“I know,” he says back, and surprises me again with what comes next. “So nothing is going on with you and Elliot? I’m asking for a friend.” He smiles, all charm, and it’s as if he’s some kind of CIA operative, and the ice cream cone is part of his interrogation tactic. But this time, I don’t have to lie. I think about Clara’s hand on Elliot’s shoulder at breakfast and take another big bite of my cone.
“No,” I say finally through my chews. “Nothing is going on with me and Elliot.”
17
You Think I’m Cute?
WILL HALE is taking me on another honest-to-goodness date. It’s not a casual hang. It’s not a “What are you up to now?” or a “I heard you needed a ride home,” or a “Hey, do you want to leave this party together and go kiss on the beach?” He planned it all. Every single step. And this time, Elliot won’t be around to ruin it.
“I realized I was going about it all wrong,” Will said when he called me on Sunday, after I got my phone back from Ava. “I’ve been trying too hard to figure you out. Instead, I should share something with you about myself, but since I just moved here, I don’t really have a lot to show.”
So he decided the most efficient thing to do would be to create a list of five awesome things I have never done in LA, even though I’ve lived here my entire life.
“Chances are I won’t have done them, either, so we can be fish out of water together. We can have a completely unique experience!” he announced. He actually emailed me an online survey for it, titled Annabelle & Will’s Unique Experience. He would make the plan; I just had to check off the boxes.
And right now that plan has landed me one hundred and thirty feet above the Santa Monica Pier, and God knows how many feet above the ocean, on the Pacific Wheel.
“It’s the only solar-powered Ferris wheel in the world,” Will informs me as I gaze at the views of the Pacific coastline. There’s a slight breeze today, and it feels good, warm air whipping around my skin. I close my eyes and bask in the sun on my face.
“Interesting,” I say.
“Are you impressed that I know that?” I hear Will ask, his tone teasing.
“So impressed,” I tease back. “What else do you know?”
“Where should I begin?” He laughs, and I giggle.
“Seriously, though, I play a mean game of trivia. Ask me anything. I know every state capital.”
“Oh, really?” I say, suddenly interested. I open my eyes and look at him. “Okay, Illinois.”
“Oooo, toughie.” Will nods. “I see what you’re trying to do there. You think I’ll say Chicago, don’t you? Well, nice try. It’s Springfield. I wasn’t born yesterday.”
“Impressive.” I cross my arms as we circle around, the crowd on the Pier swarming below us. To be honest, the Santa Monica Pier freaks me out a little bit. From a distance, it’s a wild, quirky landmark. Up close, it’s filled with hot and sweaty tourists, and a variety of characters that range from humorous to downright frightening, like the a guy covered in head-to-toe tattoos, barely an inch of his real skin visible. “How’d you get so good at facts like this?” I ask, trying not to think about it.
“I just have a knack for it,” he says. “I think I may have a photographic memory. Also”—he makes a face—“I wasn’t very cool growing up.” He makes little quotation marks around the word cool, and I resist telling him there’s nothing very cool about that hand motion. But regardless, what he just said surprised me.
“Seriously?” I ask, then I correct myself. “Sorry. It’s just that’s kind of hard to believe.” Not only is Will movie-star handsome, he gets along with everyone. It’s impossible to picture him not fitting in.
Will shrugs. “My body took a while to grow into itself. I was all gangly limbs and no body fat, my hair was really big, my pants were always too short, and as if that wasn’t enough, I was kind of a know-it-all. Always correcting other people. I didn’t have a lot of friends. Hence the comic book obsession.” He casts me a wary look. “Should I not have told you that?”
“It explains a lot, actually,” I say.
“Really?” Will laughs. “I’m that much of a jerk, huh?”
“No, no,” I say, resting a hand on his forearm when I say it, and Will looks down at his arm like I’ve just turned it into gold. “It makes sense that you weren’t super-cool.”
“Somehow this isn’t getting any better.” Will makes another face.
Now I am laughing and trying to explain through my giggles. “It’s just that you are, like, you. You know?”
“I don’t know.” The corner of Will’s mouth turns up.
“Don’t make me say it,” I whine.
“Enlighten me.” Will rests his hands behind his head.
I roll my eyes. “You’re cute and charming. And everyone likes you. But you’re not a jerk. You’ve had to earn it. I’m just saying it makes a lot of sense.”
Will doesn’t say anything for a moment; he just smirks at me.
“What?” I finally say.
“You think I’m cute?” is all he asks, as the chair blows back and forth in the wind.
After the Ferris wheel, we have lunch at the trendiest restaurant in Beverly Hills, laughing the whole time at how over-the-top fancy it is, how many forks there are to eat with, and the French poodle sitting next to us in an actual chair. Then we follow a star map to all the most absurd mansions on Sunset Boulevard, and even manage to get onto one of the properties before a gardener wielding giant pruning shears kicks us out. We catch a comedy show in Beachwood Canyon, and end the day watching ET at the Hollywood Bowl, while the LA Philharmonic plays along as the soundtrack. It’s a perfect night, and the stars are twinkling above us. And Will planned every single detail of it for me.
“Hey,” I tell him as we walk out of the venue to his car.
“Hey what?” he asks, gazing down at me.
“Thank you for this day. It was pretty awesome.”
In response, Will just smiles, and carefully takes my hand in his. “Don’t mention it,” he says, and holds my hand the rest of the way. And I let him.
When Will drops me off that night, I walk in to find the downstairs bathroom seems to have exploded all over the living room. Cabinet doors and pieces of tile lay on every surface, and the toilet is next to the sofa.
My mom comes in from the kitchen, wielding Napoleon like a weapon.
“Why is there a toilet next to the sofa?” I ask.
My mother sets down Napoleon carefully, but he starts growling, so she picks him up again, rolling her eyes. “It needed an upgrade,” she says.
“Did it really?” I ask. “Everything was working just fine.”
“Don’t start with me, Annabelle,” she says. “It needed an upgrade for potential buyers.”
“Don’t start with you?” I blurt out. “Like any of this has anything to do with me?” If I’m correct, a lot of this is being done to me.