I get out of the car, but pause with my hand on the door handle. “What are you doing here?”
Mitch stands on the crack where the driveway meets the street. His jeans are half tucked into his boots and his baseball cap is fraying and trimmed in sweat stains. “I saw you crying.”
I slam the door shut. “So you followed me?”
His cheeks flush red. “To make sure you were okay. Not to be, like, creepy.”
“Right.” I hike my backpack up on my shoulder. “Well, I’m okay.” I realize that outside of awkward small talk, we haven’t really spoken since the ordeal in the hallway. I owe him an apology. “Aren’t you supposed to be at practice?”
He shrugs.
“Come on,” I say.
He follows me through the backyard, and I tell him to sit down on one of our rusted lawn chairs.
“You want some peach tea?”
He pulls his cap off to reveal a matted head of hair and uses his forearm to wipe the sweat from his forehead. “Sure.”
In the kitchen, I drop my bag on the table and pour us each a glass. We’re in that weird time of year where we experience every season all in one day. I guess most people might call it autumn, but in the South it’s this unruly combination of winter-spring-summer-fall. Regardless, iced tea is a year-round delicacy.
I sit down across from him and hand him a cup. “My mom’s tea,” I say. “My gram’s recipe.”
“Thanks.”
We sip for a few moments.
“I’m sorry about that day in the hallway,” I say. “When someone said something about us dating.”
“It’s fine.” He rubs his fingers up and down the back of his neck. I think every girl has a spot—a spot on a guy that makes her melt. For El, it’s hands. For me it’s that place where their hairline meets their neck. I love that feeling of brushing the tips of my fingers against a guy’s buzzed hair. And when I say a guy, I mean Bo with his slim silver chain peeking out from the edge of his collar. Because he is the only guy.
Except maybe he doesn’t have to be.
“I don’t know why people have to go on dates,” Mitch says. “If we called it hanging out or something, there’d be so much less pressure. But a date, God, that’s like some huge thing to live up to.”
“Yeah, it is.” Bad first date aside, there’s something so comforting about Mitch. He feels like the kind of person you don’t have to ask to stay because he probably won’t ever leave. I reach down, tug a flower from my mom’s flower bed, and twist it around in my fingers until it’s limp in my hands. “I entered the Miss Teen Blue Bonnet Pageant.”
“You know,” he says, “if you try smiling, you might win that thing.”
I smack his shoulder. “You don’t think it’s weird?”
“That you entered?” His mouth slips into an easy smile. “Why would I think that?”
“I don’t know. I guess I’m not much of a beauty queen.”
“Well, the whole thing doesn’t really strike me as your type of scene, but if you ask me, you’re overqualified for the job.”
Heat stains my cheeks. “Thanks.”
“I want us to be friends,” he says.
I need a friend. I need one so bad. “I want that, too.” I stand up.
He gulps down the rest of his tea and stands, too, tucking his hands in his pockets. “I oughta get to practice.”
“Saturday,” I say. “I’m off work. Let’s hang out.”
“I’m sorry for whatever made you cry,” he says.
I wait for him to ask what happened, but he doesn’t, and I like that about him.
THIRTY-TWO
Me, Amanda, and Hannah sit in a tiny booth at the back of Frenchy’s with Millie at the end of the table in a chair. As we were seated, Millie took one glance at the booth and said, “Well, that looks like a squeeze.”
The waitress’s lips turned into a deep frown, but Millie shrugged it off and asked for a chair. It’s the type of thing that would have stopped Lucy from eating here, but Millie doesn’t seem all that bothered.