The Trouble With Flirting (13 page)

I meet up with Isabella near the dorm. She seems very pleased that I’ve made an effort to look nice.

“Harry’s going to melt when he sees you,” she says.

“He won’t care,” I say. “We’re just friends.”

She smiles a little smile and shrugs.

As we fall into step, heading back toward campus, I wonder why she seems to want something to happen between Harry and me. She’s his best friend, so I’ve got to assume she’s on his side and that he’s into the idea. And if that’s true—if Harry told her he likes me—how do I feel about that?

I’m not sure. Like I told Julia, I don’t trust the guy, but I’ve come to like him more than I thought I would when I
first met him.

And he’s very good-looking.

And maybe you can have fun with someone you don’t trust, so long as you remember you don’t trust him. My mistake with my previous boyfriends was caring more than they did. Couldn’t it be fun to have some kind of summer fling where neither of us takes it seriously at all?

An interesting thought . . .

Alex and Harry are waiting in front of the dining hall, close to the bus that everyone’s already starting to board.

“Any chance you two pretty ladies might be interested in spending time with some manly men?” Harry asks as they greet us.

“We were hoping to do better,” Isabella says with a toss of her head. “But there’s no shame in settling, I suppose.”

Alex touches her arm. “You look nice.”

“Nice?” she repeats. “Try harder, Alex.”

He flushes adorably. “Really nice,” he says.

“Next time, try this,” Harry says. He reaches for my hand. “Franny, I didn’t know what beauty was until I saw you walking toward us a minute ago.”

“I like his better,” I say, pulling away. “At least he sounded like he meant it.”

“I meant it,” Harry says, almost irritably. But a guy like Harry Cartwright doesn’t stay unhappy for long. A moment later he’s hauling me onto the bus with an enthusiastic “I call window seat!” So I guess we’re sitting together. Alex and
Isabella take the bench across from us.

Julia is sitting with Manny Yates a couple of rows behind us. She waves at me when I glance back and gives a little head bob in Manny’s direction:
Look who I’m with!
I give her a thumbs-up before settling down in my seat.

Once we’re buckled in, Harry slides as close to me as our seat belts will permit. He glances at my face. Then he laughs and gives my leg a friendly pat. “Relax, Franny,” he says. “It won’t be that bad.”

Our group gets dropped off in some random little neighborhood that supposedly has lots of good shopping and restaurants. We’re the only ones getting off there.

It’s cute, with a small-town feel even though I’m pretty sure it’s technically still part of Portland. There are a few crisscrossing main streets lined with small boutiques and cafés. It’s a nice place to wander around and explore on a warm and cloudy summer day.

Alex and Isabella soon move ahead of me and Harry, holding hands.

Harry and I walk behind them.
Not
holding hands.

“So,” he says after a moment. “How’s life?”

“Really?” I say. “‘How’s life’? Harry, we see each other every day. You have to come up with a better conversation starter than that.”

“I know, I know. You’re right. Can I have another shot at it?”

“Sure. We got nothing but time.”

“You don’t have to sound so glum about it.” A pause, while he thinks. Then: “Okay. I’ve got one. Do you think Pluto should still be considered an actual planet in its own right?”

“Much better. And yes, I do. I had to memorize the planets when I was in third grade, and it was one of them, and I don’t like having to relearn things.”

He gently knocks his elbow against mine. “If you want Pluto to be a planet, it’s a planet, as far as I’m concerned.”

Isabella looks over her shoulder at us, grins, and whispers something to Alex, who looks back and doesn’t grin, just observes us for a moment, then faces front again.

“Whose idea was this outing?” I ask.

“Isabella’s,” Harry says. “But she was doing it for me.”

“You have a special fondness for corny little neighborhoods with lots of tiny shops?”

“No, for corny little girls in green dresses.”

I look down at my green summer dress. “My goodness,” I say. “I do believe you mean li’l ol’ me!” Then, in a more normal voice: “You said you wouldn’t flirt with me, Harry.”

“I just called you corny and said you were wearing a green dress. That’s, like, the least flirtatious thing anyone’s ever said.”

“I’m willing to believe it’s the least flirtatious thing
you’ve
ever said.”

“Why are you so hard on me when I’m so nice to you?”

“Why are you so nice to me when I’m so hard on you?”

He claps me on the shoulder. “Nicely played, Pearson! You win that round. But the game isn’t over yet. Hey, look . . .” He pulls me over to look at a store window. “If you had to buy just one of these cupcakes, which one would you get?”

I point to one that’s thick with chocolate frosting. “That one. You?”

He shakes his head, like he’s amazed. “The. Exact. Same. One. It’s like we’re the same
person
, Franny.” He glances down the street. “We’d better hurry up—those guys are getting away from us.”

We’ve walked a few more blocks when Isabella and Alex stop suddenly, wave at us, and point to the store they’re in front of. They go on in, and when we reach the spot, I see it’s a used-book store.

“Shall we?” Harry says, and I nod eagerly. We push through the door and into the store, which looks small at first, because it’s so narrow and crammed with books and old wooden tables (which are also crammed with books), but as we wander down the main aisle, I see doors leading off the sides and back of it and realize it’s a lot bigger than it looked.

Isabella is flipping through books on a shelf that says
DRAMA/THEATER
—big surprise there—and calls to Harry as she pulls one out. He comes over and she shows him the cover, with a smile at some private joke. They share a lot of those.

I wander on to the back room, where the walls are lined with fiction. I used to love reading novels before high school
ruined the fun of it for me, forcing me to read one assigned piece of literature after another. I just want to read for pleasure again, because something looks interesting and not because it’s going to be on an AP exam. And now that it’s summer, I could actually do that—although the SAT prep book my mother made me pack keeps peeking out from under my laptop. But I’ve gotten very good at ignoring it.

After a while, I feel someone come up beside me. It’s Alex. “Find anything good?”

I show him the stack in my arms. “Lots. But I don’t know if I should get them—I don’t really want to lug them around all afternoon.”

“I’ll carry them for you. I don’t mind. I like doing things for you, Franny.”

I feel my cheeks turning hot. Is that just a friendly thing to say? Or is he saying I’m special to him? He’s holding out his hands, like he’s ready to carry the books right away, and waiting for me to respond. I shove the books back onto the shelf together. “It’s okay. I don’t really need any of these.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Plus I should be saving money.” I turn around. “I’m ready to go if everyone else is.”

We find Isabella leaning against a case marked
COOKBOOKS
, leafing through something.

“Wow,” Alex says. “A cookbook? That’s so unexpectedly domestic of you.”

She shakes her head with a laugh and shows us what she’s
reading: it’s a coffee table book of haute-couture fashion. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

“I’m not disappointed,” he says. “I’m relieved. The world has been restored to order.”

She makes a face at him, and he laughs and kisses her lightly on the lips. Right. They’re a couple. And a very affectionate and adorable one at that.

“Where’s Harry?” I ask. Might as well get
my
buddy back.

Isabella inserts her book back between two others. “He got bored and left to see what else was on this block. He said they didn’t have a good enough graphic-novel section here and he’d meet us in front in a minute.”

“You two go ahead,” Alex says. “I want to ask the guy up front if he has any antique books about the care and feeding of dogs. My mother collects them.”

“Really?” Isabella says. “My mother collects diamond bracelets.”

“My mother collects headache medications,” I say.

Isabella and I slip down the narrow aisle and out onto the sidewalk, where the clouds are getting darker by the second.

“Do you think it will rain?” I ask.

“I hope so. I love a good summer rain. We don’t get many in L.A. None, really.” She’s wearing a dark blue maxidress with narrow straps that crisscross her slender back. At least three different guys stopped to stare at her in the bookstore as we walked through. I couldn’t tell if she didn’t notice them or was just pretending not to notice them. Or maybe she’s just so
used to male admiration it barely even registers anymore.

We look up and down the street, but no Harry yet.

“Aren’t you glad you came today?” Isabella asks as we wait for him.

“I was until we were both abandoned. Do you think Alex slipped out the back and he and Harry ran off together?”

“I’d believe it of Alex,” she says, “but Harry’s not going to run away today—not on the day you’ve actually agreed to go out with him.”

“About that . . . ,” I say. “When exactly did I agree to go out with him?”

She gives an airy little shrug. “You know what I mean. He’s just really happy we’re all here together. And I am too, Franny. I’ve been wanting this to happen.”

“Any special reason you feel that way?” I ask.

She smiles her Mona Lisa smile, the one that always seems to slay Alex. “I like seeing Harry happy, that’s all.”

On cue, Harry emerges from a store at the other end of the block and gives us a jaunty wave. I watch him as he walks toward us and wonder if I’d be falling madly in love with him if I’d met him for the first time today. Probably. He’s cute and funny, and I really do like him. A lot. But all that history with Julia and Marie—all his flirting, and playing them off each other, and not caring if he made one or the other miserable—that still bothers me. Plus he’s Isabella’s best friend in the world. They’ve both said so a bunch of times. You can judge people by their friends, right? And I don’t trust her at all.

He reaches us just as Alex comes out of the bookstore.

“Here.” Harry holds a small white waxed-paper bag out to me. “This is for you, Franny.”

I open it. Inside is the cupcake I picked as the best-looking one in the window. “You didn’t have to get it for me!”

“I know. I wanted to.” He grins at me.

I try to remember all the arguments I was just making about why he’s not boyfriend material. Because when Harry grins like that, he seems like
very
good boyfriend material. I’ve mentioned those little divots under his eyes, right? The ones that are maybe dimples and sit right below those gray-green eyes that catch the light no matter how little there is? Even on a cloudy day when there’s practically no light at all?

“What did
you
get?” Isabella asks Alex, who, I now notice, is carrying a plastic bag filled with books.

“Found some stuff for my mom.” He leads the way down the street.

I spot a Starbucks on a street corner less than a block away, so I suggest we all get something to drink and split the cupcake.

“No sharing,” Harry says. “That cupcake is for you and you alone.”

“Gee, thanks,” Isabella says. “Did it even occur to you to buy me one too?”

“Nope,” he says.

“You’ve known me for years longer than you’ve known
her.” But she’s smiling. She doesn’t really mind.

“It’s my cupcake,” I say. “I can share it if I want to. Sharing makes things taste better.”

“You know, not everything they tell you in preschool is true,” Harry says.

“They were right about that running-with-scissors thing.”

“But not that everyone in your class was your friend.”

I nod. “Yeah, Alana Fonsberg was definitely
not
my friend. She was a pusher.”

“Drugs?”

“Backs. But I still want to share the cupcake. It’s huge.”

Harry heaves a mock sigh. “There’s no making you selfish, is there, Franny? That will be our goal today—to make Franny do or say one selfish thing.”

Alex is half a step ahead of the rest of us, but he looks back. “Give up now. It’s not going to happen.”

“How about we get Franny to do one selfish thing and Isabella to do one
un
selfish thing?” Harry suggests. “I’m not sure which would be harder.”

Isabella flicks at his arm. “Why are you being so mean to me?”

“Because I love you,” he says.

She scowls. “Does that ever work?”

“On my mother it does.”

“I’m not your mother,” she says.

“I know that already, because I’m enjoying your company.”

We’re still sitting at an outdoor table with our coffees, the cupcake I insisted on sharing reduced to crumbs, when Isabella picks up the bag Alex was carrying. “So what did you get your mom?” she asks, putting it on her lap so she can pull out and examine the books. She holds one up. “I thought you said you were getting her dog books. These are all novels.”

“They’re for Franny, actually,” he says, with a slightly sheepish nod in my direction.

“Really?” I lean forward so I can see them better. “These are the books I picked out at the store! But I put them back—”

“They were all still in a pile together. So . . .” He trails off.

“And you were just going to lug them around all day without telling me?”

“I wanted it to be a surprise.” He makes awkward jazz hands. “Surprise.”

Isabella sticks the books back in the bag and drops it on the ground. “I don’t see any of the ones
I
was looking at in there.”

“Oh, sorry,” Alex says. “I’d have happily bought you anything you wanted. I just knew Franny really wanted these—”

“So why didn’t
you
get them?” she asks me sharply.

“I don’t know,” I say uncomfortably. “I guess I was being lazy. I didn’t want to have to carry them. At least let me pay you back,” I say to Alex.