He’s at the game, too, sitting a few rows ahead with two girls from the drama club. They’re both seniors and halfway decent--looking, but nowhere near as pretty as Brianna’s friends and nowhere near as beautiful as Brianna herself.
Mick finds himself growing annoyed, watching Zach and the two girls keep up a steady stream of chatter, barely paying attention to the action on the rink. It’s one thing for a drama girl to do that, he decided, but Zach is a guy and should know better, even if he’s never played a sport in his life. Not that that’s why he’s getting on Mick’s nerves tonight. And it’s not because he’s here with senior girls, or because Zach is the one who told him about Brianna dating a college guy, which he never should have done, regardless of whether it’s true or they’ve broken up.
They probably haven’t, Mick speculates glumly. He can’t help but notice that she spends most of the first period typing on her phone. A few times, she nudges her friends and shows it to them. Watching them all lean in to exclaim over whatever was so fascinating on the screen in her hand, Mick is pretty sure it’s not Brianna’s latest moves in Words with Friends. There’s just something specific about the way girls talk and giggle when they’re discussing a guy, as opposed to some other random thing.
When Brianna finally looks up from her phone and turns around to talk to someone behind her, she spots Mick. His heart soars when she waves and gives him a big smile. At least he’s pretty sure she’s looking at him.
All right, there’s a small chance that she might be smiling and waving at someone behind him. But he doubts it. Especially since he would look like a real idiot, smiling and waving back so enthusiastically.
Right before the end of the first period, Brianna and her friends head for the door, probably headed for the ladies’ room along with a million other girls. Either that, or they’re going out to sneak cigarettes in the gazebo, which Mick doubts. She’s not that kind of girl.
Zach is also on the move, but Mick avoids making eye contact with him as the crowd heads en masse toward the student council concessions table.
“Hey, can I borrow five bucks?” asks his friend Van—-short for Chris-tian Wilhelm Vandergraaf III.
“For what? An apple and a box of raisins?” Mick asks moodily. The school is no longer allowed to sell candy thanks to some health fanatic mom who pushed them into enforcing a new district wellness policy.
“For whatever. I’m broke and I’m starved.”
“Well, so am I.” Mick spent his last dollar on admission to the game, after blowing the rest of his money on Brianna’s gifts.
She’s nowhere to be seen in the crowd milling around the lobby, but here comes Zach with his senior female friends.
“Hey, Lou, how’s it goin’?” he asks in his Goodfellas dialect.
“It’s going,” Mick responds in his regular voice.
“Good game, right?”
“How would you know?”
Zach frowns. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing. What’s wrong with you?”
Taking the hint, Zach shrugs and drifts away.
“How come you’re being such a douche?” Van asks. “I thought you liked that kid.”
“He’s okay.”
“How come he calls you Lou?”
“How come you call me a douche?” Mick returns, keeping an eye out for Brianna.
He finds her back in the bleachers, texting away on her phone, with her friends watching over her shoulder.
Mick settles in to watch the rest of the game, keeping an eye on her and wondering why his life is suddenly so depressing.
When her cell phone rings just past midnight, Julia Sexton is curled up on her futon wearing yoga pants, eating stale microwave popcorn, and drinking a bottle of Bud Light from the fridge—-the most inexpensive Saturday night she’s had in months.
She’s a hundred dollars short and five days late on the December rent for this studio apartment on the westernmost fringes of Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood.