Little Miss Red (15 page)

As we drove around in circles in the parking lot at five miles an hour (any time Jack tried to go faster, the engine stalled), I tilted my face up to the overcast sky and realized I felt just like Devon when Antonio, the Italian waiter (who was really a sculptor), took her for a ride on his Vespa through the streets of Rome in
Exalted by Eros
. Yes, we were driving by garbage cans and an old, rusted lawnmower instead of centuries-old buildings and gelato stands, but still, it was romantic.

“Hwyadog?” Jack yelled out as we made yet another lap.

“What?!” The high-pitched drone of the engine made it hard to hear. When Devon rode on the back of a motorcycle, the engine “purred.” With this one, it was more like it “whined.”

“I said, hwyadog?!” he yelled, louder this time.

“What?!”
I yelled back again, even louder.

He stopped the motorcycle, turned around and took off his helmet. Even though his hair was standing up like he had just put his finger in a light socket, it still looked good. “I said, hwyadog?”

“What?” I said again.

He took my helmet off. “I
said
, how are you doing?”

Now that we were stopped, the whole thing wasn’t so romantic anymore. The parking lot looked…like a parking lot. And instead of the sexy samba music that seemed to be playing whenever Devon was with a guy, I had the sound of the traffic whizzing by on the highway. “Oh. I’m fine,” I replied. “Well, actually, I’m a little nauseous, to be honest. I think some of those fries at lunch weren’t cooked all the way through. Do you think we could go home now?”

He moved a piece of hair out of my eye. “Whatever you want, Princess.”

Princess. Michael had called me that once. But only once, so it wasn’t an official nickname, but still, it reminded me again of that connection we had once had. Suddenly, I was flooded with guilt.

“I just want you to be happy,” Jack said, touching my arm.

“That’s sweet,” I replied, moving back a little. I had been ready to kiss him back at the playground, but now, thinking about Michael, I wasn’t so sure.

“Hey, do you think we can stop at that Stop-N-Slurp across the street before we go back so I can get a snack?” I said nervously. “I’m feeling like my blood sugar is falling. That never happened until I got mono last year. Have you ever had mono?” I babbled.

“Nope. Never have,” he said, getting so close I could see that he had a nose hair peeking out of his nostril.

“You’re lucky. It’s really awful. I had to stay in bed for a month and then—”

“Red?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you going to shut up so I can finally kiss you, or do you just wanna keep talking about stuff like mono and measles and chicken pox?”

At the words “chicken pox,” I leaned back so far I almost fell off the bike. “Chicken pox” equaled “Michael” equaled “my boyfriend.” Another sign. The Universe really
really
did not want me doing this. I just wanted this whole Michael thing to get settled already so I could check the guilt and move on with my life.

I whipped out my iPhone.
I need an answer, Michael!!!!!!
I typed.

When we got back to the condo, Grandma Roz was sitting at the kitchen table polishing the candelabras
again
. “I’ve got a surprise for you kids,” she said.

“What is it?” I said warily. I felt like I had had more surprises in the last four days than I had in my entire sixteen years and three months on the planet.

“Well, first off, I thought Jack might like to taste my brisket.” She turned to him. “The women in my mah-jongg league say it’s the best they’ve ever had,” she boasted. “I’ve been slaving away in the kitchen over it all afternoon.” She patted Jack’s cheek. “Not that I mind.”

Sheesh. As far as I knew she only made brisket for the Jewish holidays, and every time, she complained about how time-consuming it was.

“We’ll dine by candlelight with the candelabras,” she went on. I couldn’t believe it—no one had ever actually
used
them as far as I knew. “
And,
as we eat the macaroons I got for dessert, I thought Jack might want to see the video from your Bat Mitzvah, Sophie.”

“What?! Noooo!” I cried. As far as I was concerned, looks-wise, my Bat Mitzvah was the darkest day of my life. I had begged Mom to let me get a body wave a week before, and it had gone seriously wrong, and the trapeze dress I had worn made me look like the poster child for
How to Commit Fashion Suicide
.

“That sounds awesome, Roz,” Jack said, ignoring my freak-out. “There aren’t any Jewish people in Pointed
Fork, so I’ve always been curious about what a Bar or Bat Mitzvah was like.”

All through dinner I felt nauseous. Not just because the brisket was undercooked, or because the heat from the sixteen blazing candles was giving me a headache. It was more because I was nervous about whether Jack would still like me when he saw the red cowboy hat–less version of me.

Once dinner was done, and we moved into the living room, I started getting even more nervous. Then Grandma started up the video. The macaroons were chocolate-covered, so they made things a little more bearable, but still, if they gave out Olympic medals for sitting still while dying a slow death from embarrassment, I would’ve won the gold. Why hadn’t anyone
told
me I had been so off-key as I warbled the opening prayers that day? It was beyond humiliating to have to listen to my thirteen-year-old self, especially because I was sitting next to a working musician. Thankfully, the plastic on the couch helped to keep me in my seat. It was on all the furniture—including the La-Z-Boy recliner—and the green carpeting was also covered with plastic runners. Mom was always saying that next thing you knew, there’d be velvet ropes blocking the room off, like they have in museums.

What was amazing was Jack’s reaction to the whole thing. Instead of snickering or yawning, he seemed to be genuinely interested.

“Wow, Red—that’s real impressive, the way you know
all that Hebrew,” he announced after the part where I read my Haftorah.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I never would’ve thought you had so much rhythm,” he said as thirteen-year-old-me did the Electric Slide.

“I
knew
you had a bit of a wild side!” he said during the part where I sat in the chair while the adults hoisted me over their heads and marched me around the dance floor.

Was he serious? I couldn’t help looking around to see if there was a hidden camera somewhere.

“Thanks for pretending to be interested in the video,” I said later as we walked toward the Pagoda of Delights.

“What do you mean, ‘pretend’?”

I stopped. “Well, you didn’t actually
mean
all that stuff you said…did you?”

“Of course I did.”

I searched his face for one of his half-smiles or a wink, but he looked serious.

“But—”

“But what?” he said.

I double-checked the lounge chair to make sure it wasn’t in danger of breaking, and flopped down on it. That girl in the video didn’t have a wild side. That girl wasn’t who I wanted to be—she wasn’t who I wanted him to think I was. But I didn’t think I could hide it anymore. “We’re from such different
worlds
.” Devon was always from a different
world from the men she fell for, but this was a whole new thing for me.

He shrugged. “Arkansas is part of the United States.”

Even though it was still at least seventy-five degrees out, I wrapped my arms around myself. Maybe if I could scrunch up into a small enough ball, I could disappear. “Yeah, I know.” I sighed. “But you’re probably used to going out with girls like Juliet DeStefano. Even if her first name ends in a consonant,” I muttered to myself.

“Who’s Juliet DeStefano?” he asked, confused.

“This girl at my school. She’s exciting and mysterious and”—the time had come to be completely honest with him—“well, I’m…
not
,” I said quietly. “Sure, being with you has brought out a different side of me. Like, for instance, before I met you, I never would’ve put on boots that had been on someone else’s feet. But, Jack, I feel like you need to know this: I’m really pretty ordinary.”

He sat down next to me. “Ordinary?! What are you talking about? You’re not ordinary at all! You’re smart and funny and sweet. And with the hat and the boots?” He whistled. “Well, no disrespect or anything, but you’re a scorcher, Red.”

I smiled. “Thanks, Jack, that’s sweet of you, but seriously—I’m just…normal. I like to go see romantic comedies at big multiplex theaters, and I watch reality television, and I take vitamins. Oh, and I start to freak out if I go more than two days without eight hours of sleep a night.”

He shrugged. “I like to sleep too. Sometimes I don’t get up till one in the afternoon.”

I gave one of my heavier sighs. “I’m just afraid you’d get bored of me.” I went on. “I’m not wild or bipolar. I mean, even if I wanted to, I could never be one of those girls who did the push-pull thing with a guy to keep him interested.”

“Yeah, you don’t seem like the type,” he sighed. “That being said, you’re an excellent listener, which is a hard quality to find in a person. In fact, you remind me a lot of my shrink. I’m not gonna lie—I don’t have a problem meeting girls. But you, Red—you’re different.” He thought about it. “It’s like you’ve got a lot of weight to you. I don’t mean fat or anything like that—more like…substance. Those other girls—the Brandis, the Andis, the Randis—they’re fun and all, but they’re like Chinese food. A little exotic, and spicy, if that’s what you want, but a half hour later you’re hungry again.” He pointed at me. “But you…you’re more like a hearty stew. Fills you up and keeps you warm.”

I smiled. At first listen a “hearty stew” didn’t sound very romantic, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized it actually
was
. I was marveling at how it was the sweetest thing anyone had ever said to me, when my iPhone buzzed. But for once in my life, I didn’t pick it up and I let it buzz. I was done being a slave to an electronic device. Whatever it was could wait, especially since it was probably just another announcement of some sale. But the
buzzing was so…
insistent
. Which is why I decided to be a slave just for old time’s sake and picked it up.

It wasn’t supposed to happen like
this
. Michael was supposed to call me, and I was going to tell him that
I
wanted to push the stop button! This was the second time that he got to be the one to say things weren’t working. It was so not fair.

“Everything okay, Red?” Jack asked.

As I looked at him, all anxious and caring, I realized that, actually, it was better it went down like this. Now, when Michael found out about Jack, he wouldn’t be so heartbroken. He’d be able to tell himself that he had broken up with me even though the truth was that I had ended it in my mind way before that.

What mattered now was that since Michael had made the decision and pushed the stop button, all the guilt I felt about wanting to kiss Jack was gone. The Universe finally gave me the go-ahead! Maybe the Pagoda of Delights wasn’t the most romantic setting in the world for a first kiss, especially with the ice machine making so much noise, but it sure was better than outside McDonald’s, which is where Michael and I had first kissed.

“Everything’s fine,” I replied with a smile. As Devon also liked to say, I was now “unencumbered by the shackles of duty and gliding toward my destiny.” I wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but I had a feeling it perfectly described how I felt. “In fact, it’s all good,” I added as I leaned in, finally ready to kiss my soul mate for the first time.

Before his lips even came close to touching mine, I started to hear the fireworks and the marching bands and all those other loud noises that Devon heard when a hot guy kissed her.

Then his lips
did
touch mine, the fireworks stopped, and it got super-quiet.

It wasn’t like I had a ton of experience—I mean, other than Michael, the only other guy I had kissed was Camp Guy—but I knew enough from movies and books to know that kissing didn’t involve gnawing at a person’s lip like it was corn on the cob.

After what felt like hours but was really only about thirty seconds, Jack stopped gnawing and came up for air.

“Wow, Red,” he said, wiping his mouth. “That was
awesome
. I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but I didn’t think you’d be such a good kisser.”

How could he even tell how good or bad I was? He was mauling my face, and I had barely even had a chance to kiss back. “Uh, thanks,” I replied warily.

He flopped back on his lounge chair and grinned. “We’ve got great chemistry, huh?” he asked with a wink.

I leaned back on my own lounge chair. I was too dazed to even answer him. How could someone so hot be so
bad
at kissing? And what did this mean for our relationship? Were we doomed? When Dante kissed Devon for the first time, it had gone on for hours, and afterward she compared it to drinking two 2-liter bottles of water after having taken both a spin class
and
a yoga class. I, on the other hand, felt like I had just swallowed a cup of salt, because of the brisket.