“Want me to tell you about the dog that crossed over three thousand miles to get back to its family?” Warren asked, clearly choosing to change the subject, rather than own up to the fact that he’d been attempting to douse the dog with ketchup.
“No,” I said, automatically. “But want me to tell you about the guy who traumatized his dog because he couldn’t ask a girl for a date?” Normally, I never would have said something like this to my brother. Maybe it was because I was so much more aware of what was happening in his social life now, in a way that I hadn’t ever been in Stanwich.
Warren blushed bright red. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said, crossing his arms and then uncrossing them again.
“Just ask her out,” I said, as I knelt down to look under the table. Murphy was cowering there, shaking slightly, but when he saw that I wasn’t Warren—or wielding a liquid to throw at him—he seemed to relax slightly. I gestured for him to come, but the dog stayed put, clearly not sure if I was on Warren’s side or not. I straightened up to find my brother looking uncharacteristically confused.
“And, um,” he said, clearing his throat and then opening and closing the fridge for no reason whatsoever, “how exactly should I do that?”
“How should you ask her out?” I echoed. “You know. Just—” I stopped short when I saw the look on my brother’s face and realized that he might not, in fact, know how to do this. “Just strike up a conversation,” I said. “And then steer it toward whatever you want the date to be.”
“Uh-huh,” my brother said, and he looked around the kitchen, his fingers resting on the legal pad we always kept by the phone. I had a feeling that he was on the verge of taking notes. “And can you give me an example of that?”
“Well,” I said. I had never asked anyone out directly, but I had certainly encouraged guys in the right direction. “Like, if you want to take her out to dinner, mention that you know a great pizza restaurant, or whatever. And then hopefully she’ll say she loves pizza, and then you ask if she wants to eat some with you.”
“Okay,” Warren said, nodding. He paused for a moment, then asked, “But what if she doesn’t like pizza?”
I let out a long breath. If I hadn’t known my brother had a near-genius level IQ, I certainly would never have believed it after this conversation. “That was just a hypothetical,” I said. “Pick anything you want. A movie, or miniature golf, or whatever.”
“Right,” Warren said, looking lost in thought. “Got it.” He headed out of the kitchen, then took a step back in and gave me a slightly embarrassed smile. “Thanks, Taylor.”
“Sure,” I’d said, and then tried to see if I could coax the dog out from under the table.
After that, the dog had gone unassaulted for a few days, so I assumed that Warren had taken my advice, or at least abandoned this particular strategy. But it seemed that Murphy had to once again suffer the ineptitude of my brother’s flirting techniques.
I looked over the counter at Gelsey and Nora, who were now passing the bag of frozen M&Ms between them. “What was it this time?” I asked.
“Syrup,” Gelsey said. “Mom was really pissed.”
“I bet,” I said, thinking what a sticky mess that must have created.
“So she isn’t letting Warren pick him up. She wants you to do it. And then pick up some corn for dinner.”
“Got it,” I said, glancing back at the clock. I stretched my arms over my head, glad that I had only half an hour left on my shift.
“What’s wrong with your dog?” Elliot asked, apparently deciding to join this conversation.
Nora frowned at him. “Who are you?”
“Elliot,” he said, pointing to his name tag. “Taylor’s boss.”
I rolled my eyes at this. “No, you’re not.”
“Her superior, at any rate,” he amended, unfazed.
“Anything else?” I said, turning to the girls.
“Nope,” Gelsey said. She held out the bag of frozen M&Ms to me, and I shook three into my palm. Unlike Skittles, I didn’t care what color my M&Ms were. “See you later!”
“Bye,” I called as she and Nora walked away, heads bent toward each other, already deep in conversation.
“Your sister?” Elliot asked, pushing himself up to sit on the counter.
I nodded. “And next-door neighbor. They’re kind of a package deal these days.” I heard my phone beep with a text, and pulled it out of my back pocket. It was from Lucy, but instead of the message I’d been expecting, asking me to come back to our spot so we could keep talking, there was just one word: FRED!!!
“Fred’s here,” I hissed to Elliot, as though Fred would somehow be able to hear me. Elliot hopped off the counter and I looked around for something that I could pretend to clean, when the side door opened and Fred, looking sunburned and grumpy, stepped in, with his tackle box and a large cardboard box that he dropped on the ground with a thump.