Sometimes It Happens (13 page)

I get an uncomfortable feeling in my stomach. And I’m not sure if Noah gets one, too, but suddenly, he’s standing up.

“I should probably get going,” he says. “It’s late.”

“Totally,” I say. “Well, um, thanks for the ice cream.”

“You’re welcome.” I walk him as far as the kitchen, and then he walks himself the rest of the way down the hall and out the front door. I lock it once he’s gone, and push my face against the window, watching his car until it disappears around the corner.

Last night, my mom had the night off from work, and so she went through the bag I’d packed for school. She’s done this every year since I was little, even though I keep trying to tell her that I don’t need her to anymore. I mean, it’s one thing when you’re seven and need to remember your crayons, it’s another when you’re seventeen and able to be left alone for the whole summer.

Anyway, she slipped a travel-size thing of tissues into my bag, obviously thinking it was super necessary that I had them. She didn’t seem too concerned with anything else, like notebooks or pens or paper or a laptop or the special graphing calculator that costs about three bazillion dollars that I need for calculus. Tissues. Out of everything, that’s all she seemed to care about. I thought that went to show just how completely and totally out of touch she is, since I’m pretty sure no one’s brought tissues to school since like the fourth grade.

But now I can’t help but wonder if maybe she had some
kind of weird motherly instinct, because right now these tissues are totally coming in handy. Otherwise I’d definitely have to excuse myself to go to the bathroom or something, because there’s no way I could control the amount of snot that’s pouring out of my nose. I know, so disgusting. But I’ve been sniffling quietly to myself for the past twenty minutes, ever since I passed Noah in the hall and got here late.

If I didn’t have my tissues, I’d totally have to leave English. And then people would know that I left class, and maybe it would get back to Ava, and then she would want to know exactly
why
I had to leave class and why I was crying, and then I’d have to make something up. And there’s a pretty good chance it
would
get back to her, especially in a school this small, where no scandals ever really happen. Like, me leaving in the middle of class crying would be the big deal of the day. Of course, people would probably think it had something to do with Sebastian, but—

“Pssst!” I look out into the hallway, and there’s Ava standing by the door, trying to get my attention. She makes a miming motion like she’s talking on the phone. I guess she means for me to check mine.

I reach into my bag and pull it out. Three new texts.

All from Ava.

“Meet me in the bathroom” the first one says. “Where r u?” says the second one. And then, “Hannah, I m having a complete & total meltdown here, my life is over, now get ur ass into the second floor bathroom RIGHT NOW.”

Oh, God. I quickly type a text back. “Can’t leave 4
^th
period, Mr. Cummings doesn’t give passes.” What happened to her not skipping class for some guy? And besides, we were just
in
the bathroom.

The reply comes super fast. “Get ur ass out here now.”

Shit, shit, shit.

“We’re going to the diner,” Ava declares a few minutes later, after I’ve told Mr. Cummings I’m having a bathroom emergency and begged him to let me out of class. I’m definitely going to get written up. I mean, I was late to begin with and now I asked for a pass and am not going to be coming back. It’s one of those big, wooden block passes, too, with the room number written on it in black Sharpie, which is totally unfortunate, since I’m going to have to bring it back to him at some point. Awww-kward.

“Ava, we can’t ditch on the first day,” I try, following her down the hall and knowing there’s no way she’s going to listen to me.

“Yes, we can,” she says.

“What happened to you not ruining your senior year grades for some guy?” I ask. She’s walking a lot faster now, and I double my pace, trying to keep up with her. I’m half-expecting someone to stop us, to ask us where we’re going, and why we’re in the hall and headed for the front door, but no one does. I think it has to do with the way Ava’s walking. It’s like she’s on a mission.

“He’s not some guy, and it won’t ruin my grades,” Ava says, as if what she said just twenty minutes earlier meant nothing. Which I guess isn’t really that crazy. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about breakups, it’s that things can change by the second.

“Fine.” I’m not looking forward to sitting with Ava while she goes on and on about how much she loves Noah and how completely devastated she is, but she
is
my best friend, and I’m the one who’s put myself in this position. I need to be there for her.

So twenty minutes later, we’re sitting in Cooley’s and I’m looking around, wondering if there’s any way there could be signs of what happened here last night. Like if Noah and I forgot to lock up, or if we somehow left something behind, or if some previously unknown hidden security camera taped us. Oh my God. I never even thought of that. A security camera! I’ve never noticed one before, but who knows if Cooley has one? He always seems to be getting into shady situations, so maybe he felt he needed a camera just in case anything bad happened here. The thought’s too disturbing to even consider, so I quickly push it out of my brain.

“Do you get some kind of discount or something?” Ava asks, scanning the menu. “Because let me tell you, being a camp counselor does
not
pay that well.”

“Um, not really,” I say. “I mean, I get free fries a lot, depending on who’s working.” Last week Cooley hired two women to work the day shift when Noah and Lacey and I
went back to school. He made this huge fuss about it, and even implied that maybe it would be better for us all to drop out of school and work for him full-time. He made it seem like seventeen was way too old to be going to school and living at home. It definitely reinforced my idea that he’s a drug lord. Drug lording seems like the kind of profession you get into when you’re young.

“Fries sound good,” she says. “We’ll order fries. And iced tea.” She flips her newly-long hair behind her shoulder and looks at me seriously. “You’re my best friend, right?”

“Right,” I say, taking a sip of the ice water in front of me.
You are a horrible person,
the voice in my head says.

“And you would never lie to me, right?”

“Right.”
More than horrible.
I take another sip of water, the ice cubes hitting my lips as the liquid slides around them.

“Good,” she says. “Now tell me everything you know about Noah and what happened this summer. Everything, about any girl, and don’t leave anything out, even if it seems like the smallest detail, like, ever.”

I look at her, at the way she’s looking at me, and think about the way she pretended to be over the whole Noah thing when I knew she wasn’t. I think about how she acted like it wasn’t a big deal, about how she pretended she was going right back to class only to show up outside my English class, like, fifteen minutes later. I think about the night Sebastian cheated on me, and how Ava was there for me, how she took care of me and made sure I was okay. I think about how she
was the only one that I wanted to be there for me that night, and now, when the tables are turned and her heart is broken, I’m the only one she wants to be there for her. And that’s when I know. I have to tell her. I have to tell her about last night, about what happened here. I have to tell her that I slept with Noah.

I totally thought that after Noah told me about his screenplay that night at my house, that things would be a little awkward between us. But surprisingly, they’re not. In fact, it’s kind of the opposite—over the next couple of weeks we settle into a comfortable routine of him picking me up every morning before work, and the three of us (Noah, Lacey, and me) working double shifts at the diner.

Spending my days working at Cooley’s actually isn’t that bad, even though I’m usually super exhausted by the end of the night. Of course, this means I don’t have too much energy to spend thinking about Sebastian. I’m not sure if it’s because I have less time on my hands, or because I’m just naturally getting over him, but it seems like every day I think about him less and less. Where before, I would come home every night and wonder what Sebastian was doing; now I find myself in bed, watching TV or painting my nails or reading a book, and all of a sudden I’ll look at the clock and be like,
Wow, I haven’t even thought about Sebastian since this morning.
Lacey and I have totally stuck to our pact, and she seems to be doing better, too.

Until one particularly hot day in July (seriously it’s like ninety-seven degrees) when the air conditioner at the diner breaks at around seven a.m. We call Cooley immediately, and he comes in and promises to fix it, but then disappears and is still nowhere to be found even though it’s now lunchtime. For a diner owner, Cooley is actually really irresponsible. I mean, he’s, like, hardly ever around. Seriously, we’re pretty much running the place, which is ridiculous since we’re only teenagers. You’d think he’d be a little more concerned. It totally reinforces my idea that he’s a drug lord, and the diner’s just a front for the feds. Or whoever it is that’s in charge of drug crimes.

Anyway, Cooley put Noah in charge, and Noah keeps getting these cryptic phone calls that are supposedly from the AC repair guys, but so far they haven’t shown up, leading us to believe that they are actually from Cooley’s brother,
pretending
to be the repair guy.

I try to say there’s no way he would lie to us like that, and that it really serves no purpose other than to piss us off more, but Lacey insists that he would, that Cooley hates confrontation, and that it reminds her of the time that Cooley sent in a bunch of his friends who pretended to be regular customers so that he could grade the employees on their customer service. Which, personally, I don’t think is that big of a deal. I mean, all the big companies send in secret shoppers.

Anyway, Lacey says I’m not allowed to defend him since I didn’t work there then, and I didn’t have to deal with this one man sending his iced tea back, like, five million times because it wasn’t sweet enough. Which I don’t think sounds really all that bad, like, in the grand scheme of things that customers could complain about, but Lacey claims it was horrible, that she had to open over fifty sugar packets, and that the guy was a real asshole about it.

So it’s sweltering hot, and I’m standing in front of the fryer because some weirdo has ordered chicken nuggets with extra fries instead of, you know, a salad or a turkey sandwich or a milk shake like any sane person would order on a ninety-seven degree day, when Noah grins at me through the opening between the kitchen and the area behind the counter.

“Hi,” he says.

“Hey,” I grab some frozen nuggets from the bag and plop them into the fryer basket, then settle it into the hot oil. Steam rises up, making it even hotter than it already is, and I push my hair out of my face. Ugh. I’m all sticky and gross.

“So I think the AC guys really are on their way,” he says. Noah’s wearing his white Cooley’s T-shirt and a pair of crisp black pants, and he somehow looks fresh and put together, even though it’s like a million bazillion degrees in here.

“What makes you think that?” I ask.

“Well, they—”

“Hannah!” Lacey yells, rushing behind the counter. Her red hair is a frizzy mess around her head, and the strands
that aren’t flying every which way are plastered to her forehead. She grabs my arm.

“Lacey,” I say. “Please don’t grab me, it’s way too hot for that.” I take a bottle of water out of the cooler, uncap the top, and down a quarter of it. One of the perks of working here is free cooler drinks and fountain sodas, which totally comes in handy on a day like today.

“He’s here,” Lacey says, her face all flushed from the combination of heat and excitement.

“Who’s here?” I’m confused.

“Who do you think?” she says. “Riker! He’s here!”

Noah and I give each other a look, an
oh my God, this could definitely be bad
kind of look. I glance over Lacey’s shoulder and peer around the corner of the kitchen. There, sitting in a booth, is Riker. He’s wearing tight black skinny jeans and a black Ed Hardy T-shirt. “God, what a poser,” I say. “Not to mention, I think Ava bought him that shirt.”

“Complete tool,” Noah agrees, “His jeans are so tight his balls are probably going to be rendered useless.”

“Can that really happen?” Lacey asks, sounding interested. I shoot Noah a look. He should know better than to get her going on illnesses. At least it’s one that can only happen to a guy. Otherwise she’d totally start to think she had it.

“Anyway,” I say. “So do you want me to go out there and wait on him?”

“Yes,” she says. “Would you? I would do it, you know I would, but—”

The door opens then, the tinkling of bells echoing through the restaurant, and I look up to see a girl who looks kind of familiar walking into the diner. She’s wearing really short denim shorts and a flowy pink top. Her platform sandals are super high, and she has a pair of sunglasses perched on top of her head. She looks around, then heads toward the back of the restaurant, and slides into the booth with Riker.

“Uh-oh,” I say. “That’s not . . .”

“Danielle!” Lacey says, her eyes narrowing. “I cannot believe she had the nerve to come here with him.”

“Don’t worry,” I say, reaching over and squeezing her shoulder. “You just stay back here. Have Noah make you one of those apple walnut salads you love.”

“Stay back here?” Noah asks, sounding panicked. “For how long?”