by Amy Spalding
CHAPTER 19
Even though I’m anxious to give Jordi the gift immediately, I’m sort of uncertain about what Maggie will think, and so I put it out of my head for the rest of the workweek. Obviously, I’ll be seeing Jordi over the weekend, though our plans semi-concern me. It isn’t that she hasn’t hung out poolside at Trevor’s with me, and it isn’t that I haven’t tagged along to look at art and listen to music at Pehrspace and other spaces like it.
But tonight, somehow, the combined going out crew includes her friends Henry and Evelyn, Maliah and Trevor, Zoe and Brandon—though Zoe won’t stop saying things like it’s not a date—and Jax. Brooke is off on a family vacation, and I guess none of the other lacrosse dudebros were interested—which is fine. The group seems too mixed and potentially volatile as it is, and we’re going to a cemetery.
It’s not as creepy as it sounds. During the summers, a film organization shows classic movies against the wall of a structure within the cemetery. It’s always a huge crowd spread out over an open area on beach blankets with picnic baskets. There’s nothing scary about it, but Maliah’s always refused to come. Until this time—once Jax was going and Trevor expressed interest.
Jordi meets me at my place to wait for Jax to pick us up, since he offered, and also because Jordi’s parents each have plans tonight and therefore an extra car is not available. I try to imagine my parents being cool enough to have separate plans on a Saturday night but am unable to.
“Come to my room,” I tell Jordi when I let her in.
“Whoa,” she says with a grin.
“Not like that. My parents are—just, come on.” I take her hand and pull her down the hallway. Okay, we still kiss for a couple minutes, but then I pull myself away from her and pick up the tissue paper–wrapped bag off my desk.
“What’s this?” Jordi asks with an eyebrow raised.
“Just open it,” I say, though, for the first time, I worry that it isn’t good enough or that Jordi doesn’t like people picking things out for her or who knows. Suddenly I can’t imagine what it’ll look like in her hands.
Jordi unwraps the tissue paper and stares at the bag.
“I made it,” I say. “If that wasn’t obvious. I mean, not too obvious, I hope. It’s not supposed to look like a sad crafts project.”
“You made this?” Jordi turns the bag over in her hands. “I love this. And you know mine’s in sad shape.”
“It’s not that sad,” I say, and I realize I’m breathing normally again. “Maggie helped me, I should say. I didn’t tell her it was for you, but …”
“I don’t care.” Jordi begins transferring the contents of her old bag to this one. “Oh my god, Abby. The inside is Hello Kitty?”
“I didn’t even know that material would exist, but it does. Can you believe it?”
She hugs me so tight that I’m back to not breathing normally.
“So it’s okay?” I ask, and she laughs.
“You dork,” she says, still hugging me. “Thank you.”
Mom leans into my doorway. “Jax’s car is outside, girls.”
Jordi and I pull away from each other.
“Hi, Mrs. Ives,” Jordi says while attempting to tame down her untamable waves.
“The fruit’s in the refrigerator, right?” I ask Mom, and despite walking in on us in full-body contact, she’s smiling. Probably because I volunteered to bring a healthy snack tonight.
“It is. Have fun, girls.”
“I feel like your mom hates me slightly less every time I’m here,” Jordi whispers to me as we walk to the kitchen. “A few more times and dislike will be dialed down to apathy.”
“And then we have ambivalence to look forward to.” I take the refrigerated bag out and follow Jordi to the front door. “I’m sorry. Your parents are amazing and—”
“And it’s fine.”
Jax is out of the car and leaning against the hood like he’s the teen dream from some 1980s movie. “Hey, ladies.”
“I have the fruit,” I say.
“I have four packs of Red Vines,” Jordi says.
“Red Vines?” Jax’s face crumbles. “I thought you were bringing Twizzlers.”
“Aren’t they the same thing?” I ask.
“NO,” they chorus.
“Oh my god,” I say. “Let’s go.”
Jordi climbs into the backseat, which leaves me up front with Jax. I turn down his banjo music and check my lipstick in his rearview mirror. I notice Jordi behind me, gazing down at the bag, and I’m convinced that my physical heart feels more like the metaphorical Valentine’s one right now. This must be like what it feels like to fall in love with someone, which means that somehow I, Abby Ives, am falling in love at seventeen and without any of my apparent flaws fixed. I’m just me, and this is still happening.
We park in a garage just around the corner from the cemetery and file into the huge line filling the entrance. The movie won’t start for hours, but if we don’t line up this early, we’ll never manage to grab a good spot. Luckily everyone manages to find each other, and Zoe’s brought pre-pre-movie snacks for this portion of waiting.
“This is amazing.” Maliah selects a pink macaron from the box Zoe’s opened for us. “It matches Abby’s hair exactly.”
“Hold it up.” Jordi digs in the new bag for her camera and takes a few photos of the cookie in front of my hair. “It’s literally the exact same shade.”
“What about this one?” Zoe points to a lavender cookie, and then suddenly everyone wants to suggest macaron colors for me to change my hair to match.
“I’d actually be really sad if you changed it,” Maliah tells me. “Not that you aren’t practically a grown woman who can make all her own decisions, Abbs. You just seem pink.”
“I agree with that,” Jordi says, though she is taking photos of the rest of the macarons. Now that I associate them with hair dye, they seem less appetizing.
“Don’t you think that Abby should put photos of herself on her blog?” Maliah asks Jordi.
“Hey,” I say. “Don’t do some sort of weird … turn my girlfriend against me thing.”
“How is that turning me against you?” Jordi asks. “Also, I haven’t actually ever seen Abby’s blog. She’s mysterious with the internet.”
“What?” Maliah gives me a look. “You know that my relationship advice is no secrets.”
“Everyone knows that about you, Mal,” Trevor says, which makes me laugh.
“Are you saying … it’s no secret?” I ask, and he high-fives me.
“You two aren’t as funny as you think you are,” Maliah says with a heavy sigh, though I can see in her face that she’s holding back a smile. “I’m already mad at both of you for dragging me into a graveyard. If we have to sit on anyone’s tombstone, I’m going to Lyft a ride out of here.”
“No one sits on tombstones,” Jordi tells her. “You’ll have to walk by some, though.”
“I’ll protect you from ghosts,” Trevor promises her.
“Don’t even say that,” she says.
“Where’s your other friend?” Jax asks, looking between Maliah, Zoe, and me. “Aren’t there four?”
“She’s on family vacation,” I tell him as I notice that Henry and Evelyn are murmuring with Jordi, as well as paying a tremendous amount of attention to her bag. Jordi’s smiling in a way I can see is confidential to them, and I try to comprehend that this is about me. When Jordi and I are together, it sorts out in my head. This other part, though, is still unfamiliar.
And I like it so much.
The gates finally open, and we hurry to find a spot on the lawn. We’ve done a good job at assembling a balanced course of snacks and beverages. We have beers and sodas, Mom’s fruit salads, Red Vines, a cheese plate (apparently Jax can be fancy), three kinds of chips, more cookies—though of the non-pastel variety—and Maliah actually brought a sandwich platter from Mendocino Farms.
“How much would that make your mom cry?” Jordi asks, nodding at the sandwich s
election.
“Probably a lot. Basically everything here but the fruit would make her cry.”
“What does your mom think about your little burgers project?” Maliah asks.
“I think she’s still holding out hope that, over burgers, I’ll fall in love with Jax,” I say. “So she can overlook some buns.”
“Some buns?” Jax asks.
“Hamburger buns,” I say, which makes everyone laugh. The art kids and the lacrosse dudes and my friends. We don’t actually feel like three separate teams here.
“I’d be so sad if you fell in love with Jax,” Maliah says.
“Probably not as sad as me,” Jordi says, and Maliah grins at her. If the two of them become friends, I feel as though my whole life would get easier. I’d at least be less tense when they’re in the same proximity.
The movie starts at about the same time we’ve all had our fill of snacks, and it’s an old classic in black and white that I worry everyone else will get bored of. But the team holds together, even though once we hit the second hour of sitting on the ground it’s not the most comfortable film ever watched. Jordi and I trade off leaning against each other, and she even takes off her jacket and covers our bare legs with it once the sun is down and the night air is cool.
After the movie’s over, we stretch and gather up our things, and people start making plans for what’s after this. I love this group, but honestly all I want to do is be somewhere warm and comfortable and alone with Jordi.
That said, there’s a good chance we’ll go see some bands play at Pehrspace, and that’s okay, too.
“Man.” Jax nods his head at the group clearing out behind us. “Those women all look like my mom and they killed some wine.”
“Moms can drink,” Trevor says, which makes all of us laugh, except that my eyes catch on something familiar, and I drop Jordi’s hand.
“What?” she asks, but then she sees too and steps away from me.
And then we’re clearly making eye contact with Maggie.
“Shit,” Jordi says.
“Let’s go,” I say.
“What happened?” Maliah asks, and her eyes aren’t suspicious but kind. I don’t have time to rejoice over how much better things are, though, because I feel careless and unprofessional. Up until this moment, I thought the worst outcome at Lemonberry would be that Jordi gets the job instead of me, or even that I do and it makes us awkward.
But obviously the actual worst scenario is that neither of us do.
We sit on my tiny front porch once Jax drops us off, sipping leftover sodas.
“Is it bad?” I ask. “Really? We didn’t get an employee manual or something that said no dating.”
“I don’t know,” Jordi says with a sigh. “I’ve just been trying to follow every possible rule I can this summer. My dad told me that lots of businesses have policies about employee ‘fraternizing’—” she uses airquotes— “and to be careful.”
“Ugh, I thought your dad was cool. That sounds like something my dad would say.”
She grins. “Sorry to burst your bubble. Miguel Perez is not cool. Anyway, we can tell Maggie we’re just friends, but she probably saw me smelling your hair.”
“You were smelling my hair?” I pretend to squirm away from her. “You’re so weird.”
“If we get fired,” Jordi says, and her voice is shaky, “I don’t regret you.”
“I don’t regret you either,” I say very quickly.
I try to continue being serious but instead we kiss until one of my parents flicks the porchlight on and off and we have to say goodnight.
CHAPTER 20
On Monday, Jordi and I walk to work as separately as two people who live within blocks of each other can manage. Laine lets us inside, and we stay very quiet as we begin getting settled for the morning. It’s always easy to find work to do on Mondays, and hopefully if I’m in the midst of steaming a bunch of dresses, Maggie won’t find me particularly suspicious or unprofessional.
“Hi, Abby.”
I spin around to see Maggie behind me and hear a bunch of water splosh on the floor near but thankfully not on my feet. “Hi. Sorry. About the water. Hi.”
Jordi’s standing just a bit behind her, and she looks too nervous to be amused by any of this.
“Come on back to my office, girls,” she says with a wave. It doesn’t feel serious, except that I know it is. I know there probably was some mention of an employee manual or set of rules that I daydreamed my way through or forgot about as they wouldn’t have applied to me. At the beginning of the summer, I never would have imagined dating anyone, much less someone here. Everything about Jordi’s been the best kind of surprise.
Oh my god, am I seriously daydreaming again? Right now?
“We’re sorry,” I say as we sit down across from her at her desk. “If there’s a policy and we violated it.”
“What policy?” Maggie asks.
“My dad said …” Jordi lets herself trail off and shakes her head. “Never mind.”
“Girls …” Maggie looks back and forth between us. “I’m going to let you tell me what’s going on.”
“It’s not unprofessional,” I say, even though I may not have enough business knowhow to qualify if that’s true or not. “At work, we’re just … working.”
“I take this internship really seriously,” Jordi says.
“She does,” I say. “She would never, like, smell my hair here. I mean, I take it seriously, too. We both do.”
“Smell your hair?” Maggie takes a huge sip of coffee. “I called you both back here because we’re going to have a table at a local designers’ show this coming weekend and I think I can get you both included if you’re free to help. So I have, literally, no idea what’s going on.”
“Didn’t you see us on Saturday?” I ask.
“No … ?” I’ve never seen Maggie look so confused. Maggie’s cluttered piles of random paperwork might make her seem like a disaster, but she does have a firm handle on everything. Usually.
“At the cemetery,” Jordi says.
“Oh! Were you guys there? Did you have fun? I could live without sitting on the hard ground for four hours at my age, but some of my friends love going.” She takes another sip of coffee. “You’re allowed to socialize outside of here, you know.”
“We, ummm …” I start, but even with my big mouth, it’s hard to keep going.
“We’ve been doing more than socializing,” Jordi says in her very professional tone and, I can’t help it, I laugh.
Thank god, so does Maggie.
“Abby’s the girlfriend!” she says. “I had no idea. Is this new?”
“New-ish,” Jordi says. “Yeah.”
“The bag!” Maggie says. “Clearly that bag was for Jordi, wasn’t it? Oh no—shit. Did I spoil the surprise?”
“No, I gave it to her this weekend,” I say.
“Girls, between us,” Maggie chuckles. “I was pretty drunk on Saturday night. It was one of my first nights out with my friends since Cory and I split up. We could have had an entire conversation and I might not have remembered the next day.”
“You guys did have a lot of empty bottles of wine,” I say, though immediately I wish I hadn’t. Luckily Maggie’s still laughing.
“This has been …” Maggie shrugs. “Not my favorite summer. It’s been easy for me to tunnel vision and proclaim that love and hope are dead. So knowing that you two … well, it’s nice.”
“So we’re not in trouble?” I ask.
“No one’s in trouble. Let’s talk about this show on Sunday, because I’d love to have help if you’re free.” Maggie laughs some more. “I hope you two are never in serious trouble for, uh, anything, because you’d both crumble under investigation immediately. It was sort of incredible to witness.”
“No lives of crime for us,” Jordi says.
“Definitely not.” She fishes around in her purse and takes out a ten-dollar bill. “Go down the street, get yourselves Frappuccinos or whatever, an
d take a moment to recover from … all of this. We’ll chat about the show then. Sound good?”
We agree and take off as quickly as we can get out the front door.
“I can’t believe you actually said smell my hair,” Jordi says.
“I can’t believe you actually said we’ve been doing more than socializing!”
We both laugh, and I feel the heaviness that’s been upon me since Saturday night finally lift.
“I really like Maggie,” I say.
“Me too.”
And then we’re quiet because I think we’re both wishing that we’ll be the one to win the job. At least, that’s what I’m doing.
It would have sucked to have the internship cut short if it turned out that relationships were against the rules. But this small part of me, I realize, wishes at least a little that it had happened.
Because at least then we both would have been out of the opportunity together.
I go over to Jordi’s on Tuesday because she’s responsible for Christian and therefore can’t take off anywhere without him. I bring my laptop with me to work on +style if there ends up being a lot of brother/sister bonding and I need to keep myself amused.
“I have a date,” Jordi greets me when I arrive.
“What? With who? Not me? What—”
“I meant, a date for my show at Pehrspace,” she says. “It’s officially August 11. It’ll keep running for about a couple weeks—depending on what else comes in—but that’s the date everything goes up.”
“It’s soon,” I say. “Like a month. Less than a month.”
“Less than a month,” she repeats. “I have so much to do.”
“Can I help?” I ask as Christian runs into the room.
“Hi, Abby,” he says. “What are you helping with?”
“No one’s helping with anything,” Jordi says. “I just want to spend some time today sorting through all my photos.”
“I can sort through photos,” he says.
“Just me,” she says. “Are you guys cool with that?”
