“I’m going to pay for yours,” he tells her when she’s done. She looks at me uncertainly. I nod, and she lets him take her bowl and put it on the scale next to his.
The cashier is a smiley young Asian American woman. She’s keeping up a stream of patter, either oblivious to the fact that Ivy and Ethan aren’t really responding or savvy enough to sense that they need some help making conversation. She counts out Ethan’s change and then Ethan picks up both yogurt cups and says to Ivy, “Come with me,” and leads the way to a table. She looks back at me, but I gesture to her to follow him, and she does.
“Excellent,” David says. He’s come up next to me. “We talked about how this would go, and he remembered everything I told him to do.”
“You guys close?”
“I mean, yeah.” He puts his cup on the scale.
“Are you together?” the bubbly cashier asks.
David and I say no at the same time. She tells him the price, and he pays before heading over to an empty table.
While the cashier is weighing my cup, I say, “Hey, any chance you’re hiring?” Seems like a decent place to work—?she certainly seems to be enjoying herself.
“I think we’re set right now,” she says, “but you can fill out an application, and we’ll keep it on file in case something opens up. I’ll bring one over to you. Three forty-seven, please.”
I pay, then turn and hesitate, wondering whether I should sit with David or not. I don’t really want to have to make conversation with him, but sitting a few feet away and ignoring each other for the next half-hour or so seems even more awkward.
I decide to let him decide. “You want company?” I ask, approaching his table.
“Up to you.” He already has his phone out and is flicking at it with one hand while he shoves spoonfuls of yogurt into his mouth with the other.
I sit. He just keeps looking at his phone, so I pull out mine.
I text Sarah about the situation and get back a Holy crap, David Fields???????
David and I both look up from our phones at the same time, so I nod toward the other table, figuring I might as well be friendly—?it might make things more comfortable for me, even if he doesn’t care. “How long do you think they’ll last?”
“As a couple?”
“No, I mean right now. I’m guessing not more than half an hour. Ivy’s never been much of a sit-and-chat kind of girl.”
“Ethan can sit and chat all day long. It’s listening that’s hard for him.”
“How long has he been in that class at Vicente?”
“This is his second year.”
“It’s Ivy’s third—?and last. She turns twenty-one this summer. No more school after that.”
“Just the big bad world.”
“I wish she could stay in high school forever.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s safe for them there.” He shifts in his seat. “How about you? What’s in the future? College, I assume?”
“Definitely. You?”
“I don’t know.” He swipes at his mouth with the back of his hand, which he then wipes on his jeans. “I don’t want to leave Ethan all alone.”
“All alone? What about your parents?”
“Divorced. Dad lost the custody battle, so we live with him.”
“You mean he won it.”
“Do I?”
I don’t know what to say to that.
“Anyway, Mom moved to another state and sends us postcards of some lake at sunset. And Dad’s all about the new wife. She just had a baby, so . . .” He trails off, then shrugs. “Whatever. I’ll make sure Ethan’s okay. You going to take AP English next year?”
It takes me a second to catch up with the change in subject. “Uh . . . yeah. Planning to. You?”
“I’m taking as many APs as I can.”
“But why, if you’re—”
He cuts me off, his finger raised. “Shhh—?listen.”
Ethan is talking more loudly than he needs to in such a small space. “I like the X-Men movies but not Wolverine Origins or X-Men: The Last Stand. Those are the worst ones. A lot of people think the best one is X-Men: First Class, but I think X-Men: Days of Future Past is better. What’s your favorite?”
Ivy’s voice is quieter; I have to strain to hear her response. “I’ve only seen the first one. It was on TV. I watched it with Chloe and my mother and my stepfather.”
“The first one’s pretty good,” Ethan says.
“It was okay.”
“Wolverine is the best character. He’s played by Hugh Jackman, who’s originally from Australia. He was also in the movie that was called Australia, but it’s not very good. A lot more people saw him in Les Misérables. Some people really liked that movie, but a lot of people didn’t. I didn’t. Did you see it?”
“No.”
“She doesn’t go to a lot of movies,” I whisper to David.
“Too bad,” he whispers back. “Ethan lives and breathes movies. I told him he could talk about them if he didn’t know what else to say.”
“You should have told him to talk about TV shows. Ivy’s strong on those.”
“I’ll remember that for next time.”
“Do you think they’re having fun?”
“Ethan looks pretty happy right now. What about her?”
I study my sister, who’s gazing down at the table, her hands twitching by her sides. She doesn’t exactly look ecstatic, but she might just be nervous. “I don’t know. I hope so. I really want this to go well. She needs friends.”
“Ethan has friends—?or says he does—?but they’re all online. He’s probably being catfished by half of them.” David fidgets in his seat. He’s devoured his frozen yogurt, and seems restless without it. He picks up his phone and flips it in his palm.
“We don’t have to talk,” I say. “You can use your phone.”
His neck kind of retracts at that—?hard to tell if it’s relief or annoyance. “Yeah, okay,” he says. He slouches in his seat and stares at his phone screen as his thumbs skim over the keypad. I curl up in my chair with my own phone.
A minute later, the cashier comes over with the promised job application, which she hands to me. “Drop it off whenever you want,” she says with a friendly smile. “No rush.” She goes back to the counter.