Sometimes It Happens (14 page)

“Until they’re gone.” I grab two menus from behind the counter, not bothering to wipe them off. Danielle definitely doesn’t deserve to have a clean menu. She can put up with something a little bit sticky, since she stole Lacey’s boyfriend. Not to mention that the last time she was here, she gave me attitude and poured a whole glass of water on one of our tables. A whole glass of water that
I
had to clean up. Not that it was that hard. But still.

“Until they’re
gone
?” Noah says. “But that could be, like, an hour. How are we supposed to work with just the two of us? It’s almost lunchtime!”

“You cook and I’ll wait tables,” I say to him, rolling
my eyes. “It’ll be just like it always is, except we’ll pretend Lacey’s on a break.”

“For an hour during the lunch rush?”

“Make it work,” I say, just like they do on
Project Runway
. I give Lacey’s shoulder another little squeeze, then slide out from behind the counter and march over to Riker’s table.

“Oh, hello,” I say, sliding the menus down in front of them. “Welcome to Cooley’s.” I turn to Danielle. “I’m Hannah. I think I’ve waited on you before.”

“Thanks.” Danielle takes the menu and looks kind of bored. She’s totally pretending that she has no memory of our little interaction a couple of weeks ago. Talk about passive-aggressive.

“Hey, Hannah,” Riker says, giving me a big grin. “How are you?” I narrow my eyes. What is wrong with him? I mean, seriously. He has to know that I know that he stalked Ava. He knows we’re best friends. He knows that we were just in Starbucks a couple of weeks ago, and Ava was getting totally creeped out by him. Not to mention the fact that he cheated on Lacey with her best friend. So why does he think it’s okay to say hi to me?

“What can I get you two?” I hope my tone conveys that they deserve each other.

“I’ll have peach pie with vanilla ice cream,” Riker says.

“Just a Diet Coke for me,” Danielle says.

“Great,” I say, forcing false cheer into my voice. So basically the whole bill will come out to about seven dollars,
and they’ll probably leave me, like, a fifty cent tip. Also they’re taking up an entire booth that can seat up to six people, and they’re only a party of two. So annoying.

“What did they say?” Lacey demands once I’m back behind the counter.

“They said they’re both scum-sucking assholes.”

“No, seriously.” She bites her lip and her green eyes are serious.

“Nothing.” I shrug. “He ordered peach pie and she ordered some Diet Coke.”

“Oh.” Lacey’s eyes get all watery, and I realize she was hoping they had said something about her.

“Look,” I say, grabbing a glass and sliding it into the ice cubes, then sticking it under the soda fountain. I hit the button for Diet Coke, and the soda comes shooting out into the glass. The fryer behind me beeps, and, without missing a beat, I swing around and pull up the fry basket, letting it drain for a minute. “You shouldn’t be wasting even one second of your time on them.” I look her in the eye. “Listen to me: They are dead to you.”

“Okay.” She doesn’t look so sure. The bells over the door tinkle again, and I look up to see three repairmen coming into the store, dressed in dark blue overalls. They’re either the AC repairmen, or a bunch of random repairmen coming in to have lunch. At this point, I don’t really care. If they’re random, they’re going to have to work for their lunch by fixing the damn air conditioner.

“Now listen,” I say to Lacey. “I’m going to send the AC guys back here, and you’re going to show them where the air conditioner is, okay?”

“Okay.” Lacey nods, like she can handle this.

“I’m going to work on the lunch rush with Noah, and once Riker and Danielle are gone, you’re going to come out and help, okay?”

She nods again.

“And then later, we’re going to talk about this. Got it?”

“Got it.”

I redo my ponytail, slice a piece of peach pie, plop some ice cream on top, grab the Diet Coke, and head back out into the dining room.

But it doesn’t really work out. My whole plan to talk Lacey through her trauma, I mean. She gets so upset that she can’t come out of the back room, and then one of the repairmen gets really nervous because she won’t stop crying, and so finally Lacey has to go home. The rest of the day is completely crazy with me as the only waitress. (Seriously, at one point I look at the amount of people waiting for their orders to be taken, and consider just bursting into tears and/or walking out the door.) Noah and I are kept so busy that we don’t even have time to eat, so once we close, he makes us French fries, cheeseburgers, and onion rings and we sit down at the counter with our feast.

“So this,” Noah says, “is Sting. Do you like it?”

“What’s Sting?” I ask. I sniff the air around him, assuming it’s some kind of scent. You know, like, Sting by Tommy Hilfiger or something. Noah’s not the type that wears cologne. Not that I know what type he is or anything, I’ve just never known him to wear cologne before, but maybe it’s something new he’s trying out. I get really close to him and smell his neck. But I don’t smell cologne. I just smell laundry soap and shaving cream and boy.

“Sting,” he says. “You know, the musician? The one you thought wore wraparounds?”

“Oooh,” I say. I realize he’s not talking about some new cologne, but about the song that’s playing. Ever since that day at the ice-cream stand, when he found out that I actually have Lady Gaga and the Jonas Brothers on my iPod, Noah’s been on a mission to get me interested in “better” music. He even brought in his iPod and a dock, which he hooked up to the diner’s speaker system, and now, whenever we’re cleaning up after all the customers have gone home, he makes me and Lacey listen to what he thinks is “good” music. Although, Lacey’s not as bad as me when it comes to music. She listens to bands that sound familiar but I’ve never really heard, like Modest Mouse and Hole and The Ting Tings. Their names alone make them sound trendy. And let’s face it, nothing is as humiliating as The Jonas Brothers.

“Sting’s the one in U2, right?” I ask, then take a sip of my drink. Of course, now I know that Sting was in the Police, but it’s fun to tease Noah and watch how pained he gets. It’s
like every musician or song I don’t know is an attack on him.

“Oh, God,” he says. He stands up. “All right, I didn’t want to have to do this, but I think I’m going to have to use tough love on you now.”

“I thought you already were by making me listen to this stuff.”

“This
stuff
?” He drops his head onto the counter, as if he can’t take it anymore. “This
stuff
,” he says, “is some of the best music to, like, ever exist. You do realize that, right?”

“You can’t dance to it.” I shrug. “And you can’t really sing along, and, like, it’s not that sad.”

“Sad?”

“Yes,” I say. “I’m very into sad music right now, for obvious reasons.” But as I’m saying it, I realize it’s not completely true. I
am
into sad music right now, but at the same time, I haven’t had a really bad day since Lacey and I drove by Sebastian’s house. In fact, every day since then has gotten a little bit better. I’m actually kind of proud of myself.

“Okay,” Noah says, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “I think I understand the problem now. We’re obviously going to have to ease you into this.”

“Ease me into what?”

“This whole music thing.” Noah reaches over me and snags a fry off my plate, then pops it into his mouth. I swallow. Hard. Something about the way he did that, the way he just reached over and grabbed my food like that. . . . It felt . . . almost intimate. Suddenly, I’m super aware of his
closeness, the way his hair flops over his eyebrow, the crispness of his T-shirt sleeve where it hits his bicep.

Stop it
, I tell myself.
He’s Ava’s boyfriend, and he took a French fry off your plate. It’s nothing to get all freaked out about.
In fact, it’s perfectly normal, probably. And the fact that my stomach is flipping all around now means nothing, except I’m obviously starved for male attention. I wonder if I still have Jonah Moncuso’s number in my cell. He never called me after that night we made out, but maybe he’d be up for hanging out again.

He reaches over and takes another French fry off my plate. See? Just two friends, sharing French fries, la, la, la.

“You’re obviously not ready for Sting or anything like that,” Noah’s saying.

“I am so ready for Sting!” I mean, I think I am. I want to be, at least.

“No,” he says. “Youre not.” He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a wrinkled piece of paper, which he unfolds and sets on the counter. “Now I wasn’t going to go to this, because I’m exhausted and hot and sweaty and I still need to write tonight, but this . . . this is a drastic circumstance.”

I peer down at the paper. “‘The Spill Canvas,’” I read. “‘Tonight, at The Middle East.’” I look at Noah. “It’s a band?”

“Yes,” he says. “Now, they’re not on the level of Sting, or anything even remotely like that, but for our purposes, they’ll do. They play a lot of really sad music,” he explains.
“But they’re actually a great group, and you wouldn’t have to be embarrassed about having them on your iPod.”

“Who’s embarrassed?” I say, shrugging and eating another fry. “So you’re going to put on some of their music?”

“No,” he says. “We’re going to the concert.”

I stare at him incredulously. Is he crazy? “No we’re not,” I say. “I’m exhausted, and I have to be back here at six a.m.” The only places I’m going are the shower and my air-conditioned bedroom.

“You’re kidding, right?” Noah says.

“No.”

“Hannah, you’re a teenager. You’re not supposed to be too tired to go to a show.”

“But you just said
you
were too tired to go.”

“That’s different.”

“How come?”

He hesitates, like he doesn’t really want to say what he’s about to say, but thinks I might need to hear it. “Hannah,” he says gently. “How much have you gotten out this summer?”

“I get out,” I say defensively.

“I don’t mean watching TV with Lacey,” he says. “I mean out-out.”

I open my mouth to protest, but then close it. I realize he’s right. I’m young. It’s summer. I should be out and about, living my life.

“Fine,” I say, popping the last fry into my mouth. “But you’re driving.”

“Over there,” I say, bouncing up and down in the passenger seat and pointing to an empty spot on the street. “Right there, right there!”

Noah expertly navigates the car into the space that’s just opened up a couple of blocks from The Middle East. Which is totally lucky, since we’re in Cambridge, and it’s, like, impossible to find a parking spot here at this time of night.

“Good eye,” Noah says, shifting the car into park and cutting the engine.

“It’s one of my gifts,” I tell him, shrugging and pretending to sound modest. I unbuckle my seatbelt. “My hidden talents are instinctively choosing the most horrible music and being able to spot open parking spaces from a mile away.” I look down at what I’m wearing. “Are you sure this is okay for a rock concert?”

Noah sighs, and then puts his head down on the steering wheel, the same gesture he made back at the diner when I asked if Sting was in U2. “It’s not a rock concert,” he says, his voice muffled against the steering wheel.

“It’s not?” I frown. “I thought you were taking me to a rock concert.”

“It’s not rock,” he says. “It’s more like . . . I don’t know, emo, alternative, that kind of thing.”

“I guess,” I say doubtfully. “But anyway, is what I’m wearing okay?”

I insisted that Noah take me home to change before we
headed to Cambridge to see the show. He told me there was a chance we would miss the first opening act, but I wasn’t too concerned about that, since I’d obviously never heard of them. I mean, I’d never even heard of the headliners. Plus, when I went to see a Justin Timberlake concert once, the opening act was pretty horrible, some Disney girl-band that everyone booed.

So Noah took me home and waited in the car while I changed into dark jeans, boots, and a low-cut black T-shirt that’s tight around my boobs. I darkened my eye makeup and tied a bandana in my hair to make it look kind of like a headband, leaving my hair down and flowing. I look cute. Edgy. But not too edgy.

“You look great,” Noah says. He reaches over me and opens the door. “Door’s broken,” he says. “You have to jiggle it just right.” His arm brushes against mine as he pulls back, and I feel that same rush of energy that passed through me earlier.
Stop,
I tell myself.
You’re just tired. And Noah’s a boy, and you’re broken-hearted and obviously going a little bit crazy.

I step out onto the sidewalk, and as if on cue, my phone rings. Ava.

“It’s Ava,” I say, holding it up.

“Oh.” Noah looks at me over the top of his car, where he’s still standing in the street. He gets a weird look on his face. “Um, could you not tell her you’re with me?”