She smiled, then grabbed her keys off the desk, sliding them into her pocket. ‘I’m going to go clean up the denim section while you finish up. Finding those slim boot cuts for that woman was work. But it was so worth it. Her butt looked great when she left here.’
‘I bet,’ I said, and then she was gone back down the hallway to fold. I sat there for a minute, in that pink and orange room, thinking about what impressed my mom, and the either/or I’d been stuck in for so long. Maybe it was true, and being a girl could be about interest rates and skinny jeans, riding bikes and wearing pink. Not about any one thing, but everything.
Over the next couple of weeks, I fell into the perfect routine. Mornings were for sleep, evenings for work. My nights were for Eli.
These days, I didn’t have to make it look like I was bumping into him accidentally. Instead, it was understood that we met each evening after I got off work at the Gas/ Gro, where we fueled up on both gas (coffee) and gro (you never knew what you might need) and planned our evening’s activities. Which meant errands, eating pie with Clyde, and working on my quest, one item at a time.
‘Really?’ I said, one night around one as we stood outside Tallyho, Leah’s favorite club. There was a neon sign in the window that said HOLA MARGARITAS! and a beefy, bored-looking guy sitting on a stool by the door, checking messages on his phone. ‘You think I need to do this?’
‘Yup,’ Eli said. ‘Hitting a club is a rite of passage. And you get extra points if it’s a bad club.’
‘But I don’t have an ID,’ I told him as we walked closer, passing a girl in a red dress, puffy eyed and stumbling.
‘You don’t need one.’
‘Are you sure?’
Instead of answering, he reached down and grabbed my hand, and I felt a jolt run through me. Since that night at the hot-dog party, we’d been closer, but this was the first real physical contact between us. I was so busy worrying about what it might mean that it took me a minute to realize how natural and easy his palm felt against mine. Like it wasn’t new at all, but something I’d done recently and often, that familiar.
‘Hey,’ Eli said to the bouncer as we approached. ‘What’s the cover?’
‘You got ID?’
Eli pulled out his wallet, then handed over his license. The guy glanced at it, then at him, before giving it back. ‘What about her?’
‘She forgot hers,’ Eli said. ‘But don’t worry, I’ll vouch for her.’
The guy gave him a flat look. ‘Honor system doesn’t fly here, sorry.’
‘I hear you,’ Eli replied. ‘But maybe you can make an exception.’
I expected the guy to react in some way, but if anything he looked even more bored than before. ‘No ID, no exceptions.’
‘It’s fine,’ I said to Eli. ‘Really.’
He held up his hand, quieting me. Then he said, ‘Look. We don’t want to drink. We don’t even want to stay long. Five minutes, max.’
The bouncer, now starting to look annoyed, said, ‘What part of no ID, no entry, do you not understand?’
‘What if I told you’ – Eli pressed on as I squirmed, worrying my palm was now entirely sticky against his – ‘that this was a quest?’
The guy just looked at him. Through the door, I could hear bass thumping, thumping. Finally he said, ‘What kind of quest?’
No way, I thought. There’s just no way.
‘She’s never done anything,’ Eli told him, gesturing at me. ‘No parties in high school, no prom, no homecoming. No social life, ever.’ The bouncer looked at me, and I tried to look adequately culturally stunted. ‘So we’re just, you know, trying to make up for lost stuff, one thing at a time. This is on the list.’
‘Tallyho is on the list?’
‘Going to a club is,’ Eli told him. ‘Not drinking at a club. Not even staying at a club. Just going.’
The bouncer looked at me again. He said, ‘For five minutes.’
‘Maybe even four,’ Eli replied.
I just stood there, feeling my heart beat, and then the guy was reaching for my hand, pulling a rubber stamp out from his chest pocket. He pressed it against mine, then gestured for Eli’s so he could do the same. ‘Stay away from the bar,’ he said. ‘And you’ve got five minutes.’
‘Awesome,’ Eli said, and with that, he was tugging me inside.
‘Wait,’ I said as we headed down a dark, narrow hallway that led to a room full of flashing lights, ‘how did you do that?’
‘I told you,’ he said over his shoulder. He had to yell over the music, which was just getting louder. ‘Everyone understands a quest.’
I wasn’t sure how to reply to this. Not that I could have anyway, as we emerged into the club, which was so loud I couldn’t hear anything, even my own voice. It was a single room, square, lined with booths on three sides, a bar on the other. The dance floor was in the middle, and it was packed with people: girls in tight shirts, holding beer bottles, guys with deep tans and faux-surfer gear shuffling their feet alongside them.