy lady on Uncle Jeff's voicemail. Apparently, I had dialed a lot of phone numbers that night to spread my good cheer.

  Cooper said, “You must have mixed up your vodka with your water that night.”

  I put the keys in the ignition to get them out of my sweating hands. “Do you wanna go on a date with me some time?”

  Cooper reached over and ran his finger across my forehead, pulling a loose strand of hair away and tucking it behind my ear. “As long as you don't draw me naked.”

  “Never again,” I said. “Just photos.”

  He seemed pleased with that, and he leaned in toward me. I leaned in to meet him. And then Cooper kissed me.

  Chapter 26

  If that little scenario in my mother's Land Rover had been one of my dirty sex fantasies, we would have mashed faces for a few minutes, then jumped into the back seat and ripped off the bottom halves of our clothes and mashed our private parts together right then and there, parked on the street outside his house.

  What really happened was about two hours of clothes-on making-out, mostly in the passenger seat, punctuated by some talking.

  I pretended my hands were cold, even though they weren't, and slipped them up inside his shirt. Touching his naked chest and collarbone and even his armpits was heavenly. I'd never touched anyone's body like that, except my own, and it was every bit as exciting as getting to second base should be. He slid his hands up inside my shirt too, and I just about died from feeling it happening while also knowing it was happening.

  Honestly, I didn't even consider taking it to the next level, because the level we were at was so wonderful, I couldn't imagine it getting better.

  Cooper was my official date to see The Hunger Games, and we went on the Thursday night after the Monday we'd kissed in my mother's Land Rover—kissed for so long, my lips were actually sore the next day.

  He sat next to me at the movie and held my hand, just like a real boyfriend, which he was. I'd planned to see it with Courtney, but I told her to give my ticket to Britain and enjoy.

  Cooper and I both loved watching The Hunger Games, and he gave me a sympathetic hand squeeze during the sad parts. He hadn't read the books, so we went for sushi after the movie and I explained some of the parts that weren't totally clear in the movie, like about why Gale had to put his name in multiple times in exchange for extra food.

  After a good post-movie discussion, Cooper told me about some philosophy book he was reading, and we sat at our little table drinking green tea until the restaurant kicked us out at closing time. He was interested in what I had to say and vice versa. Time just evaporated when we were together.

  He dropped me off at my house, and we made out in the car again, but I didn't invite him in and he didn't ask.

  On Friday, which was my day off from work, we had my house to ourselves while my brother was at school. My parents were both still down in LA, as my father had cashed in some of his holidays at work.

  Cooper brought over an easel and some of his paints, and we planned to do some painting and sketching in the back yard, but he dropped those things by the front door when he came in and we found some other things that were more interesting.

  After an entire day of building up the sexual tension with kissing and squeezing and groping, we found ourselves on my bed, where I just happened to have some protection stashed under my pillow.

  “How convenient,” he said.

  I'd like to report back that we didn't have intercourse that day, and decided to wait until we were twenty-five and married, or at least until we'd been officially dating a bit longer, but let's be honest here.

  I was eighteen, almost nineteen, and the world thought I was responsible enough to drive a 4500-pound Land Rover up and down the city streets … not that I was thinking about driving trucks at all by the time everything happened.

  You can skip this next part if it's TMI (Too Much Information.)

  Ginger, from work, had warned me that it could hurt, or not be very pleasant the first time, especially if my hymen was intact. I'd been to a gynecologist once before, and according to the nice doctor lady, it was there, but she'd assured me it wouldn't be a problem and I seemed otherwise healthy.

  Our first time started out really nice and I was practically begging for it, but things took a turn for the serious once the action started, because it did hurt. I wondered if I hadn't made a terrible mistake, but we got cleaned up and I washed the blood away, and by the next day, when my brother was over at his friend Kyle's house, I felt ready to try again.

  You know that saying, practice makes perfect?

  We're not perfect at sex yet, so we're going to have to keep practicing.

  It's been just over a month since my first time, and I'm glad it was with someone I cared about. I didn't know I loved Cooper at the time, but I'm pretty sure I do now.

  Love is funny.

  Like my father's ADD, there is no test for love. You can fill out one of those questionnaires in a magazine or on a website, or possibly consult a psychologist, but nobody can prove conclusively that someone is or isn't in love.

  My parents came home last week and they've been walking around in a daze, holding hands, and acting like a couple of honeymooners. They actually are newlyweds, because they renewed their vows while they were down in California. The only bad news out of all of this is Mom's big comeback album has been put on hold.

  She did confess to me and Garnet that she was writing all sorts of very personal songs about what they were experiencing with their renewed love, and she wasn't sure how he'd feel about it—how he'd feel about being in a song.

  “He'd love it,” I said.

  “I wish someone would write songs about me,” Garnet said grumpily as he ate his post-soccer-game grilled cheese sandwich.

  Mom and I gave him a big hug and assured him he'd meet a special girl one day. Garnet's a good-hearted kid, and since his two adventure-filled days with my uncle, he's been taking his school work more seriously.

  Things may change down the road, but for now
, my life is pretty sweet. Tonight, Cooper and I are going on a double-date with Haylee and Andrew to see The Cabin in the Woods, which Andrew has been talking about non-stop.

  We invited Courtney to come along, even though it meant bringing Britain, but she politely declined. From what little we've discussed her life at work, which is just when our shifts are changing over, she and Britain are still dating, but they do argue a lot.

  I'll try to not say “I told you so” if and when they split up. I was hoping a break-up would have happened by now, but it hasn't. I guess my life can't be too perfect, with absolutely everything wrapping up exactly how I'd like it to be, now can it? I feel resolved in my heart, at least, because as her friend, I choose to be a pal and at least pretend to accept Courtney's choices. I avoid Britain, but when I see her, I make an effort to not antagonize her ... much.

  I don't know if I even want Courtney back as a close friend. We'll always have a connection, because of our past, but I don't know if there's much future for us. I never believed my parents, when they'd said they grew apart from their high school friends, but I'm starting to think they weren't wrong.

  People do grow apart, and they do change, just not always in the ways you want.

  Marc is still in my life, because he's Cooper's friend. The two of them actually came in together the past three Monday mornings. Each time, they brought two copies of the crossword puzzle and raced to see who would finish first. So far, Marc's won two out of three, but he has had more practice.

  I think Marc will make someone a nice boyfriend, some day. Maybe he just needed more time to get over Sunshine. I've been hanging out with her a bit, and she is pretty amazing. My mother likes her too, and yes, I did ask my mother if she could help Sunshine out with her music. To my surprise, my mother said she'd be delighted to, and that ever since watching the taping of The Voice, she'd been itching to mentor someone.

  That was how Sunshine became my mother's protege. So, watch out, music world!

  Cooper likes hanging out at my house, and I like being over at his place. I especially like his mother. She's been trying to get me into art, so I may take some art classes in the fall.