Lessons in Love (Flirt) (16 page)

When I stepped into my room wrapped in a towel, Simone was hanging a garment bag from the curtain rod. A large, shiny purple case was sitting on my bed. I didn’t have to look inside to know that it contained her entire makeup collection.

“Don’t panic, I’m here,” she sang out. “All ready to doll you up for your first date with Logan.”

“It’s not a date.” I hesitated. “Necessarily.”

She unzipped the garment bag. “Okay, I wasn’t sure how dressy you wanted to get,” she said. “I mean, it’s a morning date, so you shouldn’t look like you’re trying too hard. But you want to look nice, right?”

“Right. That’s why I was going to wear jeans and maybe my blue V-neck T-shirt.” I walked over to my dresser and pulled out some clean underwear.

Simone looked dismayed. “The one you bought last month? No, I don’t think so.”

“What? Why not? You said I look great in that.”

“For
school
.” Simone shook her head. “You need something a little more special for a weekend date. Like this.” She pulled a shiny purple minidress out of the bag with a flourish.

“You just said I shouldn’t look like I’m trying too hard,” I reminded her. “Besides, I’m going to the animal shelter, not dinner at the White House.”

Simone chewed on her lower lip, turning the dress this way and that. “Maybe you’re right—jeans should work fine with the right shirt.” She hung the dress on the curtain rod beside the bag. “Maybe that black top with the sequins on the sleeves . . .”

As she dug through the garment bag, I quickly pulled on my underwear and dropped my damp towel in the hamper by the door. Even though Simone was acting kind of crazy, I was glad she was there. She was distracting me from being nervous. At least a little.

Every time I thought about meeting Logan, I felt a weird flip-flopping sensation in my gut. Was that the sparks at work again?

“This could work.” Simone pulled out a bright pink shirt. “The color will look great on you, especially after I do your makeup. Here, try it on.”

She tossed it to me, and I yanked it on over my head. “It’s a little snug,” I said, pulling at the front.

“No, it looks great! Hang on—I want to try something.” She hurried over to the bed and snapped open her makeup case.

“Wait, what?” I watched as she started pulling out colorful tubes and bottles and vials. “Stop. What’s wrong with my usual makeup routine?”

“Nothing—for school,” Simone replied. “But you’re not going to school today, remember? You’re going on a date.”

“It’s not a—”

She didn’t let me finish. “Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing.”

That was true. Simone had been going out on dates for years. Even if this wasn’t a real date, it was still an outing with a guy friend, which was almost the same thing, right? Maybe she really did know best in this case. Or maybe I was still half-asleep and didn’t feel like protesting. Either way, I was soon sitting cross-legged on my bedroom floor while she dabbed concealer onto my face.

As she worked, I tried to figure out what Logan had intended when he’d asked me to meet him at the shelter. Was it supposed to be a date? Simone seemed convinced it was, but I still wasn’t sure.

Oh well. With any luck, I’d figure it out when I got there. I stifled a yawn as Simone used a giant brush to apply blush to my cheekbones.

“Hold still!” she ordered.

“Sorry. I didn’t get to bed until late—our last customers were a bunch of hungry frat guys who didn’t clear out until almost an hour past closing.” I kept my face still, but slid my eyes toward her. “So what did you and Matt end up doing?”

“Dinner at the Chinese place on Oak. It was okay.” She sat back to study my face. “Except we ended up spending like half the night talking about Ling and Megan’s battle over Logan.”

“Really?” I closed my left eye as she came at it with a tiny eye-shadow brush. “What did he say about it?”

“He thinks it’s pathetic. Not that he’d ever say it to their faces.”

“Can you blame him?” I opened my eye and looked at her. “Those two have really gone nuts over this. Like, scary psycho-killer nuts.”

Simone capped the mascara and tossed it back in her bag. “I know, right? They’re acting like Logan’s the last guy on earth or something.” She leaned over, picking through the makeup bag. “Actually, though, I think it’s just about the competition at this point. We all know they both hate to lose at anything. I bet that’s the only reason neither of them will back down.” She pulled out a tube of eyeliner and examined it. “It’s not even about Logan himself anymore. I doubt they even really care about him.”

I’d been thinking pretty much the same thing just the day before. Still, something about the way Simone was dismissing Logan’s role in the whole thing rubbed me the wrong way. It wasn’t as if two pretty, popular girls like Ling and Megan would make total fools of themselves over just anyone.

“I don’t know about that,” I told Simone. “Why
wouldn’t
they care about him? He’s a super-nice guy, and you said yourself he’s cute.”

She smirked at me. “Uh-oh, sorry—I didn’t mean to insult Mr. Perfect,” she said. “You’re right, he’s super droolworthy, and every girl wants him. There, is that better?”

I rolled my eyes. “Whatever. Are you done yet?”

“Not quite. Close your eyes and stop talking for a minute.” She went back to work. “There,” she said after a bit. “We can do your lips last. Now, about your hair—where’s your curling iron?”

“No way.” I put a protective hand to my head. “The last time I let you curl my hair, I ended up looking like Little Orphan Annie.”

“Oh, please. We were like ten years old!” She fingered a strand of my damp, limp hair. “I just think you’d look cute with a few soft waves framing your face.”

“Forget it.” Climbing to my feet, I took a look at myself in the mirror. I was quite a sight. Simone had done an expert job on my eyes, giving them a smoky, almost exotic look. My lashes seemed a mile long, and my cheeks glowed with soft, sparkly pink blush.

“What do you think?” She hovered behind me, grinning like a loon. “Cute, right?”

“I don’t know.” I leaned closer for a better look. “I’m not sure Logan will even recognize me like this.”

“Sure he will. Come on, at least let me help you dry your hair. Then you can finish getting dressed.”

After one last glance at the semifamiliar face in the mirror, I followed her across the hall into the bathroom. It was still steamy from my shower, so I didn’t have to look at my made-up face as I started blow-drying my hair. It was hard to miss that hot pink shirt, though. Even in the foggy mirror it glowed like a type II supernova.

“So what are you going to talk about on your date?” Simone asked, raising her voice to be heard over the roar of the blow-dryer.

“It’s not a date,” I replied, glad that my parents had already left for the restaurant. “And I’m guessing we’ll mostly be talking about dogs.”

“Okay. But you should have some other topics prepared just in case,” she said. “Like current events, or funny stuff that happened in school, or . . .”

She babbled on for a while, but I wasn’t paying much attention. When my hair was dry, I went back to my bedroom and pulled on my favorite jeans.

Then I looked in the mirror again. Simone’s proud, smiling face appeared over my shoulder.

“You look perfect!” she exclaimed. “So adorable. Logan’s going to love it.”

I just stared at myself. At least I
thought
it was me. Between the makeup and Simone’s pink shirt, I definitely didn’t look much like my normal self.

Was that a bad thing? I wasn’t sure. If Simone was right and this was supposed to be a date, maybe Logan would be expecting me to get all dressed up. Maybe he’d even be insulted if I didn’t. On the other hand, what if he really did just want a friend’s advice in choosing a dog? In that case, he was going to think I was insane if I showed up looking like this.

Besides, I wasn’t that kind of girl. The kind who got all sparkly and fancy to try to win over a boy. Logan might as well know that from the start. Grabbing a tissue out of the box on my dresser, I glanced at Simone.

“Sorry,” I said. “I appreciate the effort, but it’s a little too much for me.”

I wiped one eye, smearing glittery eye shadow across the tissue. “No!” Simone squawked, looking as stricken as if I’d just defaced the
Mona Lisa
. “But this is your first real date—I just want you to look as cute as you can.”

“I know, and thanks. The trouble is, I don’t look like
me
.” I quickly wiped off the rest of the makeup. Then I pulled the pink shirt off over my head. “If this really is a date—”

“It is,” she put in.

“Whatever.” I handed her the shirt. “If it is, and if Logan really does like me as more than a friend—”

“He so totally does!”

“—then he’d better like the real me.” I glanced at my naked face in the mirror. “Not some second-rate Simone clone.”

Simone frowned for a second. Then she sighed. “Okay, fine,” she said. “Natural girl it is. But you’ll at least put on a
little
blush and eyeliner, right?”

Since my parents weren’t home to drive me, I rode my bike to the animal shelter. The day was sunny but chilly, as if winter was digging its claws in, trying to hold on as long as possible. Logan was waiting outside the shelter when I got there. He smiled and waved as I pedaled over.

“Thanks for coming,” he said, walking next to me as I wheeled my bike over to the rack. “I’m really excited about this!”

“Me too. It’ll be fun.” I quickly locked my bike, then straightened up. “Should we go in?”

“After you.” He hurried over and opened the door, waiting for me to go through before him.

“Thanks.” I shook off the chill as I stepped into the warm building. The sounds of muffled barking greeted us, along with the battling smells of animals and disinfectant.

The lady working at the desk was a regular Eats customer. “Bailey!” she greeted me. “So nice to see you. What can I do for you?”

I explained about Logan’s quest. The woman nodded. “Yes, there was a note here about that when I came in this morning.” She scrambled around on the messy desk. “The director said we could hold whichever dog you choose until next week.”

She pointed us toward the dog section. Not that it would have been hard to find—most of the barking was coming from that direction.

“Let me know when you find one you like,” the woman said. “I’ll bring it to the meet-and-greet room so you can get to know it.”

The dog room was noisy and active. Wire runs lined both walls of the long, narrow room, with a concrete aisle in between. In each cage was a dog, or sometimes more than one. For a few minutes we just walked around, peering in at each dog. Most of them seemed happy to see us, wagging their tails and sometimes barking or jumping up against the mesh fronts of the pens.

I paused to watch a pair of shepherd puppies wrestle. “So did you decide what kind of dog you want?” I asked as Logan stepped past me to the next run.

“I’m still not sure.” He bent to let a medium-size hound type sniff his fingers through the wire. “I don’t want anything too small and yappy, but Mom asked me not to get anything too huge, either.”

“Okay. What else are you thinking?”

He shrugged. “I don’t really know. I just figured a mutt is a mutt, you know?”

I glanced from a feisty little terrier barking nonstop in the next cage to the dog across the aisle, which appeared to be some kind of Lab mix. “Right, but you can guess at least a little about a dog’s possible genotype from its phenotype.”

“Uh-oh,” he said. “You’re talking science again, aren’t you?”

“Oops.” I shot him a sheepish look. “Sorry.”

He reached over and poked me on the shoulder. “Just kidding,” he said with a grin. “I love it when you talk science.”

“Good. Because that’s the only way I know how to talk, pretty much,” I replied.

I was blushing a little, but there was none of the tongue-tied awkwardness that usually popped up at such moments. Come to think of it, being with Logan felt almost . . . easy. Like I really was just hanging out with a friend. A really, really cute and amazing friend.

“So, Professor,” he said. “What’s this genotype stuff you were talking about?”

“Oh, right.” I stepped down the aisle to the next cage, where a tiny white dog peered up at me curiously. “I just meant that the way a dog looks can help you guess its breeding. So if you like, say, golden retrievers, you could see if any of the dogs have silky yellow fur or any other features that look like a golden. Because that might be a hint that they have some golden in them, which means a greater chance of them possibly having a similar type of personality.”

“Gotcha.” He stopped to look at the resident of the next run, a lean dog that appeared to be at least part greyhound. “I guess my mom’s right and science really does make a difference in real life, huh?”

I grinned. “Definitely.”

Just then a medium-size brown-and-white dog jumped up and barked at us from farther down the aisle, its fringed tail wagging furiously. “That one’s cute,” Logan said, hurrying over and offering his fingers for a sniff. “It looks sort of like a collie or something.”