Chapter 2 #2
Her tongue moves around in one of her cheeks, making it poke out. At first I think she’s being flirty, but then I realize that is not at all her tone. “Really?” She scoffs. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“No, no, no,” I say. “I didn’t mean any offense or anything. Just that, like, you probably kind of get around a bit and—”
“I get around?” she asks, her eyes narrowing.
“Not like that. I mean to… like… parties and stuff.”
“So I just seem like the kind of girl who goes around kissing a bunch of guys?”
“No. Sorry. I mean that you seem like someone who has a lot of experience and just that you’re… I don’t know—”
“A slut?” she says.
“No!” I blurt out. The family across from us stares at me. “No, that’s not what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean?”
I meant that you’re really pretty. Like, main character kind of pretty. The girl next door. The siren. The warrior princess in the fantasies. The femme fatale in the detective stories. The leading lady in the love stories. No matter what, you’d take top billing for any role.
“I don’t know… but not the slut thing,” I say, apparently too loud, because the family across from me is frowning now.
She purses her lips. “Gee, thanks.”
Silence.
“So, how are we supposed to do this?” She sighs, not looking at me.
“Do what?”
“This kissing thing. Let’s just get it over with because I’m kinda super humiliated right now.”
I shift in my seat. “Like, how do you kiss? Like, are you asking for instructions or—”
“No,” she says. “I know how to kiss. I mean, like, do we kiss in here? Are you going to kiss me after, when we’re outside? Like, when do we do it?”
I shrug. “I mean, I guess probably after we eat.” I lean closer. “Don’t look, but behind you there’s a family who hates us for corrupting their kids. I think they’d be pissed if we kissed.”
She laughs a little and the edges of her eyes crinkle and everything in me feels like it’s doing somersaults.
I remember seeing her in the black dress at Marcus Sanchez’s party—her sharpness, her inaccessible confidence.
But her sweatshirt tonight is a pale green and there’s a flush to her cheeks that seems to be coming from her nervousness, which makes her look so soft, so lovely.
I don’t know which version of her is more beautiful.
“I thought we were trading first kisses,” Mayte says. “I didn’t realize you’ve already had yours. What do you even get out of this deal then?”
To kiss a really pretty girl, I am, like, three seconds away from saying, but then I remember I am the writer of words like these coming out of the mouths of men who are way better than me, so I shut myself up.
“I don’t know,” I say, instead, like an absolute douche. “I think Janko just thought it’d be a good idea for me to go on a date.”
Mayte nods. “That makes sense.”
Silence.
“So, do you read?” I ask.
“Do you want my hat?” Mayte says at the same time.
“What?”
“My hat,” Mayte says, and holds up the yellow hat she’d been wearing when I first spotted her.
“My grandma and I just learned how to knit, which I know sounds super boring, but it was just something to do with her to pass the time, and I just felt like maybe I could, like, I don’t know, pay you for kissing me…
with… a homemade hat.” She rubs her hands over her face and sighs again.
I laugh.
“Is that super weird?” she asks.
“I mean, kinda,” I say.
“I was just trying to be nice since my friends… and my grandma, apparently… have put you in a really weird situation.”
“It’s fine,” I say. “I don’t really want the hat.”
“Why not? It’s a perfectly good hat.” She looks at the hat from different angles. “Or, not perfect, I guess, but it’s a good hat.”
I laugh again. “I don’t know. It just kind of feels like hat prostitution if you’re paying me homemade hats to kiss you.”
Her tongue does that angry thing again and her eyes start to narrow, and I know I’ve made a huge mistake. “So first you call me a slut and now you call me a prostitute,” she says.
“What?” I blurt out.
“Wow, I really want to kiss you now, Auggie.”
“I… I didn’t call you either of those things.”
“You did! You straight up just said it’s prostitution for me to give you my hat out of the goodness of—”
“You’re literally asking to pay me for a sexual activi—”
“Kissing is not a sexual activity!” she shouts.
“How would you know? You’ve never been kissed!” I shout back.
“Screw this!” she says. I can feel myself shrinking. “You can keep your fucking kiss,” she says, sliding out of her seat. “Enjoy your vanilla milkshake.” She presses her phone to her ear and walks to the front of the restaurant and out into the cold.
I’m frozen for a few moments, staring at the table in disbelief that this really happened. I can hear my heart beating. My hands feel tingly and hot.
“Hey, bud.” I look up to see a man in a white apron standing at my table. “We’ve received a few complaints about the noise over here. Would you please watch your and your lady friend’s language? This is a family establishment.”
I glance at the family across from me. They’re death-staring me.
I look up at the man in the apron and nod.