Smart Mouth Waitress (32 page)

We stopped off in Garnet's room first.

“Wow,” Marc said when he saw the black walls. “This color sucks up the light,” he said as he ran his hand over the wall.

“Black would be depressing in every room, but I like it in here.”

“Your brother's friends must think he's the coolest guy around.”

“That's exactly what I thought!”

He pulled out some of the books on Garnet's bookshelf. “Harry Potter. Hah!”

“Don't tell me you're a hater.”

He wrinkled his nose. “The world makes no sense. Everyone can do magic and conjure things out of thin air. The economic system is non-existent. Ron Weasley shouldn't have to wear ugly sweaters and have hand-me-down things. His parents can just wave their wands and make new sweaters.” He shook his head.

“It's just a book,” I said, feeling defensive of the world in which I'd spent so much enjoyable time.

“And if someone paints your picture, that means you have to spend your afterlife in that picture. There's something very wrong about those portraits. It's not clear if they're artificial intelligence or dead spirits. Harry could commission a painted picture of his parents so he could have them around, even talk to them.”

“I think you may be missing the point,” I said.

“Assuming there is a point, besides cashing in,” he said.

I muttered something lame about good versus evil and gestured for him to follow me out to my room. This time, he didn't stop at the door, but came right in.

The first thing he did in my room was point to the spot where the brush had slipped out of my hand and smudged some blue-green paint on the ceiling. “Oops,” he said.

I said, “You can criticize JK Rowling all you want, but leave my painting skills alone. It was my first time, okay?”

Marc put his hand on my shoulder and gave me a little shake. “Just teasing you. I like it, especially the color. You look like a mermaid in here, in your sea-green room.”

My sketches of Cooper, naked, sat out on my dresser, next to Marc. My heart flipped and a lump went up the front of my throat.

Marc hadn't noticed the charcoal sketches, and I didn't want him to. Even if he didn't recognize his friend's face from my poorly-drawn likeness, I didn't want him questioning why I was drawing naked guys. Or worse, criticizing my skills.

“I'm a mermaid?” I stepped backwards two steps, away from the drawings.

He stepped forward two steps and paused, grinning at me. After a moment of staring at each other, he reached up and gently touched my eyebrow piercing. “Does it hurt?”

“Only when I catch it on my clothes.”

“Hmm,” he said.

“Hmm,” I replied, taking one little step closer. Without exaggerating, I must tell you my entire body was on fire with excitement. I wanted to kiss him so badly, just to see what he would do, but I restrained myself. He would have to make the first move.

As though reading my mind, he said, “You should kiss me.”

I blinked and said nothing, but I did tilt my chin up.

“I can't believe you like
Harry Potter
,” he said.

I held my ground.

The house was silent, except for the rushing pulse in my ears.

He leaned forward and kissed me, very gently.

I didn't move my lips, but I leaned forward a little.

He pulled away and tipped his head to the side. “We should shut the door.”

“Sure.”

We were still standing next to my dresser at this point, so he turned and closed the door, then pushed the little button to lock it. My mother had sourced door handles that matched the house's original brass ones, but had modern locks on them.

When he turned back and kissed me again, I had one very specific thought:
oh shit
.

It was all happening too fast. In my imagination, kissing Marc was completely different, and my mouth wasn't dry. I backed away, thinking I should get a drink of water, and he moved with me, so I stepped further, until I bumped the backs of my legs against my bed.

He laughed, then sat on my bed, patting the spot next to him.

I joined him, and we kissed some more, until he said, “My neck is hurting. Why don't you sit on my lap?”

I jumped up. “Haylee's here. She's probably wondering what's going on.”

He took his glasses off and hung them by the arm from the collar of his shirt. “Let her wonder.” He fell back on my bed and rubbed his cheek against my pillow. “A nap might be nice.”

I stood, halfway between Marc, on my bed, and my locked bedroom door. Something I hadn't disclosed was bothering me. I grabbed the sketches of Cooper and brought them over to Marc. He sat up and put his glasses back on. “These are not turning me on,” he said.

Taking a seat on the edge of the bed, I said, “That's Cooper. I don't know if he told you, but I went to his mother's drawing class and drew him. Nude.”

“Well, obviously nude,” Marc said, frowning.

“I also kissed him.”

“Nude.”

“No, with clothes on. In here, actually.”

Marc scowled and jumped up from the bed, away from me. He paced to the door and back, ruffling his dark hair with one hand. “I don't know why you're telling me this.”

“Full disclosure. I wanted to be honest with you.”

“Honesty's overrated,” he said, unclicking the lock and opening the door.

“You should try it sometime,” I called after him.

He was already at the foot of the stairs by the time I came out my door. Haylee came rushing out of the laundry room and nearly knocked me over when I came around the corner. I could hear Marc talking to Pickles and getting her from the back yard.

“I think Marc's going home,” I said to Haylee.

She gave me a sidelong, smirking look. “That was fast.”

I asked her to stay where she was, and I went and found Marc, putting his shoes on by the front door.

Annoyed, I said, “Why do you have to act like you have a bug up your ass?”

He tried to tie up his shoes while Pickles playfully tugged at the laces.

“Pickles, no! Bad dog,” he said.

“She's just having fun. You know you could lighten up a little.”

“You're bad,” he said to her, a sharp edge to his voice.

“So I kissed your friend. Once. He's a nice guy, or you wouldn't be friends with him. I'm free to kiss other people, since you and I aren't a thing.”

“I didn't want any of this,” he said.

With one hand on my hip, I said, “Well, good, because you're not getting any of this.”

He stood and took an audible breath. “Perry, let's forget this whole thing happened. I shouldn't have sent you those messages, and when we were in the park, I shouldn't have said I wanted to kiss you.”

As my anger dissipated with his apology, the urge to cry crept up on me. “Why don't you like me?” I asked, my voice cracking.

Instead of saying he did like me, or anything that would have stopped my heart from breaking, he said, “I don't know.”

And then he left.

A few minutes after Marc stormed out, Haylee came up behind me and put her arms around me in a hug. She'd heard everything.

I pulled myself back together and we went to the laundry room to fold her clothes. The laundry room, conveniently enough, is where my parents' liquor storage is, and I eyed the vodka while we matched up socks.

Haylee said, “Having someone to help almost makes laundry fun.”

I sorted out the white sports socks, which were nearly identical, but had slightly different lengths. I threw a pile down in frustration, saying, “If Andrew would just buy the same damn brand of socks, this would be a lot simpler.”

“What can we do to make your mood better?” she asked, turning and giving a subtle nod to the booze.

“Do you think vodka helps with rejection?”

“Let's do some shots and find out,” she said.

I ran to the kitchen and grabbed two soft-boiled-egg holders to use as shot glasses. “Does that look like a shot size to you?” I asked, holding up the silly cups, which looked like miniature old-fashioned sundae dishes.

“You're a classy lady,” she said as she unscrewed the lid of the vodka.

We each chugged an egg-cup shot and agreed it made doing laundry more fun. I paired up socks with matches that were “close enough.”

Haylee giggled and crammed together a blue sock and a white one. “Look, it's
Avatar
,” she said.

“Not really. They were both blue when they did the nasty.”

She threw the pair of socks down. “It was still bestiality. So gross. Totally took me out of the movie.”

“And yet … decapitations are fine by you?”

She rolled her eyes. “That stuff's not real.”

“And giant, blue aliens with tails and head snakes that plug into other animals are real,” I said.

We poured two more shots and discussed blue aliens
and
their enormous blue organs.

My father and brother came home, so we shut the laundry room door for privacy, as we were quite comfortable, sitting on stacks of folded towels.

When my father knocked on the door, I cracked it open and asked sweetly if I could have the night off from cooking.

“I guess I could make some grilled cheese, since the other option is starvation,” he said.

“Awesome!”

I clicked the door shut, and a moment later he knocked, asking where the cheese slicer was, and then the cheese.

Haylee was stunned. “They would starve! If you weren't here!”

“He was probably kidding about the cheese. I hope.”

The buzzer on the dryer went off and we both shrieked.

Dad knocked on the door again. “Everything okay in there?”

“Girl stuff! Never mind!”

After a bit more giggling and not much laundry, Haylee called Andrew and said she was going to stay over at my house, so we could have a “good, old-fashioned sleepover” like we used to have.

After the coast was clear in the kitchen, we snuck through and watched some movies in the TV room, sobering up and nearly falling asleep. Around midnight, we took the sofa cushions off the sectional and brought them up to my room for Haylee to sleep on.

We revisited the laundry room to “look for missing socks” and smuggled some more booze from there up to my bedroom, and that was when the
real
drinking began.

I don't know how our laundry day sleepover ended, but I have to assume I had a good time. I woke up in bright sunshine, due to not having shut the curtains the night before. I had to pee like crazy, and Haylee was snuggled in next to me on my double bed. Patches of memory came back from the night before.

You're probably wondering if I did anything I would come to regret, say … something involving drunk dialing?

Did I phone Cooper while I was drunk? Or Marc?

I don't think I need to tell you I did. Of course I did.

Even though our text messaging to date had been limited to Facebook Chat, both of the boys were programmed into my cell phone.

I'd had Marc's number ever since he gave me his business card, before he came to my house for dinner. Cooper had his phone number on his Facebook profile, so I'd programmed it into my phone, just so I had it. Until my vodka-soaked evening, I'd never phoned or phone-texted either of them.

Girls who call up guys while drunk are total idiots, right? If you'll remember, I specifically warned you that I can be an idiot at times.

The thing is, I knew drunk dialing was wrong. Why would someone willingly do something they
know
is so wrong?

My only explanation is that my drunk personality is even more of a dumb-ass smart mouth than my sober one.

After the world's longest pee, I filled my toothbrush cup with water three times and drank it down each time.

When I came back from the washroom, Haylee had taken over my bed, so I made a nest with the couch cushions on my floor and lay down. Despite wanting to sleep off the gross feeling, I couldn't get back to dreamland.

I listened to my father get Garnet out of bed. It was Saturday. They were going out with a friend of my father's, to fly miniature airplanes somewhere near Langley, and they'd be gone most of the day, which was fine by me. Had my father's voice always been so annoying? Why so much conversation? He stood just outside my door, talking to my brother non-stop about their plans for the day, for at least one million minutes.