“That’s okay.”
“We had a little talk about tolerating other people’s opinions,” David says to me as we walk ahead, leaving the other two to follow together.
“I figured. We had a talk too.”
“What about?”
I move closer and lower my voice. “That it’s okay for a guy to put his arm around you at a movie, but not for him to cop a feel.”
“Wait—” He grabs my arm. “Did he—?”
I shake my head. “Just a nice friendly shoulder squeeze.”
He releases me. “Oh, good. I mean, unless she’s told you she wants him to make a move—”
“Definitely not. She’s not ready yet. Do you think he is?”
He snorts. “He’s a guy.”
“Does he talk to you about it?”
“Not really. But I’ve seen his Google history. He looks up a lot of stuff.”
“You mean like porn?”
“He mostly just Googles body parts—?the fun ones. But he must stumble on porn now and then. I mean, it’s the Internet—?you can’t not end up looking at porn.”
“Ivy is definitely not looking at porn.”
“Well, she’s a girl.”
“That’s sexist. Girls can like porn too.”
“Yeah?” he says with interest. “Do you?”
I laugh. “Actually, no. I think it’s gross.”
“Have you ever heard a girl say she liked it?”
“No, but I don’t go around asking people.”
“Well,” he says, “from my sample size of one, I’m going to say my theory that girls don’t like porn is confirmed.”
At the food court, Ivy and the guys get meals at Panda Express, but I don’t feel like Chinese food, so I wander around, considering my choices, before settling on a tuna roll and a Diet Coke from the Japanese place.
It takes me a minute to find the others, who are no longer at Panda, but once I turn a corner, I spot their table instantly—?they’re hard to miss, mostly because Ethan is standing up and shouting and flailing his arms.
“It hurts!” he’s shouting. “It hurts!” He sticks his tongue out and rubs at it with first one hand and then the other—?he looks like he’s slapping at his own mouth.
David grabs at his hands. “Hey, hey, hey. Don’t do that. Eat some rice—?that’ll help.”
“Why did they give that to me?” Ethan cries. “It hurts!”
“They’re just for flavor—?you’re not supposed to eat them.”
“Why do they put them in there, then?” He wrenches his hands out of his brother’s grasp and swipes at his mouth again.
David sees me standing there. “Chili pepper,” he says wearily.
“Oh.” Now I understand. “He’s right about eating rice,” I tell Ethan. “It stops the burning.”
“The rice is hot too!”
“It’s a different kind of hot. Blow on it first, and it will help, I promise.”
Ivy’s sitting at the table, watching Ethan with impassive curiosity as she steadily chews and swallows her own food. There are bits of rice on her shirt and in her hair, which I got her to wear brushed and down tonight, instead of in a ponytail, and there’s also some kind of brownish sauce on her chin and at the corners of her mouth.
Ethan wails some more. An elderly couple is walking by, and the man maneuvers around his wife so he can put himself between her and our group.
He’s being gallant.
It hurts, especially because he’s probably just some sweet old guy who loves his wife and wants to protect her from bad things.
But Ivy and Ethan aren’t bad things.
David pushes Ethan into a chair and stands over him. “Seriously, dude, eat some rice.” He plunges a fork into the mound on Ethan’s plate.
Ethan glares at him but opens his mouth, and David shoves the rice in. Ethan chews and swallows. “It still hurts.”
“You shouldn’t have eaten the chili pepper,” Ivy says. “Everyone knows they’re hot.”
“I didn’t mean to!” Ethan roars at her, spraying chewed-up rice across the table. “It got in my mouth on accident!”
“Chilis can be sneaky,” I say.
“Tricky little beasts,” David agrees. “You can’t trust a chili.”
“Bell peppers, though—?they’re trustworthy.”
“The really evil ones are those little shishito bastards,” David says. “Some of them are hot, and some aren’t. You can’t tell until you bite into one. How is that fair?”
“It’s not,” I say. “It’s not fair at all.”
“And don’t get me started on pepperoncini. I mean, first of all that name . . .”
“My tongue is better now,” Ethan says. “Because of the rice.” He takes the fork from David and starts rapidly shoveling more rice into his mouth. “I’m not going to eat any more orange chicken,” he says through the mess in his mouth. “Just the rice. There’s no chili pepper in rice.”
“Good idea,” David says, and we sit down to our food.
I’m drizzling a packet of soy sauce over my sushi when I hear someone say, “Hey!” and look up as Jana Rodriguez descends on us. “What are you guys doing here?”
“We just saw a movie,” I say.
Her eyes flick eagerly back and forth between me and David. “You two?”
“All of us,” I say quickly. “My sister and David’s brother are friends.”
“Yes, don’t mistake their friendship for ours,” David says jovially.
Jana turns to Ivy. “So you’re Chloe’s sister? Oh, my God, you totally look like her! I can’t believe I’ve never met you! I’m Jana.”
“Hi,” Ivy says. Her eyes slide away from Jana’s friendly gaze. I notice there’s now also a smear of sauce on her forehead. How did that even get there?
“And you’re David’s brother?” Jana says to Ethan, who’s still hunched over his plate, forking rice into his mouth like his life depends on it. “What’s he like at home? Does he say really smart, scary things there too?”
Ethan says, “I don’t know,” through a mouthful of rice.