The Meet-Cute Project

by Rhiannon Richardson

  “Yeah, and the guys that you all know turned out to be really crappy. The guy you picked started flirting with you, Grace!”

  “That’s not my fault!” she says, leaning forward.

  “It was your fault when I had to wait in the car for twenty minutes while you yapped it up with your drama camp pal—that’s when it became your fault!”

  “If you didn’t want our help, then why did you ask?”

  “I didn’t, Grace. Sam did!”

  Grace leans back in her chair with an eerie smile on her face. It slips into a laugh, but not a forgiving one.

  “Guys,” Sloane tries to cut in, but her voice is too quiet and Grace doesn’t pay attention.

  “Are you really going to blame Sam for all of your problems? Again?”

  “I do not—”

  “ ‘Sam embarrassed me by saying I need a date to the wedding,’ ” Grace begins in a mocking tone. “ ‘Sam made me do volunteer work because she’s brainwashed my parents. Sam ruined my life by moving back home to plan the wedding. Sam ate my bagel. Sam drank my juice. Sam used my pens. Sam did this. Sam did that. I have no autonomy in my own life because I let Sam push me around and control everything.’ I mean, Mia, really, it’s getting annoying and pathetic.”

  Sloane’s jaw drops, and she and Abby stare at Grace in utter silence. My brain blanks and tears sting the edges of my eyes.

  “If I’m so pathetic, and so horrible to be around, then…” I stop myself from saying it because I know I don’t mean it. I know that I don’t want to push her away.

  But it’s not hard to guess where my words were going. Grace closes her folder, even with the papers not being tucked into the pockets, grabs her purse off the back of her chair, and disappears into the shelves of books surrounding our study hall table.

  I press my face into my hands, dreading the thought of Abby and Sloane getting up to follow her. When they don’t, I peek through my fingers and find them glancing from their papers to each other and then to me.

  “I do need your help. I just—I thought that, since I hadn’t been having luck so far, I should try at least.” I try to think back about what I thought I was accomplishing by cutting my friends out, but with my heart racing and a lump rising in my throat, I can hardly remember what my rationale was.

  After a long silence, Abby is the first to finally speak. “I just want to put this out there. I don’t like Ben. He’s selfish and self-obsessed, and you deserve someone who will worship the ground you walk on. This whole plan was for you to find a date to the wedding, not a boyfriend. I’ll help you find time to plan for the wedding with Ben before you have to go home and stuff, but I won’t help you guys be together.”

  She looks to Sloane, who says, “Mia, I think you really need to consider how you want to play this, because I’m not mad at you, but Grace has a point. This is something we were supposed to do together, and the second you cut us out, you did put yourself in danger when no one knew where you were. Not only did you lie to your family, but you lied to us, and that’s not cool at all.… It’s not who you are.…”

  Abby nods in agreement, and then looks down at her folder. Sloane starts stacking her books on top of each other. I don’t say anything because I know it’s best to just let her walk away to get air, instead of pressing more buttons. So that leaves me with Abby.

  I look down, waiting for her to get up, or to say more stuff about Ben, but she just rips a piece of paper out of her notebook and pushes her folder and binder aside. I look over and see that she’s writing every day of the week, and then my Monday through Thursday math club and swim schedule. She pulls out a red pen and starts drawing lines in between things.

  “Mondays and Wednesdays after your last class, maybe try to talk to him a little at his locker. Tuesdays and Thursdays, since you see him in math club, I can cover for you for, like, the first ten or fifteen minutes of practice if you want to try to have a quick conversation with him after math club before swim practice. Maybe he could come to some practices and then you can talk for a little bit after. Then on Fridays tell your mom you’re staying for an hour after school to work in the library. Say you have a research paper due or something. If she needs proof that you’re with one of us actually doing work, let me know and I’ll stay.”

  She stops, her pen hovering over Friday after school. I can feel the table shake a little as she bounces her leg, which means she’s thinking.

  I expect her to say that what I did was messed up, or that I need to apologize to Grace, or that she’s worried about me too, but she just adds, “And then hopefully after Thanksgiving you’ll be ungrounded and you won’t need to—you know…”

  She pushes the paper over to me and then takes out her headphones. I look back down at my math homework. All the numbers and equations blend together as my eyes blur with tears.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I try to follow Abby’s advised schedule. Ben and I talk at his locker after school. I find out the measurements for his tux, and I tell him more details about the color scheme for the wedding and how evergreen is going to be everywhere. I try to get him to open up about other things, like how Carly has been doing or if he’s feeling confident about his upcoming senior thesis presentation. But he never seems interested in talking about much, other than math team and the wedding.

  On Thursday it’s a little harder to focus during math team practice. Now I have this thing that no one else on the math team has with him, this secret project that we’re working on. Just us. While he reviews derivatives, I imagine him in a tux with a deep-green bow tie and a red carnation attached to his pocket. I imagine us dancing at the reception, staring into each other’s eyes, and him maybe seeing me as more than a junior that he’s known from math team, but as someone he could take to prom in the spring.

  When Friday comes around and he has plans after school and can’t stay at the library, I’m disappointed. But Abby and Victor made plans to stay, and I decide to join them instead of going back to prison right away.

  “No Ben?” Abby asks, looking up from her planner.

  “Not today,” I say, slipping into the empty seat across from her.

  I start pulling books out of my bag, and after I get set up, Abby sighs. It’s the kind of sigh where I can tell she’s not actually sighing but she’s trying to get my attention or trying to get Victor to ask her what’s on her mind. So I take the bait and look up at her.

  “Have you talked to Grace at all?” is her question.

  “No,” I say.

  “Are you going to?” she asks.

  “Eventually,” I say. “I just don’t think it’s the right time.”

  “Will you talk to her before the wedding?… Like, is she still invited?”

  “Of course she’s still invited,” I say. The thought of uninviting her or of anything wedding related happening without the three of them there has never crossed my mind. Plus, Sam would probably lose it if I took away Grace and her plus-one, ruining the feng shui of her seating chart just one month before the big day.

  “Okay,” Abby says, smiling to herself. She folds one leg over the other and scooches her chair into the table, satisfied.

  * * *

  When Mom and I pull into the community garden, I’m excited in spite of the cold. When Gavin walked in at November Always, I was a girl in the process of being stood up, still dateless to her sister’s wedding. Now so much has changed.

  It becomes apparent that change has occurred both in my life and in our little greenhouse. All the troughs are in place and finished. There are four total, arranged in two rows on the left side of the house. On the right side the soil is turned and there are rows of tilled earth, and the last row on the right is planted with small trees wrapped in burlap sacks. I can smell fresh water and fertilizer in the air, and by the moist dirt on the pair of gloves thrown onto the back table, I can tell Gavin is somewhere close by.

  The weather has gotten a lot colder since I first started. I’m wearing an insulate
d flannel under my coat in case I want to take my coat off but am too cold to just wear a long-sleeve shirt, and inside my Vans I have on wool socks. I trade my mittens for my pair of gardening gloves and head over to the supply shed to get an extra shovel and rake, in case Gavin wants me to do more work on the troughs. I pile some mulch into a wheelbarrow and set a few small pots on top, figuring they might give us something to do with the table at the back of the greenhouse.

  After a minute or two of waiting, I head out the back door, propped open with a cinder block, and take a lap around the greenhouse in case Gavin dared to go up on the ladder without a flashlight. It’s already dark outside. As I come around the front of the greenhouse, I finally see him walking over from the dumpster. He doesn’t notice me at first, but when he gets closer and glances up, I can almost swear he tenses before putting his head down.

  “Hey!” I say, beaming as I remember that Gavin did meet Ben at the diner.

  Without saying anything, Gavin holds out a tote bag to me. I take it without looking to see what’s inside and trail behind him back into the greenhouse. The grass crunches under our shoes, creating a white noise in the silence between us.

  “Do you remember that guy I was with at the diner?” I ask, following Gavin as he places his tote bag on the table at the back of the greenhouse. He pushes my pots to the far corner before picking up his gloves.

  “Darth Vader?” he asks, raising his eyebrows even though he’s focused on the inside of his bag and not looking at me.

  I turn to my bag and pull it open. There are baby leafy plants inside.

  “No, the guy I was with was Ben. Remember, I introduced you. He’s the one I’ve liked for, like, ever?”

  “Yes,” he mumbles.

  We start unloading the plants from our bags.

  “Well, he agreed to go to my sister’s wedding with me!”

  I expect a smile or for him to at least look at me, but he just focuses on turning all his plants so that their labels face forward.

  “I thought you were going on a date with Darth Vader,” Gavin says, and he stops fidgeting with the leaves. “Didn’t you embarrass yourself in front of the other guy and you were excited about going on a date with someone new?”

  “Yeah, I was, until he stood me up. I was lucky that Ben showed up, or I would’ve felt humiliated.”

  “What do you mean, you got stood up?” he asks, his tone getting less abrasive.

  “I mean I was waiting at the diner that we agreed to meet at, and he never showed up,” I say, trying to keep my insecurity at bay. Instead of allowing myself to mope about the fact that Darth stood me up, it’s been easier to just focus on moving forward with Ben.

  “How are you sure he never showed up if you don’t even know what he looks like?” Gavin asks.

  “Maybe because no one came up to me. He saw me at the party, so it’s not like he was there and couldn’t find me,” I remind him. “Plus, I’m not even talking about him right now. I’m talking about Ben and how he agreed to go to the wedding with me, and I’m really hoping that it turns into something more. Like, even if we don’t end up dating, maybe he’ll decide to ask me to prom.”

  “Maybe,” Gavin agrees, though I can tell he’s not enthusiastic, not like he was last week.

  “Yeah,” I go on. “It’s been hard, though, because now I’m grounded. It’s funny how when I first started here, you were grounded, and now I’m grounded.”

  “It’s not that funny,” Gavin says, gathering all the kale plants and carrying them over two at a time to one of the troughs.

  “You’re right; it sucks, to be honest. I finally have a date to Sam’s wedding, and I really want to spend time with him, talk to him, and get to know more about him. But I can’t. And ironically, it’s all because of Sam, because she had it out for me.”

  “I don’t think she had it out for you,” Gavin mumbles.

  “Why are you so grumpy?” I ask, organizing the rest of the plants so that they’re grouped by type.

  “You easily could’ve avoided getting grounded,” he says. “You could’ve stayed home, gone to your sister’s shower thing, and been fine. Don’t act like you went to that diner for her. Don’t pretend like this is funny or that you’re the victim, when you did and controlled everything that happened on Saturday night.”

  “Where is this coming from?” I ask, dropping the collard plants into another trough. The garden is the last place I thought I’d be blindsided by another Mia-the-self-saboteur intervention.

  “I don’t know. Maybe because you’re not the only one going through stuff. Maybe because we always talk about you.”

  “We can talk about you,” I say, surprised. “I wasn’t trying to hog the mic or anything. You just haven’t offered up any information about yourself.”

  “That’s because not everything is about me,” he snaps.

  “So, what is it, then? We never talk about you, or not everything is about you? I’m not a mind reader.”

  Gavin doesn’t say anything; he just stands there looking down at the trough across from mine.

  “What? Did something happen with your girlfriend?” I ask, remembering that he mentioned her at the diner. “Did you guys break up or something? And me talking about Ben—” It makes sense now.

  Gavin curls his fists and then lets his fingers spread out again. I see his breath in front of his face as he exhales the brisk November air.

  “Gavin, we can definitely talk about it. I mean, had I known you even had a girlfriend, I would’ve asked you about her. I would’ve tried to help you.”

  “Mia, I don’t need your help,” he says, laughing sarcastically. “Please, you just started talking to a guy who you thought didn’t even like you. And it sounds like the only reason he’s interested in you beyond math team is because he wants a free gourmet dinner, not because he suddenly cares.”

  “Hey!” I snap.

  “What? It’s true. You’ve liked him for how long? And after all this time, the second you start talking about your sister’s wedding, suddenly he’s interested. Doesn’t that sound at all suspicious?”

  “What’s wrong with you?” I feel protective of the small spark that Ben and I finally have. I feel protective of my one good meet-cute. No matter what my friends say about Ben, no matter about Gavin’s sucky attitude, I finally found something that works, and I’m not about to let Gavin’s negativity take it away from me. “What, are you not able to be happy for me because there’s trouble in paradise?”

  “Whatever, Mia.” Gavin smirks, shaking his head. “Just don’t come crying to me when this superficial non-romance comes back to bite you.”

  “And don’t come crying to me the next time you need someone to keep you from falling off a ladder,” I bark, before throwing one of the brussels sprout plants onto the ground. I kick it against the closest trough, turn around, and leave the greenhouse. I throw my gloves down somewhere in the grass on my way to find where my mom is working. As I walk, I count the hours I’ve spent at this stupid garden and figure I have enough for the National Honor Society and there’s no sense in me coming back. It’s hard to see, since there are generator lights shining only where people are working and not on the spaces of grass in between.

  When I find her, I tell her we have to leave.

  “We just got here,” Mom says.

  “You and Gavin have to plant the winter vegetables,” Gloria says, looking slightly on edge, as always.

  “Mom, we have to leave,” I say again, because I know if I try to say anything else, if I slip into any of the emotions rushing through me, I might cry in front of all my mom’s friends.

  “Mia,” Mom says, like I’m some impatient ridiculous child. And maybe I am. Maybe I’m all the things everyone has told me that I am. But even so, I’m not someone who wants to keep standing here.

  “Mom,” I say, my voice breaking. “Can I have the keys, then?”

  This gets her attention and she looks up at me, squinting from the glare of the fl
oodlight behind me.

  “Okay, then,” she says, looking down at the work in front of her and gathering the tools she took from the shed. “Let me just put these away and we can go. Okay? Everything is going to be all right. We can leave right now.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The week before Thanksgiving break is the last wave of midterms before finals in December. Trying to use my virtually nonexistent spare time to see Ben and also focusing on the cell reproductive process and the minute details of the Civil War have made it impossible to find the right words to say to Grace. She gave me one week of the silent treatment, and was then able to acknowledge me at lunch throughout this week. But Sloane, Abby, Grace, and I all had our heads down to focus during the times we’d usually spend talking to each other. It’s like we silently agreed to put the meet-cute tension on hold to offer each other flash cards or help each other find that one very important section in our textbooks that could help finish a paper. By the time school let out on Friday, Grace was already gone and so was my opportunity to apologize in person.

  For as long as I can remember, Grace has always come over for Thanksgiving dessert. Both Grace’s family and mine are used to hosting our respective Thanksgiving dinners. The first year that we went to the Davenports was so weird because Grace wasn’t able to just walk over to my house for dessert. But, thankfully, the Davenports prefer when we host. Geoffrey’s parents use the small size of our house as an excuse to not invite their entire family for the holiday. I didn’t mind at first because hosting the Davenports meant that I could go back to having Grace come over, and Sam and I could start decorating the Christmas tree at the end of the night. We used to stay up until early in the morning talking about the ornaments that we’d gotten on family vacations or from friends.

  Now, as I’m watching Sam in the foyer greeting our relatives at the door, with a smile permanently plastered to her face, I feel how far from our old tradition we are. Not only do I miss Grace, but Sam has barely talked to me since the bridal shower. Before, her going home and sleeping at her own apartment full-time would’ve been a win. But since I know the reasons why she packed up and left her room here at the house, her going home feels more like a loss.