A Blind Spot for Boys (4 page)

“Anybody can be charming when you first meet him,” Reb said as we pulled up in front of the Four Seasons, the only minivan in the brick-paved entry.

My head jerked to her. How did she know about Dom? But then I realized she was talking about the boy of the moment. I said, “Quattro was hardly
charming
, unless you call almost running me over charming.”

“Where are you taking him?”

“I was thinking Oddfellows.” Coffee shop by day, restaurant by night, the place had a great vibe: cool without taking itself too seriously. Best of all, there wasn’t a whiff of romance about it.

“How’s about I go ahead and wait there for you?” she asked as a valet in a tidy chocolate-brown uniform started to hustle to her side of the car until he noticed me. So intent on her question, Reb didn’t notice him circling to my side first. “That way, if he turns out to be a total sociopath, I can be your personal extraction team.”

“You’re being paranoid,” I told her. The valet opened my door. I unbuckled my seat belt. “Thanks for the ride, Reb.”

“No, trust me,” she said firmly and leaned over the parking brake to peer into my face. “You can never be too sure of anyone.”

Reb should know: Her dad had up and left her family unexpectedly over the summer, not completely unlike Dom. I exhaled hard, as though I had been holding my breath.

“You’re on,” I told her, nodding. “Oddfellows in twenty-five minutes.”

I
nside the wood-paneled hotel lobby, Quattro was hard to miss, dressed in a long-sleeved, traffic-stopping orange T-shirt. He rose from a cream-colored chair as soon as he spotted me. To be honest, he was better looking than I remembered, but that might have been the halo effect of the unexpectedly good Gum Wall shots I’d reviewed for way too long last night. Even before we reached each other, I bypassed the whole awkward do we hug or do we stand with our arms at our sides moment and cut directly to “Now about those doughnuts…”

“Bars, not doughnuts,” Quattro corrected, then spread his arms wide. “Totally different.”

“There’s a difference in fried dough?”

“It’s like saying golden retrievers and Labradors are the same breed.”

“They aren’t?” I asked, deadpan.

He laughed. Without waiting a beat, I sighed as sorrowfully as I could. “Hate to break it to you, but bacon maple bars aren’t in your foreseeable future.” I explained the car situation with my mom and proposed walking to Oddfellows instead.

“That’s cool,” he said with an easygoing shrug that I appreciated. Once we were outside, Quattro said, “Just as I predicted, my sister freaked out when I told her I met you.”

“Really?” I smiled, flattered in spite of myself.

His realistic impression of a bubbleheaded middle school girl—“No way!”—made me snort from laughing hard. I blushed; it wasn’t exactly the most feminine sound to produce.

“So Kylie had some questions for you, but I can’t remember them. She’s going to kill me.”

“No prob, I’ll give you my number so she can text me.” Was I smooth or was I smooth? I made a mental note to tell Ginny how to slip her number to all the other Chef Boys in her future. As I started to unclip my messenger bag for my phone, I asked, “How about I just call your cell now so you have it?”

“I don’t have a cell.”

“For real?” Stunned, I stopped on the sidewalk to stare at him.

“I know, I know. Weird.”

“Well, yeah.” I dodged a piece of suspicious-looking garbage. The route to Oddfellows cut through a few sketchy blocks. “Oh, hey, did your dad recover from the bedbugs?”

“Yeah, they moved us to a new room, but once he found out that he got the job he was interviewing for on Friday, nothing would have bugged him. Literally.”

“Wait, I thought you were here looking at UW?”

Quattro shrugged, then nodded at the crosswalk light that was about to change to red. We charged across the street together as I asked, “Your dad’s actually following you out here?”

“He prefers to call it
relocating
.” His face tightened. “But Chicago’s our
home
. He and Mom… It’s the only house I’ve ever lived in.” His eyes flicked to mine, then down to the sidewalk like he was embarrassed.

Part of me wanted to tell him that the same thing had happened to Reb, and another part wanted to dig into what was bothering Quattro, but sharing led to revelations, which led to conversation and connection. Before long, if you weren’t careful, you could be staring at commitment. No, thanks. It started to drizzle, and Quattro hunched his back against the light rain, his expression stark. The misty gray light made for perfect shooting conditions. I couldn’t help breaking out my camera. What was a little impromptu photo session between new friends? So I wasn’t paying attention to the street when Quattro grabbed me hard by the arm, yanking me back to the sidewalk.

“What the—?” I started to demand angrily before a BMW rounded the corner so fast, it nearly plowed into us. The driver didn’t notice, too busy talking on his cell.

“Get off your phone!” Quattro shot at the vanishing car. Shaking his head, he loosened his grip on me. “Sorry, I hate that. You okay?”

“Whoa… we could have been hit,” I said, only now measuring the distance between us and the speeding car. Mere inches. “Oh, my gosh, you saved me.”

He breathed out, then said lightly, “Just add that to my fee.”

“I owe you breakfast, for sure.”

“And an entire box of bars.”

I could only manage a halfhearted laugh, my pulse still racing. As if he knew and wanted to calm me, Quattro asked, “Where were we?”

After thinking a moment, I said, “Your dad’s move.”

“Right. I tried to tell him that I didn’t need him ten minutes away from me.”

“So how about a father-son adventure?” I suggested before we crossed safely to the opposite corner. This time, I was careful to look both ways. “Maybe he wouldn’t feel like he needs to move with you if you did something epic together.”

Quattro’s wry smile returned from its brief vacation. “We’ve got that covered in a couple of weeks.”

“Yeah? What?”

“Machu Picchu.”

“No way! My best friend just told me she’s going there, too.”

“It’s a popular spot.”

“No kidding. My parents have always wanted to go.” As we walked under the freeway overpass, I described my parents’ Fifty by Fifty Manifesto, expeditions and photo safaris all rolled into one grand plan for an adventurous life. Machu Picchu topped their list.

“That’s such a cool idea,” he said, changing his stride so he wouldn’t walk on top of a large crack in the broken sidewalk. He didn’t strike me as someone superstitious—step on a crack, break your mother’s back and all that—but I swept the thought away
to focus on what he was telling me now: “We had to cancel our trip a year and a half ago, and the tour company’s got a policy that trips need to be taken within two years. So it was use it or lose it.”

Quattro brushed his hand through his rain-dampened hair. Some inner part of me that I thought had withered from Dom’s rejection now wanted to reach for his hand. I fisted my own and thrust them deep into my jacket pockets, glad Quattro wasn’t looking at me, uncertain what he would see if he did.

Damp and hungry, we finally reached Oddfellows. Quattro’s gaze swept the brick walls, scuffed hardwood floors, and distressed tables. The scent of earthy coffee mingled with the aroma of fresh baked goods. Like half of the customers inside, the baristas and waiters wore the unofficial uniform of the Capitol Hill neighborhood: heavy army boots, funky T-shirts, and tattoos. Luckily, Quattro didn’t notice Reb playing secret service chaperone at a window table, engrossed as he was in inspecting the vintage typewriter in front of the café.

“I like this place,” he said, smiling at me.

That warm grin alone could be dangerous for a girl’s heart. I vowed to keep our banter light and frothy and completely noncommittal.

“Just wait until you taste the desserts,” I told him, pointing to the well-stocked glass case under the massive espresso machine.

After a quick but thorough glance, he said, disappointed, “There really aren’t bacon maple bars.…”

“Well, yeah, because bacon isn’t a dessert.”

“To some people it is.”

When I laughed, he refocused a hundred and ten percent back on me, as though we were the only two people here.

“Don’t worry. I know just what to order for you,” I said as I started for the register.

“Really?”

“Oh, yeah.” As we passed Reb’s table, she arched an eyebrow at me:
What are you doing?
I flushed and quickly diffused my flirtatiousness with a bland explanation: “That’s what happens when you’ve got two older brothers. Twin older brothers. Trust me, I know guys.”

Behind me, I thought I overheard Reb snickering. In case Quattro glanced her way, I drew his attention to the menu on the large chalkboard as we stood in line to order. “But on the small off chance that I might possibly be wrong—”

“Though you doubt it…”

“—you can check out what they have.”

“Nah,” he said, “I trust you.”

“Good.” So a few moments later, I ordered. “I think he’ll want the breakfast panini. Extra bacon and a side of maple syrup, please.”

He nudged my shoulder with his. “I like the way you think.”

“I knew you would.” I practically groaned at my knee-jerk flirtation. Maybe Brian’s helicopter mom was right, and I had some kind of commitment disorder. Once boys bit, I fled. I asked the waiter manning the register, “How’s the brioche French toast?” After he described the rich thick slice of fluffy bread dipped in vanilla-infused eggs, I groaned. “That sounds incredible.”

The man’s expression communicated all too clearly:
So do you.
If I so much as batted my eyes, he’d slip his phone number to me on the receipt. I lowered my gaze, glad that I could break the moment by insisting on paying for breakfast over Quattro’s objections. “Fine,” I said, “you can pick up my coffee.”

“So guys pretty much fall all over themselves around you, don’t they?” Quattro said as soon as we snagged the only open table, back in the dim corner. His eyes danced in amusement. I shrugged, lifted my coffee mug, then smirked at him over the top. He grinned at me and said, “Got it. You’re the Genghis Khan of heartbreakers.”

My eyes darted over to Reb, who was so busy drawing in her journal, she might as well have been in Peru already, which called into serious doubt not only her surveillance skills but her chaperoning ones, too. So much for Mission: Extraction.

“Not anymore.” Time to self-police and keep this conversation on the friendship track. “I’m on a no-boy diet.”

Quattro tilted his head in the direction of the waiter who was staring at me. “Yeah, so how’s that going for you?”

“Really well.”

“That’s cool. I’m on a no-girl diet myself.”

I couldn’t help myself from asking, “Yeah, so how’s that going for
you
?”

“How do you think?” He shot me a roguish grin that—I hate to admit—made me feel all quivery inside, as if I wanted to be the one to make him cheat.

Fortunately, our food arrived. But after our conversation meandered to safer territory—the Bumbershoot music festival
every Labor Day weekend, hiking the Enchantment Lakes—why, oh why, did I have to return to his no-girl diet?

Shana, stop.

“With the move and college,” he said, “I just don’t want drama.”

That, I understood. I wiped a stray drop of coffee off my mug. “I totally get that. You’re so lucky. I’ve got an entire year before college. That’s an eternity.”

“But then watch out, Milan.”

I raised my eyebrows. “How’d you know?”

“It’s in your blog.”

In the six weeks that Dom and I dated, I don’t think he read my blog once, though he had a ton of great suggestions about how I could build my readership. I bit my lip uncertainly, so thrown off by Quattro’s revelation I was almost glad that Reb was hurrying to our table. How’d she read my signal so quickly? But then I saw her pale face, and it didn’t matter if Quattro figured out she was my backup plan.

I asked, “Reb, what’s up?”

She blurted, “My mom just called. Your mom’s been trying to reach you. Your dad’s had an accident.”

Dad, Mr. Strong and Sturdy, in an accident? Inconceivable. I slung my messenger bag onto my lap to retrieve my phone from the front pocket.

Five missed calls. Ten texts.

Worry trickled down my spine. My parents rarely texted. I skimmed the last of Mom’s messages:
Come home.

Home. I called home. No answer.