How They Met, and Other Stories
Page 3

That night, Aunt Celia asked me how it was going with Arabella. We were at a trattoria down the street from her apartment, her concession for never cooking me dinner.
“Fine,” I said.
Aunt Celia swirled the wine in her glass for a second before drinking it. “She’s a very talented girl…or so Elise tells me.”
“She’s very smart,” I agreed.
Aunt Celia nodded. “Good.” Then she speared an asparagus and we remained in silence until she released her next fleeting criticism.
Pretty much the whole time, I was thinking of Starbucks Boy.
The next morning, I couldn’t stop myself from being impatient. Arabella also seemed to be pushing the clock to go faster. Instead of spending time on each book, she sped through them, scowling at the illustrated kittens and puppies as if it were their fault that time couldn’t move as fast as she turned the pages.
Finally, a little before ten o’clock, she looked at me thoughtfully and said, “Let’s go now.”
I had spent about a half hour deciding which T-shirt to wear, which was a sure sign of a crush if ever there was one. I was also carrying two wallets—an empty one in my left pocket, an only-marginally-more-full one in my right.
I didn’t even accept the possibility that he might not be there when we arrived. I knew that if I entered the Starbucks and didn’t see him, I would impale myself on the nearest coffee stirrer.
My heart missed about a thousand beats when we walked in and discovered the surly girly behind the counter. But then Starbucks Boy emerged from the back room, a stack of cups piled high in his hands. Gently he settled them down next to the mocha machines. I felt all the nervous static in my heart empty into my bloodstream.
As he straightened the cups into neat rows, he looked up and saw me. There was instant recognition, and another one of those smiles. As Arabella and I moved to the front of the line, he relieved his co-worker at the cash register.
“The usual?” he asked.
“Thanks,” I said, handing over Arabella’s purple cup.
Then he went back and made them himself. The glum girl returned to the cash register as if it had all been planned.
I thought about leaving the H&M wallet in the tip jar. Then I thought about striking up a conversation and handing it to him. Then I thought about how ridiculous everything was, and all my resolve dissolved. When I picked up Arabella’s milk and my chai, my fingers again briefly touched his. But it was just a hand-off, not a hands-on.
“Thanks,” I said again.
“My pleasure,” he replied. And then we stood there for a second, before I felt goofy and turned away to get a table.
Arabella didn’t seem happy with me.
“He’s really nice,” she said once more, this time between sips.
“He sure is,” I agreed, perhaps too enthusiastically.
After about four more sips, Arabella announced she had to go to the girls’ room.
I looked at the restroom door and saw I’d need to get the key.
“Are you sure you can’t wait until we get home?” I asked.
“I need to go now.”
“Okay, okay,” I mumbled. Then I went back up to the counter. Of course, Starbucks Boy was the one who came to my aid.
“The bathroom key?” I said. He reached over and gave me a key with a plank the size of a gym teacher’s clipboard attached.
I felt silly, so I told him, “It’s not for me.”
He smiled and said, “It would be okay if it was.”
Now I felt truly foolish, and knew there was no transition in the universe that could take me to “Hey, I have a wallet for you!” So I took the plank-key and led Arabella to the bathroom.
“Give me the key,” she said.
I handed it over, and she locked herself in the bathroom. I decided to guard the door, just in case.
Minutes passed. I finished my chai and threw out the cup. A line started to form for the restroom.
“You okay in there?” I asked through the door.
“It’s coming out!” Arabella called back.
More minutes passed.
“How’re you doing?”
“Good.”
The line grew longer.
I didn’t hear any activity inside, and felt like a perv for listening.
The people in the line were getting grumpy. One lady went and got Starbucks Boy.
“How’s it going?” he asked.
“Great,” I said. “I’m sure she’ll just be another second.”
Up close, I could not only see his dimples, but also the light stubble on his chin. I so wanted to touch it.
“Arabella?” I called into the bathroom.
“Almost empty!” she shouted back.
Then, even louder, “Oh! There’s another!”
Starbucks Boy chuckled.
“How old’s your sister?” he asked.
“Oh, she’s not my sister.”
“She’s not?”
“No. I guess I’m…uh…babysitting.”
“I’M HALF EMPTY NOW!” Arabella called out.
Deadpan, as if he hadn’t heard it loud and clear, I told him, “She’s half empty now.”
People were leaving the line, giving up. The lady who’d complained started to complain some more, saying there needed to be a time limit for restrooms, and minors should never, ever be let in on their own….
Starbucks Boy turned on all the charm, and told her there was a bathroom in the Barnes & Noble two blocks away. She only huffed some more, said something about writing Bill Gates to complain, then stomped away.
And it was at that moment—that glorious moment—that the saints went marching in. Because it was at that moment—that wonderful moment—that Starbucks Boy leaned over to me and said, “God, my last boyfriend was just like that.”
The tell.
“That must have been fun,” I said, my heart break-dancing.
“A blast,” he said.
Then he looked down at the door and asked, “Hey, where’s the key?”
“Um…in there…with her.”
Starbucks Boy seemed to be torn between amusement and concern. “You know, there isn’t another key,” he told me.
“No,” I said, “I didn’t know that.” Then I knocked on the door and said Arabella’s name again.
“Almost empty!” she called.
Starbucks Boy and I hovered there awkwardly. I could sense he was about to say he needed to get back behind the counter, and I didn’t want that to happen. Somehow it made it easier to talk to him when I could see his shoes.
“I’m Gabriel,” I said.
He smiled. “I’m Justin.”
Justin.
“Three-quarters empty!” Arabella announced.
“It’s nice to meet you,” I said.
“It’s nice to meet you, too.”
“I have to wipe now!”
“Okay, Arabella!”
“Is that really her name?”
“Yup.”
“I can hear you!”
“Do you live around here?” Starbucks Boy—Justin—asked.
“Yeah,” I said. Then I added, “For the summer.”
“Cool.”
Yes yes yes yes yes.
Arabella had fallen silent.
Please may this not be a part of the History…
“So, Justin…”
“So, Gabriel…?”
I can’t believe I’m doing this. I can’t believe I’m doing this.
“You wanna—I dunno—get coffee or something sometime?”
Justin smiled. “Not coffee. But yes.”
“Not Coffee it is, then.”
“Yes, Not Coffee.”
As Arabella emerged from the bathroom, hands freshly washed, Justin ran for a pen, then came back with his number on a napkin. Untrusting of napkins, I entered it into my phone.
“Tomorrowish?” Justin asked.
“Sure,” I said. “Tomorrowish.”
Arabella looked satisfied, but I couldn’t tell whether it was from what she’d just done or what I’d just done.
On the way out, she gave me a hint.
“You’re going to call him, right?” she asked.
And I said, yes, I was going to call him.
When we got to the first block, she took my hand. And for the rest of the afternoon, she rarely let go.
That night, Aunt Celia got a call from Elise. Aunt Celia’s side of the conversation went something like this:
“Hello, Elise…. Oh, it was fine…. Yes?…No! Already?…I see…. Yes, he’s right here…. That’s really amazing, isn’t it?…No, I’m sure he won’t…. I’ll make sure he does…. No, thank you, Elise. Talk later!”
Aunt Celia hung up, then shocked the heavens out of me by saying, “I hear you’re going on a date tomorrow.”
I still hadn’t called Justin—I figured waiting until eight was a good idea, for some arbitrary reason—but I figured that since it was going to happen, I could tell her, yes, I had a date tomorrow.
“You know,” Aunt Celia said, “Elise told me that Arabella was good, but I had no idea she was that good. Three days!”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Oh, you’re the fourth of Arabella’s minders to have been set up by her. It’s remarkable, really. Maybe I should start taking care of her!”
“She didn’t set us up,” I said—but immediately I started to wonder. I mean, I was sure I’d had something to do with it. But maybe not everything….
“You’re not to quit on Elise, do you understand?” Aunt Celia continued. “The last girl, Astrid, did that. And that other girl—the one who ended up in India with her girlfriend. Poor Elise—she loses sitters faster than I lose umbrellas.”
“I won’t leave her,” I promised.
“And you won’t run off to India?”
“Just Starbucks.”
Aunt Celia grimaced. “Starbucks is so crowded,” she judged.
“But you do what you want.” She gestured toward the take-out menus and told me to order what I wanted for dinner. “I won’t be back too late,” she told me. “Nor too early, for that matter.”
I waited until she was gone before I took out my phone…and the green H&M wallet. I imagined myself filling it with lucky pennies and love notes and photobooth strips of Justin and me in playful poses.
“You’re such a goofball,” I said to myself.
I discarded the notion of waiting until eight and dialed his number. I already had my first line ready.
“You’ll never believe this,” I’d say. Then I’d tell him the whole story.
Except for the wallet. I wouldn’t tell him about the wallet.
I’d save that for an anniversary.
MISS LUCY HAD A STEAMBOAT
The minute I saw Ashley, I thought, Oh shit. Trouble.
You have to understand: I grew up in a house where my mother told me on an almost daily basis that until I got married, my pu**y was for peeing. In her world, all lesbians talked like Hillary Clinton and looked like Bill, and that included Rosie O’Donnell especially. My mother didn’t know any lesbians personally, and she didn’t want to know any, either. She was so oblivious that she stayed up nights worrying that I was going to get myself pregnant. There was no way to tell her the only way that was going to happen was if God himself knocked me up.
Luckily, I’d learned that the best defense against such hole-headed thinking was to find everything funny. Like the fact that all the sports teams in our school—even the girls’ teams—were called the Minutemen. All you had to do was pronounce the first part of that word “my-newt” and it was funny, like suddenly our football team had Tiny Dicks written on their jerseys. Or the fact that in the past calendar year, my mother had hit so many mailboxes, deer, and side mirrors that her license had been suspended. I chose to think she did it on purpose, just so I’d have to drive her around and hear her advice on boys, school, and how bad my hair looked. Hysterical. And, best of all for a quick laugh, there was Lily White—that was her name, swear to God—who certainly enjoyed kissing me in secret. But then when I brought up the idea of, hey, maybe doing it outside of her house, she shut down the whole thing and said to me, “None of this happened.”