As much as I want to defend myself, I know they’re right. The last time I tried talking to a guy was at homecoming last year, and we ended up talking about the ethics behind investing in Chick-fil-A, not a very romantic topic—especially if you have differing political views.
“So, what’s your plan? Or, your plans,” I ask, trying to shake away the cringe-worthy image of Grace stomping up the bleachers at homecoming to yank me down, mid-argument with Nate Fischer.
“I’m thinking something along the lines of Serendipity,” Grace muses with a mouth full of crunchy lettuce. She holds up a finger and drinks some apple juice before continuing. “You remember the meet-cute from Serendipity?”
“Refresh me,” I say, even though I remember talking about it with my mom.
“We watched it like two weeks ago, dude.” Abby bobs up from her fort, frowning. “That was my movie night pick.”
“Right, so remind me what happened,” I say, turning back to Grace.
“Jon and Sara reach for the same glove in Bloomingdale’s while holiday shopping. It’s the last pair of black cashmere gloves, and in that awkward moment where they both want the same thing, that’s their meet-cute.”
“You want me to bump hands with someone over a pair of gloves?” I ask, feeling the familiar lump in the pit of my stomach manifesting. “Grace, it’s October in Chicago. No one is shopping for gloves! And the wedding is the third week of December. Hopefully I won’t still be trying to find a date by the time there’s one pair of gloves left to fight over.”
I’m trying to imagine myself in a store, shopping for a pair of gloves that I don’t need. “How would you even get a guy to shop for a pair of gloves specifically? Like, what are the chances that I’d go into a store thinking, Serendipity, Serendipity, Serendipity, and find the boy you’re setting me up with in the gloves section?”
Before Grace can answer, Sloane holds up a hand and says, “Enough. We’re not doing this.”
“Doing what?” Grace and I ask in unison. Abby peeks her head over the top edge of her folder.
“We’re not telling you anything else about our meet-cute ideas. You’ll have information on a need-to-know basis, okay? I don’t need your bad pessimistic mood all up in my meet-cute mojo,” Sloane explains. She pushes her reading glasses up onto her forehead and presses her face into her palms.
“When will I have my first meet-cute? Can I at least know that?” I ask, figuring I can rationalize some information out of them. “I’ll have to make sure it doesn’t overlap with math team or swim practice or—”
“We can keep track of all your stuff. Just try to let us handle this, and when it’s time, we’ll pass the reins on to you,” Sloane tells me as she closes her folder, her paper tucked inside.
Sloane starts eating her ramen, and I can hear Abby crunching on her salad behind her folder-fort. We fall silent, and as I chew on my turkey sandwich—realizing I forgot to put mustard on it this morning when Sam was wasting electricity standing in front of the open fridge figuring out what she was going to eat for breakfast—I try to imagine what meet-cute moments Sloane and Abby may have picked. Sloane is very into the damsel-in-distress movies like Maid in Manhattan and The Wedding Planner. But Abby really has a thing for the comedy side of the rom-coms. Sometimes I think she barely cares about the romantic plot, only when it overlaps with something funny happening.
We’ve been having movie nights for years. Up until now I haven’t really given them much thought. It’s weird to think that I have this arsenal of information on falling in love but no idea how I’m supposed to use it.
“So, in other news,” Abby says, breaking the silence. “Our first meet is next week.”
“What day?” Grace asks.
Across the cafeteria I see Ben Vasquez emerge from the lunch line with his tray in hand. He’s wearing a blue Camp Cuyahoga T-shirt—definitely from his summer exploits—and a pair of dark moss-green pants. His glasses are tucked into the collar of his shirt, which makes his brown eyes seem bigger somehow.
“MIA!” Grace plucks me in the forehead.
“Ow!” I swat her empty apple juice bottle across the table. “What?”
“Nervous or excited for the meet?” she asks slowly, probably for the millionth time.
Abby turns to look over her shoulder and spots Ben as he’s slinging his book bag over the back of a chair.
“Oh,” Sloane says, noticing too.
“Please tell me at least one of you has Ben on your list. He’s the one guy that was on mine that I actually really would want as a date,” I say, remembering how quick they were to shoot him down yesterday.
All three of them share a look. Abby raises her eyebrows, Grace faintly shakes her head, and Sloane frowns. I can already tell they’re thinking about arguments against him.
“Guys!”
“Mia, he’s awful,” Abby states.
“Absolutely awful,” Grace agrees.
I look to Sloane, who points to her closed mouth, chewing on a piece of chicken from her soup. Technically she’s not saying no.
* * *
In biology later, I get distracted thinking about Ben and what it could be like to dance with him at Sam’s reception. How cool it would be for him to walk me down the aisle, us holding hands. I turn to Sloane, even though she’s actually paying attention to the lecture.
“Why don’t you pick Ben. I know Grace and Abby won’t, but you’re more realistic than them.” Sloane taps her pencil on the desk for a second, and I add, “And you’re prettier.”
“Liar,” she whisper-laughs. “Brownnoser.”
“Come on,” I plead. “You know how bad I want this. If you pick him, my predisposition to wanting him will help you win the Starbucks gift card. What if you pick someone who I don’t even like and you lose? At least this way you know you’ll have a chance.”
“Yeah, and if I pick someone else, I know you’ll have a chance of not being screwed over by Ben flipping Vasquez,” she counters.
“It’s a possibility that I could get screwed over by anyone that any of the three of you choose,” I remind her. “At least if it’s with Ben, you wouldn’t have only yourself to blame.”
“Mia, that just made it sad.”
I press on, “You know how important this would be to me. Please promise you’ll at least consider it?”
“I promise to think about it, but I don’t promise that it’ll happen,” she says, falling quiet when Mrs. Gruber pauses to adjust her PowerPoint. The slides are almost always out of order. When she starts playing a short clip to review mitosis, Sloane whispers, “I also promise that if you bring it up again after this, it will be an immediate and absolute no!” She adds the last part quickly before I can say anything else. So, I take the crumb that I get and shut my mouth.
Even if this scheme ends up a failure, I’d consider it worthwhile if I get to go on one date—one non-math-related outing—with Ben Vasquez.
CHAPTER FIVE
Definitely the red velvet,” I say with my mouth full. I chew quickly and lick the vanilla frosting off my lips before taking a sip of the sparkling grape juice brought out just for my under-twenty-one-year-old self. I watch Sam take a sip of her champagne, swishing it around before swallowing.
“Definitely a good one,” she agrees before setting her slice aside.
“I feel like we don’t have to taste any more because this is the one,” I tell her, helping myself to another slice.
Mom laughs, covering her mouth with her napkin. “Mia, this is only the third cake.”
“And it’s delicious,” I tell her, laughing.
I was happy when Mom reminded me of Sam’s cake tasting at the Butterfly Bed & Breakfast after dinner. Both Monday and Tuesday have gone by and my friends haven’t given me a single update on their meet-cute plans. As I slip another forkful of cake into my mouth I think Here’s to tomorrow to myself. Honestly, if Sam has more wedding stuff like this that she needs help with, I will happily oblige. I don’t know wh
y she always wants me to run around buying more Post-it notes and categorizing the stacks of papers she needs three-hole-punched for her binder, when there are tastings to be had.
The dining room of the B&B has a bit of a rustic-grandma’s-house feel to it. The vertical wood paneling ends about halfway up the wall and is met with a floral-print wallpaper that has grown on me since the first time I saw it. The dining room has small circular wood tables that each have their own floral arrangement at the center, with tealight candles and a pastel tablecloth. The fact that each tablecloth is a different color makes the place feel cozy. I could curl up on the huge floral-print couch in the library, especially when the fire is going in the winter, and read for ages.
Right now we’re the only ones in the dining room because it’s after hours. We’re at the green table, per Sam’s request. The green table is right by the bay window facing the backyard, where Sam’s wedding ceremony and reception will be taking place since the dining room inside the inn is too small for her guests. I remember her going back and forth with the owner, and Mom having to calm her down and work out a compromise where we would order a temperature-controlled tent to be set up outside so that the inn could still be responsible for catering, decorating, and hosting the wedding.
I watch Sam while I chew on more red velvet cake as she stares into the yard, remembering how she used to daydream about having her wedding here when she was my age and I was still in elementary school. I try to imagine what she might be envisioning. The arch at the end of her aisle, decorated with ivy vines and carnations? Or maybe she’s envisioning herself on our dad’s arm, thinking of what she’ll look like in her dress, thinking of what Geoffrey will look like at the end of the aisle. Will he cry?
I imagine what I might look like in my bridesmaid’s dress, a flowing wave of forest green standing just a couple of steps behind Sam, a part of one of the biggest moments in her life.
“Peach,” Mom says, wiping her mouth after trying the lemon cake with whisked blueberry frosting. I spear a piece with my fork just to make sure it’s not better than the red velvet. “I got a letter from the school talking about your National Honor Society application.”
“What about it?” I ask, noting how faint the blueberry flavor is.
“They said that you need more volunteer hours to qualify for the president or vice president position.”
“I wasn’t planning on being the president or vice president,” I tell her, even though I can almost swear I told her this before.
“Why not?” Sam asks.
“I have math team and swim practice. Plus, this is my junior year. I’m in three AP classes, so I have to make my grades count. I figure just being in NHS will be enough for college applications. That in conjunction with my extracurriculars and good grades will be fine—sans a presidential status.”
Mom considers me for a second, and I can tell that I’ve got her convinced. I use my fork to sever a huge section of my new slice of double-layer red velvet, and I cautiously guide it to my mouth without it toppling back to the plate. The rich flavor mixed with the silky frosting soothes me—mind, soul, and stomach.
“Wait,” Sam says as she finishes her taste of strawberry cake. “I was president. You were president,” she says to Mom. “Mia, it’s barely any extra work. It’s more about title, and yes, right now you would have to stomach some volunteering, but you can do it. I looked at your calendar back home, and you don’t have club or practice on Fridays. You could do volunteering once a week somewhere and get enough hours to qualify.” She looks at my mom and adds, “It would be worse for her to not try at all than to try and simply not get the position.”
I want to lie and say Abby or Grace want to be NHS president so that Mom doesn’t make me do it, but I have a mouth full of cake and no room to speak without risking spraying crumbs all over Mom.
“I suppose, if you have Fridays free,” Mom says, thinking.
I shake my head, but Mom looks at Sam and tells her, “She could volunteer at the garden! We need some extra help cleaning out the flower beds and refurbishing the greenhouse. And it means we can spend more time together!” She turns back to me as I struggle to swallow my mound of mushy cake. “I feel like I barely see you, with your clubs and swimming and your friends. This can be our thing,” she tells me, beaming.
I chug some juice to clear my mouth and stare at Mom and Sam. Before I can say anything, Sam rushes to ask, “How can you say no to that?”
Right. How could I?
I shrug my shoulders and smile to keep myself from saying something sarcastic and intentionally mean to Sam.
“Great,” Mom says, grasping my hand. “I’ll tell the group tomorrow. And don’t worry. It’s not all a bunch of old ladies like me. There’s a boy your age who volunteers most days after school.”
“Look at that, a young man.” Sam smiles at me over Mom’s shoulder. She reaches for her glass of wine and takes a sip to hide her laugh.
I grab my glass of juice and take a sip to hide the fact that I’m silently praying Mom doesn’t point out the bit of cake Sam has between her teeth.
* * *
“And that’s why I need to go to the store and waste money on my own pair of gardening gloves and knee pads,” I explain to my friends the next day in study hall. “Why would Sam want me wasting time at a garden when she also wants me looking for a date to her wedding?”
“I can go with you after school,” Grace says. “I’ll swing by your house, and then we can go into town. I know the perfect shop for you to find all your stuff.”
“You know the perfect shop? I’ve never seen you garden a day in your life,” Sloane says, staring at Grace suspiciously.
“My mom gardens,” Grace says in her own defense.
“I was thinking about going to Lowe’s,” I admit. Since none of my friends have presented me with a meet-cute and now I have the impending doom of volunteering on Friday, I’ve lost my inspiration for my history paper. I zip my pen case, ready to wallow in some self-pity.
“Lowe’s is so overpriced,” Grace tells me. “Trust me, you can get everything you need from this place.”
“Okay,” I relent, not caring about where the stuff comes from but about the fact that I need it in the first place. Mom told me that there are gloves and pads at the garden, but they’re shared by people, and since the summer just ended, some of the gloves smell like sweat and a lot of the knee pads are stained. Gross.
Sloane shakes her head before returning to her history essay. Abby is once again writing behind her secret folder fort, and I can’t tell if she has paid attention to a single word I’ve said.
I bend over the back of my chair and stare down our aisle of the library. We always pick the table in the back corner by the windows when we have study hall, because most people don’t know it’s here. You have to wander through the labyrinth of shelves to find it. The first time Sloane found it, she wasn’t able to remember how to get back to it, and none of us believed that it actually existed. But then during second semester of freshman year, I was trying to sneak away from my English class to check out a section of the library that our teacher hadn’t requested to have materials pulled from. As I was tiptoeing toward the back wall, scanning for newspaper excerpts printed from 1920, I found the spot. I made sure to remember what section of the library it was near, and ever since then we’ve always tried to get the same study period so that we could meet here.
Through an empty space on the shelf behind me, I see movement. In the silence I try to listen to the shuffling to tell whether they’re getting closer or going farther away.
“Someone’s about to infiltrate,” I whisper.
Everyone looks up, and we watch the bookshelf in silence. I startle when I see someone’s eye looking right at us.
“Victor?” Abby hisses from behind her folder.
The figure disappears as Abby stands up. She goes behind the shelf and comes back with her boyfriend, Victor—who’s on the boys’ swim team.
&
nbsp; “Did anyone follow you?” Sloane asks, pointing her pencil at him like she’s about to launch it.
He holds his hands up in surrender. “No. I swear.”
“You may enter,” Sloane declares, looking down at her notes again.
When they both sit down on the other side of the folder, Grace says what I start to think. “Why does he get to be on the other side of the fort?”
“Because he’s helping me.”
“What exactly is he helping you with?” I ask. I originally thought she was working on meet-cute stuff and that the whole point of the folder was so that no one would see her plan and try to sabotage her chances of the Starbucks gift card. I hope she’s not showing my meet-cute to her boyfriend.
“None of your business,” she tells me, before ducking back behind her folder.
Victor huddles down close to her, which is hard for him since he’s six feet tall. Victor and I are two of the three Black people on the swim team. He and I have both heard a lot of jokes about how Black people don’t swim. There’s another girl named Shannon who joined the team last year. There was an incident in the locker room where some of the senior girls were whispering to each other and someone asked why Shannon didn’t just go run track or play basketball. She ended up telling the coach, and those girls were suspended. When I asked her about it, she said that when people say stuff like that, it only makes her want to swim faster. It pushes her to practice harder. Victor and I decided we should definitely stick together—Shannon included—and always speak up for each other in situations like that because I used to feel more intimidated about it when I first joined the team freshman year.
Now that I’m thinking about it, I wonder—if Victor is helping Abby with her meet-cute—would Abby be annoyed if I ask her to possibly set me up with someone Victor knows from the track team. Victor runs track in the spring and he knows a lot of people, so that could widen the pool of possible dates.
The Meet-Cute Project Page 4
