There was a lot of silence on my part.
“So, my professor was completely unreasonable, and wouldn’t even consider letting me retake the test, when really the entire misunderstanding was his fault. You’d think for the amount of money we’re paying for his class that he would be a little better at communicating, right?”
Silence.
Cammie giggled.
I cringed.
I had to work on replying faster.
“Right. You’d think.”
She smiled and tossed her hair again. “I’m sorry. I’m probably boring you with all my talk about school.”
“Oh, no, not at all!” I said.
“Oh good. Because you know, I ran into the same professor at happy hour hitting on a girl my age. Can you believe it?”
I said as fast as humanly possible, “I cannot!”
“I mean, the guy was like forty. I suppose if I were a different kind of girl maybe he would have let me retake the test, but honestly. I wrote a letter to the dean about the professor. Maybe he’ll get fired. At the very least, my grade will get changed. Daddy is friends with the dean. They’ve been golfing together for ages.”
“Oh, is that so?”
“Oh yes. You know, I almost went to another school so that I could ‘make my own way,’ and all that, but in the end, I thought . . . why not take advantage of every opportunity I’m given?”
She kept going, but I was having trouble listening. I liked to think that I probably made it longer than most before tuning out. I was sure that there was a really cool person underneath the designer clothes and the manicured nails and the most obnoxious laughter known to man, but tonight I didn’t have the patience or attention span to find her. My body felt almost electric at the thought of where we’d be heading next.
I’d spent an embarrassingly long time Googling Max’s band Under the Bell Jar. I learned that they’d named themselves after a Sylvia Plath novel, which made me think of Max’s threat to stick my head in the oven on Thanksgiving, and I died laughing. The bass player and Max were the original founding members, and it looked like Max’s boyfriend was a more recent addition. His name was Mace. As in the stuff sprayed into the eyes of rapists and muggers. Or the ancient weapon used to bludgeon people to death.
He sounded like a real keeper.
I was snapped out of my reverie when the waiter came by with the check. My stomach clenched as I slipped a ridiculous amount of cash into the plastic folder. Maybe I shouldn’t be dating, not if I wanted to have the money to go home for Christmas.
I pulled out Cammie’s chair and offered her my arm.
She giggled.
God help me.
“I’m so glad I met you at that god-awful bar. My friends dragged me there, and I wanted to leave as soon as we got there. Well, until I met you.”
Awesome. That meant she was probably going to hate the place we were heading.
“So, tell me again about this band,” she said.
I’d been on the website enough to be able to parrot back to her, “They’re a local Philly band that blends rock and folk music. They’re supposed to be pretty good.”
“Cool.”
Giggle.
Giggle.
Giggle.
Dear God. I had to keep talking.
“Yeah, I’ve not heard them play before, but I know someone in the band. I think it’s going to pretty awesome. Do you like music?”
She started talking about Lady Gaga and I sighed in relief. That should last us at least until we walked the block and a half to The Fire. Then hopefully it would be loud enough there to drown out her inane giggling.
When we got to the door, I paid the cover and slipped happily into the darkened bar. I found us a table, and then escaped to get us both drinks. As I was leaving, Cammie was looking worriedly at her barstool like it was going to give her Ebola. They had a great selection of local beers. I got Yards ale. Cammie wanted a cosmo. The bartender looked at me like I was crazy. This wasn’t really a cosmo kind of place, but he went off to make it anyway. While I waited for our drinks, I pulled out my phone and texted Max.
Here. Have a great show!
I didn’t expect a reply, since she was going on soon, but I got one almost immediately.
Thanks. You should come backstage afterward.
Huh. We hadn’t talked once since her original text, so I had assumed she’d only invited me to be nice . . . or to make more money, but she seemed to genuinely want to see me again. I’d thought of all these strategies for talking to her again, and it looked like I wasn’t even going to have to use them. That made it ten times harder to accept the drinks from the bartender and return to Cammie, who giggled when I sat down with what would probably prove to be the worst cosmo in history.