I think you’re pretty cool too…, I type back. I’m smiling so hard my cheeks hurt.
Yeah?
Yeah.
So … Friday night?
Yeah … Friday night
Okay … cool … goodnight Vivian
Night Seth
I’m still staring at the phone when I hear my mother’s keys in the front door. A few beats later she walks in, throws her purse on the kitchen counter, and opens the refrigerator to look for what I know is an ice-cold Coke.
“Hey, Vivvy,” she says, her back toward me.
I think I’m breathing, but I’m not sure. I’m glad my mother isn’t looking at me or she’d wonder why I’ve gone catatonic.
“Hey, Mom,” I finally manage.
She fishes a can from the back of the fridge and turns to smile at me.
“How was your day?” she says.
Two asshole guys bump ’n’ grabbed me and one not-asshole guy told me he thinks I’m one cool girl. So I guess you could say, it was a day of extremes.
“It was fine.”
“That’s good,” my mom says. Just then her phone buzzes. She smiles at the screen, and I know it’s John. She reaches to answer it.
“I’m getting ready for bed,” I mouth to her as she presses the phone to her ear and starts talking.
“’Night, sweetheart,” she mouths back, pulling me close to give me a brief goodnight hug.
Later, as I slide under the covers, I think about boys. Mostly about Seth, of course, but Jason Garza and Mitchell Wilson and John, too. Some boys piss me off and some annoy me and some of them make my body go electric in the best way ever. I toss and turn and toss some more, and when I finally fall asleep, I dream about driving in a car with John and my mother and Seth around the Eternal Rest Funeral Home until my mom says it’s time for Seth and me to go on our date, but when we show up to Los Tios restaurant, Seth turns into Mitchell Wilson, and when I see him, I promptly punch him in the face.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
There are a million things I want to know about Seth Acosta, and as we sit in a back booth inside a dimly lit Los Tios, white Christmas lights strung around the windows, queso and tacos in front of us, I keep discovering them like little treasures.
Like he’s left-handed.
Like his dad speaks Spanish and German.
Like his dog is named Max after this old jazz drummer his mother loves named Max Roach.
I think it’s going to be scary, going on a real date with Seth Acosta. And at first, of course, I’m a little nervous. But soon, it’s as easy as the last time we hung out, driving around the funeral home and eating Jack in the Box in an empty parking lot.
From the minute we sit down, we start having one of those conversations where we keep jumping on the ends of each other’s sentences.
“And did you read…”
“And have you heard…”
“And did you ever watch…”
And sometimes our knees bump under the table. And once our fingers touch in the chip basket.
And the entire time I’m wonderinghopingthinkingpraying that when this night is over, Seth is going to kiss me.
Please to the God I want to believe in, please let me get my first kiss from Seth Acosta.
After dinner’s over, it’s still early—not even 9 o’clock.
“What else can we do?” Seth asks as we slide into his car and pull out of the Los Tios parking lot.
“There’s a party at this girl’s house,” I say. “But to be honest, I don’t really feel like a party.”
“Me neither,” Seth says. “What about the beach? Too cold?”
“I brought my jacket.”
We head down to the public beach on the bay, right by the Nautical and Seafood Museum of the Gulf Coast and the Holiday Inn. It sounds all romantic and gorgeous to live by the beach, but the Gulf Coast isn’t exactly a bastion of moonlit walks on white sand. Seth parks his car and we sit on some ratty old picnic tables on the perimeter of the thin strip of sand, staring out at the mucky Texas water as it laps against clumps of seaweed and a few empty plastic bottles. At least we’re the only ones here.
“Kind of sad how there’s so much garbage,” Seth says, peering at the water line.
“Once in sixth grade our class came down here to do a beach cleanup as a community service project,” I say, drawing my knees to my chest, controlling a shiver. It is cold. “And my friend Claudia found a condom, but she didn’t know what it was, so she asked our science teacher, who was a guy, and he was so embarrassed that he ended the cleanup and we went back to school early.”
Seth laughs out loud. I’m not sure if it’s weird to bring up a story about a condom in front of Seth, but I feel kind of bold and funny doing it.
“So you want to leave East Rockport or stick around?” Seth asks. “I mean, after next year?”
“I don’t know, honestly,” I answer. “I mean, I want to go to college, I guess. That’s what I’m supposed to say, right? But my mom can probably only afford in-state tuition, so I don’t know … wherever I go I doubt it will be far from here. What about you? What do you want to do when you graduate?”
Seth tucks a strip of his black hair behind his ear and scratches his chin with his thumb, and it’s just the most delicious thing.
“Honestly? I have no idea. Literally zero clue.”
“God, that’s so nice to hear,” I say. “Like, I’m sixteen, right? How the hell can I possibly know?”
“Exactly,” Seth answers.
It’s quiet for a while, and I get up the guts to ask the question that’s been on my mind since Seth asked me out.
“That girl you were hanging out with in Austin. Was she … mad? That you ended things?”
Seth glances down at his knees. “I don’t think so. I mean, she was a nice girl and everything, and we’d known each other for … forever, before we started going out last spring. She was fun to hang out with but it was like we were together because we thought we were supposed to be, I think.”
“Oh,” I say. “What’s her name?”
“Samantha,” Seth answers. “She was my first real girlfriend, I guess you could say.”
I nod, and I wonder not for the first time if that means he’s Done It, but I can’t ask that. All I do is say that I think that Samantha is a pretty name.
“Yeah, it’s okay, but not as cool as Vivian,” Seth answers, and he kind of knocks his body into mine a little and I grin and look down into my lap, reminding myself for the tenth time this evening that this is real and not track number seven of my mental album titled My Fantasy Boyfriend—Greatest Hits!
“What about you?” Seth asks. “No boyfriend?”
“Nope,” I say, staring out at the dark water. “Never.”
Seth draws back and his eyebrows fly up. “You? But you’re, like, the Moxie girl.”
I flush. “Yeah, well, remember you’re the only one who knows about that. And anyway, that’s not exactly a plus around here. Most boys of East Rockport would consider that very un-girlfriend material.”
Seth shakes his head. “Just proves the guys around here are dumb.”