I get a little tingle of excitement because I’m starting to really see it now. Images like this. People playing, having fun, maybe being a little daring. Trying new things. I can film around LA, enlist Skyler and Beth.
Paolo gives a sharp whistle. “Yo, Mia, back to me.”
I practically skip back to my desk, excited to start getting some of my ideas down, though less excited by the idea of another painful setup.
“Okay, I’ve got two options for you. Both primo.”
“Lay them on me.”
“First . . .” He swipes at the screen. “Brian. Film guy. Tremendous Whedon nerd like you, so total score. And he’s got a band. Blues and alt covers. He uploaded a video, and it doesn’t suck.”
“Sounds awesome,” I say. And I have to admit he kind of does. “Boomerang him.”
“Do you want to look at his picture first?” asks Paolo. “He’s a good-looking dude.”
“Surprise me. Who else?”
“You go on, Frisky, dating two men at once!”
I smile. “No, I’ve got to do two more dates. You pick.”
“What if you really like this Brian?”
I’m aware of Ethan’s attention on me, the weight of his focus.
“I’ll figure that out if I need to,” I say, not risking a glance in his direction. “But, you know, for research purposes . . . I think it’s important to experience, um, a cross-section of the clientele.”
“For research purposes, of course.” Paolo winks. “Then I present you with King.”
“King? No.”
“Okay, I totally get it. Douchy name. But trust me. He’s a writer; you’re a filmmaker. He’s from New Jersey; you’re from New York. I won’t even get into the fact that he looks like he could be Drake’s twin. I know you don’t want to see him, but—”
“Pull the trigger,” I tell Paolo. “I trust you.”
“I wouldn’t steer you wrong, baby,” he says, and taps around on the screen a bit. “Okay, two dates, two weeks. You’ll thank me.”
“I’m thanking you now.” Mostly for sparing me from having to pick for myself.
Paolo turns to Ethan. “Your turn.”
Ethan pushes back from his seat and rises. “I’m good, man,” he says. “Took care of it.”
“You did?” asks Paolo.
He did?
“Yep, I’m all set. Thanks.” He glances up at the clock. “Hey, Curls, can you give me a lift to soccer practice? My ride won’t be back from Vegas ’til later.”
“Sure,” I say, knowing I’m doomed to spend the rest of the day wondering when he picked his dates and who they are.
Luckily, I actually find myself absorbed in making notes for the booth and talking to Pippa about some concept sketches. I see something cinematic, framed as a movie, but I don’t know what style yet, what tone. They teach so many things in film school but there’s that “it” factor, that mysterious, instinctive thing that can’t be taught. A point of view. A singular way of seeing. I’m not sure I have it, and that terrifies me.
Before I know it, I hear the sounds of chairs squeaking back, people gathering their stuff. They drift by, dumping out their coffee mugs and rinsing them at the sink, gathering up leftovers from the fridge.
Ethan stands and gives his seat a sharp shove into the desk, toppling my camera, which rests on its rubber tripod atop my desk.
“Sorry,” he murmurs.
Something’s on his mind, I can tell. He gives off an unfocused, impatient energy, though maybe he just doesn’t want to be late.
He’s quiet all the way to the soccer field.
“At least you don’t have to worry about Rhett clothes-lining some little kid today,” I offer.
“That’s football,” he says, with a distracted smile. “But he’s coming along later, after he lands.”
He unfolds his long body from the car and gets out. “Thanks for the ride, Mia.” He gives the roof of my car a little pat. “You have a good night, okay?”
“You too,” I say, but he’s already shut the door. I don’t know what bothers me more: that he barely looked at me all day or that he called me Mia instead of Curls.
He jogs onto the field, and a glimmer of red catches my eye.
It’s Raylene. There on the field. With Ethan.
She’s in a tight yellow dress and black heels—on a soccer field. She races toward him like they’ve been separated for ten years and throws her arms around him. Watching them, my chest tightens like I’m in one of RobbyDTF’s anaconda hugs.
What’s she doing here?
She’s got a little kid with her—pale with hair that’s orange red to her deeper auburn. He’s either her son or some kid she picked up so she could get closer to Ethan.
But that would be crazy, right? A person wouldn’t do something like that, would they?
I don’t know. Putting my car in drive, I know I better get out of there before I do something crazy myself.
Chapter 28
Ethan
Q: Team player or Lone Ranger?
As I walk up to Raylene, who has a curly-haired kid glued to her hip, I try to gear myself up for the next hour and a half.
In the car the other night, I made it sound like I could help her. This is my specialty, I’d said. But what do I know about getting the lives of heartbroken thirty-year-old single mothers back on track?
“Hi, Ethan James,” she says, moving in for a hug like we’re old friends.
Instead of peeling away from his mother, Parker only slides to her side so he’s buried under her armpit. It’s the kind of thing you see toddlers do all the time, but he’s almost nine.
“Hey, Raylene,” I say, patting her back. “Hey, Parker. I’m Coach Ethan. I hear you played left forward on your other team?”
Parker turns away from me, so I’m talking to the back of his curly head.
“Sorry,” Raylene mouths.
“It’s okay,” I tell her. “I’ve got it from here. You can pick him up at seven.”
That gets Parker to look up.
“What?” he asks his mom. “You’re leaving?”
“Well, I . . .” Raylene looks at me.
“Team policy,” I say. “The boys train better without parents around.”
Parker throws his head back. “No!” he yells. “I’m not staying here!”
He goes from yelling to tantrum, which is my cue to leave. “I’ll be on that field,” I tell Raylene and walk away.
As I grab my gear from storage containers, I glance toward the parking lot, but Mia’s car is long gone. I wonder what she thought of Raylene being here. Maybe it was close to how I felt earlier, hearing about the awesome dudes she’s going to be meeting on her next two dates.
Fuckin’ Paolo. The shit-disturber. But it’s not like he knew it was torture for me to hear. No one at work seems to have any idea about Mia and me, which honestly is surprising.
I get the team going through warm-ups and stretches, keeping an eye on Parker, who sits at the edge of the fence tearing up grass.
“Where’s Coach Sweat?” Tyler asks me. A few of the other boys chime in.
Rhett’s an official coach now, cleared through the league, with his own set of keys to the storage lockers, his own team shirt, everything. When I told him he was in, I swear the guy got emotional.
Being around his level of energy can be overwhelming. It’s like hanging out with a team mascot. Like he’s a fire hose of enthusiasm. But you can’t keep someone like that at a distance for long. Sooner or later, they wear you down.
“He’ll be here soon, Tyler,” I say. “He’s on his way back from the airport.”
I’m moving the team into drills when Parker makes his way over and sits against one of the goal posts. I give it a few minutes before I go to him, which works out great, because Rhett’s just bounding up, geared up like he’s playing in the World Cup.
“Who’s the new kid?” he asks, tipping his head toward Parker.
“Long story,” I say, f
ully expecting that he’ll want to hear all about it on the ride home.
I sit down next to Parker, who does his eye-contact-avoidance thing again.
He’s a sturdy little guy, with wide shoulders, freckles across his nose and his cheeks, and a tough set to his jaw. He doesn’t look like the kind of kid who’s afraid of much.
“You worried she’s not coming back?” I ask.
He scowls at me. “What?”
“Your mom? You keep looking at the parking lot.”
“No,” he says too forcefully. “I just don’t want to be here.”
“Yeah, but you are. For another hour.”
“Who cares?” he says.
“About soccer? Me. About you? Your mom.”
“So? I don’t even know you. I don’t even like soccer anymore.”
I nod, absorbing his guarded body language, his defensive tone, and try to imagine what he’s really feeling. Like his father doesn’t care about him. Like his mother might do the same someday, drive off and never come back. Like there’s no point to laughing and kicking a ball around because life is hard and unfair.
I don’t know this kid. Not yet. But I actually do care.
I jump to my feet. “We’re going to do this, Parker.”
“Do what?” he asks without looking at me.
It’s a good question. I don’t really know. So I just say, “You’ll see.”
At seven, the boys are picked up by their parents. I introduce Rhett to Raylene, the only parent he hasn’t met. Then he and I stow away the gear in the lockers, rehashing the practice. As I predicted, the questions about Parker come up on the ride home. I tell Rhett about the date with Raylene and how I offered to help her.
“That’s real sweet of you, Ethan,” Rhett says.
“I’m going to ignore the fact that you just called me sweet.”
“But it is. You don’t even know that chick. I mean she’s hot and all, but you don’t owe her anything.”
“I know I don’t. I just see something I can do. I watched Parker during practice. The kid’s dying to play. I just have to find a way to get the rest of the boys to accept him. I think he’s worried about being the new kid. The other thing is getting him out of his own head. Getting him to focus on something besides the fact his dad left and his life’s probably in chaos. I’m going to schedule a team-building practice soon. We’ll switch it up, do something different. It’ll be good. Not just for Parker. The whole team could use . . .”
I stop myself because Rhett’s giving me a strange look.
“What?”
“You have, like, a super-coach gear. Like a John Wooden mode. All philosophical and shit?”
“Uh-huh,” I say, but the comment spreads through my limbs and into my lungs. I feel like I just drew a deep breath. Maybe I was channeling Coach Williams for a bit there, which is cool. A pretty good guy to channel.
Rhett takes a hand off the steering wheel and makes circles in the air. “Wax on, wax off, Ethan Miyagi.”
“Whatever,” I say, but I can’t keep the smile from my face. A guy who quotes from The Karate Kid has to have some redeeming qualities.
Rhett looks at me. “Man who catches fly with chopstick can accomplish anything!”
“I bet that’s actually true.”
Up ahead on Sepulveda the light turns yellow. Rhett guns it, and the Cooper surges forward. As we fly through the intersection just under the red, his hand opens and he yells, “Clear eyes, full hearts!”
Aw, what the hell.
“Can’t lose!” I shout, and give the man five.
At home, I find Jason and Isis curled up on the red or brown or orange couch they bought over the weekend. Neither of them has said anything about the bet they laid on me and Mia hooking up. Isis quietly accepted the win, slowly bringing in new pieces of furniture into the apartment. They’ve stopped heckling me about Mia completely.
I’m not sure how I feel about that.
“Sup, kids?” I say, kicking the door shut behind me.
Cabin in the Woods is playing on the TV, and a half-eaten pepperoni and mushroom pizza sits on the coffee table in front of them.
“Mandatory study break,” Jason says. He’s been hitting the books hard this week, and his eyes are almost closing.
“Joss Whedon marathon.” Isis taps her rainbow-socked foot on the chair beside the couch. The girl is obsessed with socks, the weirder the better. “Join us.”
“Yeah, join us,” Jason says. I think he might actually be talking in his sleep.
Zoning out to a movie actually sounds great. But then I remember that Mia’s a Joss Whedon fan too, and I don’t want to be reminded of her right now.
“You’ll have to manage without me.” I grab a slice of pizza, eating it as I toss my messenger bag and soccer duffel in my room and head for the shower.
Which reminds me of Mia.
I check my phone when I get out, finding a message from Chris asking me what’s going on, why did Mom sound worried about me when he talked to her?
I text him back, telling him he’s doing college all wrong if he has time to text me and talk to Mom. Then I pull up Mia’s contact information and engage in a very competitive bout of mental tug-of-war, in which I kick my own ass and win the prize of doing what I shouldn’t do.
Ethan: All good there, Curls?
I type the message and then stare at it, my finger hovering over the send button. I want to know if she’s in her room. Or hanging out with her friends, Skyler and Beth. I want to know anything. I just fucking want her.
But I can’t break now, especially after I reaffirmed my commitment to our co-workers only rule at her place the other night.
I delete the message, then stare at my phone some more, not sure what to do with myself.
I need something else to think about besides Mia. A distraction.
Then it hits me. Maybe I’ve been looking at these Boomerang dates wrong. If I met another girl, someone cool, maybe that would push her out of my thoughts. I know the odds of that working are slim to none, but I’ve got nothing else.
Who knows? Maybe my next date will be the answer I’ve been looking for.
Chapter 29
Mia
Q: Is honesty always your policy?
I’m going to blame it on a brain fog, because under normal circumstances, I absolutely would not tear away from the soccer field, drive back across town, and find my way into the Boomerang offices.
Under normal circumstances, I’d have zipped home, changed into my comfiest sweats, and flopped onto the sofa while Beth served me a heaping plate of her Poor Girls’ Paella, the exact ingredients of which are kept strictly secret—even from me.
But clearly I’ve snapped some major twig because here I am, slinking along the dimly lit center corridor, on a weird kind of needy girl autopilot that just doesn’t feel like me. Or like anyone who’s not a cartoon character.
Still, I have to know. Who did Ethan choose for his next Boomerang date? Raylene? Why is he being so tightlipped about it all? Why do I care? And how can I get off this ridiculous treadmill of clichés?
I can’t. Not until I know.
A patch of light oozes from beneath the conference room door, turning the bamboo floor a milky white. Heart thudding, I tiptoe past. Someone’s here, working late. Probably doing something more productive and reasonable with their evening. Whoever it is, I hope to hell I don’t run into them. I already feel like an idiot.
Of course, that’s not enough to keep me from slipping into Ethan’s seat, imagining that somehow I can still feel the warmth of his body cradling mine. The oven clock ticks noisily, something I hadn’t noticed before, and this little alcove seems especially shadowy and drafty at dusk.
I shiver as I glance around, listening for breathing or footsteps or the Ghost of Common Sense to come drag me out by the hair. And then I pull out Ethan’s tablet and power it up. His wallpaper is an image of a soccer dude in a white uniform with beads of silver sweat haloing his head,
caught mid-kick. Or mid-block. Or mid-something-intense.
I love the image. It’s so Ethan. Beyond the obvious soccer element, it seems like him because it demonstrates someone’s passion, his hunger to succeed.
Scrolling through apps, I tap on the Boomerang icon, which loads the site. Ethan’s account is ready, the password already auto-filled. Which makes me wonder what I would have done otherwise. Gone home without prying maybe? I touch the screen, try to imagine what words make up that row of asterisks, wishing I knew him well enough to even attempt a guess.
I maneuver right to the “Game On” page and see that no, he hasn’t chosen Raylene for dates two or three. This is worse. Date two—Carmen—is petite, deeply tanned, with full glossy lips and the brown limpid eyes of a baby deer. She’s a nursing student, into crafting her own wooden jigsaw puzzles, and her profile is so funny and self-deprecating, I practically want to date her myself.
Date three: total disaster. She’s beautiful, Asian, and a top-seeded tennis player. Every photo of her is fierce, shots of her on the court or hoisting a trophy, except for one where she’s in a micro-dress and thigh-high snakeskin boots. She’s arm in arm with another girl. They’re making duck faces at the camera, and it’s clear they’re trying not to laugh.
She’s still in school—pursuing a PhD in anthropology with an emphasis on migratory cultures. Someday, I’m sure, boys around the world will have screenshots of this girl on their computers.
It’s a little tough not to admire Ethan’s taste—especially the fact that he’s picked girls with smarts as well as looks. And yet the thought of sitting across from him at a restaurant and watching either of these girls flirt and giggle and feed him hot soup is enough to make me want to scream myself raw.
Or, okay, it’s enough to make me contemplate something a little evil. Not Cruella-de Vil-wearing-puppies-for-kicks-evil, but . . . Not. Entirely. Kosher.
The darkness seems to thicken around me, and I brighten the screen. Sitting, letting the plan solidify, I scroll through his matches, read over profiles. A part of me shrinks with every model-gorgeous, bright girl whose subtitle is a quote from Anchorman. They say LA is filled with beautiful women, but I never knew how many gorgeous, accomplished women there were. Holy hell.
Boomerang Page 14
