Fireworks: A Holiday Bad Boy Romance (66 page)

“Would you mind going up
to my desk and grabbing the blue spray bottle and the paper towels?” Tonya asks
my dad.

“How often does he pee?”
dad asks.

“The dog got a little on
his paws and I’m going to wash him off,” Tonya says. “If you could just go grab
the blue spray bottle and those paper towels, I would appreciate it.”

I wait until dad leaves
before I ask, “Is that Ian Zavala talking to that veterinarian?”

Tonya’s got more pressing
matters on her mind as she tries to get Gerald into the basin for a bath.

“What?” she asks as he
wriggles his body in strange and hilarious ways in an attempt to break free and
escape the coming b-a-t-h.

I get up and help her get
Gerald into the basin.

“He’s not a fan of
baths,” Tonya says.

“Yeah, I’ve heard most
dogs aren’t,” I respond.

“Well, there’s most dogs
and then there’s Gerald, here,” she says. “I’m sorry, what were you asking me?”

“I think I just saw
someone I know from school, Ian Zavala?” I start. “Does he work here or
something, or do you not know who I’m talking about?”

“Ian?” she asks. “He
comes in when we’re overloaded and understaffed. Nice kid.”

“So he works here then?”
I ask.

“No, it’s more of a
volunteer thing, I think,” Tonya says.

Ian Zavala, world-class
skater, sexy and respectable guy—although I do have a few questions about what
happened between him and Abby at that party—and apparently, animal lover’s on
the list as well. Unless something pretty freaky went down between he and Abs,
I think I might just be in love.

Well, okay, love here is
just an expression, not an actual “I think I’m in love with this guy” thing. I
am very attracted to Ian Zavala, especially given this new information. Let’s
leave it at that.

It’s nice to know
sometimes that, even when things aren’t going the way I want them to go, good
things can still happen. I just met who I’m sure is going to be my best friend,
Gerald, and I found out that my kind-of crush and project partner volunteers at
an animal shelter.

I guess life isn’t so
bad.

“Would you mind grabbing
that soap?” Tonya asks. “You’re going to need to wash the area just above
Gerald’s penis. I can’t reach from where I am and I don’t think he’s going to
let us trade places.”

*
                   
*
                   
*

After the way my dad had
acted toward Ian, we both agreed that it would be best to meet on neutral
ground. That, and it’s about time Ian finally makes things right by buying me a
meal in the café where he stood me up.

Call it karma.

After the row with my dad
and seeing Ian at the shelter, I think I let my mind get a little ahead of
itself. He’s attractive and he’s talented, but he still went behind my back
with the professor in pushing his topic through, and I
still
have another question I’d like to ask him.

“What happened with you
and Abs?” I ask.

“Me and who?” he asks.

“You and Abs,” I respond.
“Abby. You know, the chick who was standing next to me at the competition and
then a little bit later at a party where the two of you took off to have some
kind of alone time. What happened with the two of you?”

“Are you sure that’s an
appropriate question to ask your class partner?” he returns, laying out two
thick lines of condiments on the thin paper on his tray: ketchup and
mayonnaise.

What he’s planning to do
with them is beyond me and who orders a burger and fries at a neighborhood
café? The whole point of these places is to walk in and order something that
sounds pretentious so people will think you’re the classy type.

Myself, I’m having the
bruschetta and the prosciutto. I just hope it’s not too obvious that I got both
of them because I can never remember which one of them I like.

“I think it is,” I tell
him. “If we’re going to be working together, I don’t think we should have to be
uncomfortable around one another. I’m not going to freak out or anything. It’s
not like we’re married.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Well, I
don’t know if you’ll believe me or not, but nothing really happened.”

“Is that a ‘nothing
happened
really
happened’ as in stuff
happened, but you didn’t go all the way or is that a ‘nothing really happened’
as in nothing really happened?” I ask.

“Would it bother you if
something
did
happen between me
and…your friend?” he asks.

“Her name is Abs,” I tell
him, “but you can’t call her that. Her name is Abby. So, did something happen
with the two of you or not?”

“I can’t believe it,” he
says. “You, my dear, are jealous.”

I’m laughing, but trying
to cover my mouth at the same time. I can never fake laughter. My inability to
smile properly on demand isn’t particularly well-developed.

“You
are
,” he says. “Well, that changes things.”

“What do you mean?” I
ask. “And I am not jealous.”

“Well, we can’t very well
work together on this project if you’ve got these feelings for me. I’d be over
here suggesting some brilliant idea or other and you’d be giving me the googly
eyes and trying to picture me naked,” he says. “We’d never get any work done.”

“First off, I’m not
jealous,” I tell him. “Second off, I don’t have feelings for you that would
affect, prevent ,or even manifest in any conceivable way, as I’m not entirely
sure what it is you think I feel for you.”

“Third off?” he asks.

I actually did have a
third off, but he broke my rhythm and the little teleprompter in my head just
had a power outage.

“I don’t even care,” I
tell him. “The two of you are consenting adults and it’s none of my business
what you did at that party.”

“Can I tell you something?”
he asks.

The waiter comes over
with my bruschetta and prosciutto, but he walks away before I can ask him which
one is which.

“He forgot me,” Ian says.
“That dude’s not getting dick for a tip.”

“If you’re going to talk
like that, would you mind not doing it so loudly?” I ask, my face growing red
as I look around the café for signs of the offended.

“What do you mean?” he
asks. “What’s the problem? I always talk like this.”

“I get that,” I tell him
in a whisper. “I’m just saying that I would appreciate it if you would curse
quietly if you’ve got to curse at all. It’s embarrassing.”

“You know, you dress kind
of funny and you hang out at some pretty weird places for someone who’s so
uptight about swearing,” he says. “They’re just words like any others, only
someone at some point decided this term was acceptable, but that term wasn’t.”

“Could you rephrase what
you were saying to convey the same point, but use what you’d call an acceptable
word instead?” I ask.

“Listen,” he says. “I’d
love to sit here and go the rounds with you again and everything. Sparring’s
one of my favorite hobbies. That said, we have a lot of stuff to do and I don’t
think that we’re going to get any of it done by sitting here and arguing
whether or not I could have gotten away with saying the guy wasn’t going to
get—”

“Very sorry for the extra
wait, sir,” the waiter says, interrupting Ian at what I can’t imagine could
have been a better time. “Here’s your cheeseburger and French fries, sorry
again about the wait.”

“Don’t worry about it,”
Ian says calmly and the waiter walks away.

“You kind of switched
gears there, didn’t you?” I ask.

“Nothing happened with me
and your friend,” he says. “She was kind of looking for something, but I wasn’t
interested.”

“Why not?” I ask.

“Because I’m interested
in you,” he says.

I’d hoped for a response
like that, but he’s so matter-of-fact about the whole thing that it takes a few
seconds for his words to really process in my head.

“You’re interested in
me?” I ask. “You have a funny way of showing it.”

“What do you mean?” he
asks, taking a few French fries then dipping them, first in the ketchup, then
in the mayo.

“That is disgusting,” I
tell him.

“What?” he asks. “It’s
called fry sauce. You just mix ketchup and mayo together. I’m telling you, it’s
the best thing you’ll ever dip your fries in.”

Ketchup is fine, but mayo
on fries? Ew.

“Listen,” he says, “we
can sit here and argue over fry sauce, or we could see if we can get some work
done. Where are we on everything?”

I grab the folder sitting
next to me on the seat and set it on the table. “We’ve got our topic and
everything, general approach, too,” I tell him. “What we need are questions to
ask people to test our theory.”

“Which is?” he asks.

“Oh, shut up,” I tell
him. “The professor already decided on your idea, you don’t have to—”

“I’m not rubbing it in,”
he says. “To be perfectly honest, my mind’s kind of been focused on other
things. I know we were going to talk to people who hold fringe or extremist
viewpoints on either end of the American spectrum and see if there’s any common
ground between them and everything, but what is our basic statement?” he asks.

“You mean our
hypothesis?” I ask.

“Sure,” he says.
“Whatever.”

“Our hypothesis is that,
by interviewing people with radical social and/or political beliefs, we may
begin to see a pattern, even in those whose beliefs appear to be incongruent or
even opposite,” I tell him. “The problem I’m seeing is that we’ve only got like
a month left and if we’re going to do things your way, we’re going to need a
lot of time for these interviews. I think the first thing we should do should
be to write out some questions we’d like to ask and then we can worry about how
to find these people.”

“They’re not hard to
find,” Ian says. “They’re usually the people with the loudest opinions and the
least fundamental understanding of the world around them.”

“So you’re saying anyone
who has a firm opinion on their beliefs is ignorant?” I ask.

“Not at all,” he says.
“It’s when those beliefs have no basis in reality, and when someone questioning
your beliefs becomes a cause for going off that you cross the line into freak
mode.”

“Freak mode?” I ask.

He dips another few fries
in his ketchup and mayo, lifts the top bun of his burger and places the fries
between the bun and the cheese.

“The questions won’t be a
problem,” he says, ignoring my question. He reaches down to the floor to the
side of the booth and grabs his backpack.

While he’s looking for
whatever it is that he’s looking for, I’m gazing down at my plates. One looks
like a dessert and one is definitely not. The one I like is the dessert, but I
forgot to stop the waiter and ask which one it is when he was giving Ian his
food.

“Here,” Ian says. “I
think this should help.”

He hands me his open
notebook and I start reading. They’re questions to ask interviewees.

“When did you do this?” I
ask.

“I
am
a college student,” he says. “I
do
realize there’s going to be homework from time to time.”

I flip the page. The back
of the first page and at least the front of the next one are filled not only
with linear questions, but with, “if so, go to this question,” and, “if not, go
to that question.”

“These are good,” I tell
him. “I think we can use these.”

I look up at him.

He’s taking a bite of his
burger, and I take a moment to wonder why it doesn’t bother me that he has
fries dipped in ketchup and mayo on his burger, but it bothers me when he eats
them without.

“Great,” he says through
a full mouth. “I’m going to need to up my practice time as the competition
comes closer, but I’ll put as much time as I can into this. Despite what you
may think, I’m not just some ingrate who expects other people to do my work for
me.”

I’m laughing.

“What?” he asks,
fidgeting a little in his seat.

“I don’t know if you know
this,” she says, “but I saw you biff it when you were trying to drop in at the
skate park.”

“Yeah,” he says, looking
anywhere but at me. “I know you were there.”

“What
was
that, anyway?” I ask, still
tittering. “I’ve seen you skate before, but you looked like you didn’t know
what the hell you were doing.”

“There was some loose
gravel at the bottom that I didn’t see in time to react,” he says, but I know
he’s lying. Besides, I was at the park for a while, and I caught him running
out or crashing every time he went down that half-halfpipe section.

“I don’t think so,” I
tell him. “If that was the case, you would have cleared it out before you tried
again.”