Chapter 7 Daisy
Seven
Daisy
Dear Owen,
First of all, I hope you apologized to the guac on my behalf. If it makes you feel any better, I’m having a heap of really
underwhelming guacamole as we speak, on top of my breakfast burrito from the club. (See that grease stain in the corner? Sorry.)
Got a server job here. Today’s my first day—I aspire to be one of the world’s worst waitresses. Think I have a shot? Anyway,
I hope you’re having fun backpacking and eating schnitzel or whatever you’re doing out there. If you’re reading this, it will
mean you did not in fact get lost and starve to death in the vast Austrian mountains. So I offer a preemptive congrats.
Daisy
PS: Just me or does that grease stain look eerily like Stalin?
I sit at a faux-iron table on the lake-view terrace with my feet up on an empty seat, rereading the postcard a few times,
flipping it over to look at the front, which has a picture of the Laurel Lake Tennis Club as well as the club’s logo: a tennis
racket with a happy face and waving hands. I got dropped off early since Georgia was eager to get her day started and Eden
was, well, a lot less eager but had no choice. (She came home from orientation yesterday and told us all about seeing her
ex, Leo Goldbaum. Georgia gently suggested maybe it was a sign it’s time for Eden to make peace with Leo once and for all,
but Eden was having none of it, and literally begged my mom to let her bail on the whole program. Mom just smiled and shook
her head, saying it’ll do her good to be out there communing with nature.)
Anyway, I don’t mind the extra time to check out the breakfast menu and write to Owen. As I stare at my own handwriting, I
try to imagine him receiving this postcard. On the surface, it’s friendly banter, not even the slightest bit flirty. But then
again, neither was his postcard to me. Just funny and cute and . . . basically normal. And yet, none of this seems normal because in normal life we don’t write each other postcards. It makes me feel like we’re in some old-fashioned love
story where he’s gone off to war while I stoically take care of the farm.
And I guess the other reason it doesn’t feel the same as before is because I’m not the same. The Daisy of Before didn’t know what it felt like to lean over Owen like that, to feel his hands on my waist, to kiss him for the first time: that crazy rush like going over the drop on a roller coaster.
I tuck the postcard into my paperback to mail later, with the urge to hide it away, keep it private, like a secret message.
Even though it’s a postcard, so literally the postal workers could all read it if they wanted to, and it would be totally
legal.
I flip open the book to my current page—the part where the rebel vampire clan are just making the dangerous crossing into
the Kingdom of Gremlins—and take a huge bite of burrito. I should be going down the checklist of my summer reading assignments
for ELA rather than finishing book sixteen in a romantasy series where everyone is always marching into battle and having
sexual awakenings with different species of magical creatures. But we can’t all be perfect.
I’m just at the part where Ronaldo, the vampire army general, confesses his adoration to Sahara, the demigoddess who has snake
blood in her veins—which I saw coming from a mile away but is still incredibly titillating because they’re on the cusp of
battle, naturally, and he may never see her again, and I’m pretty sure Sahara is going to take him back to her war tent so
they can be alone after he says I’ve been waiting so long to taste the serpent lifeblood in your veins—when a shadow falls over the page.
“What’re you reading?” says a guy’s voice.
I squint up, my brain still in the book. Ronaldo the vampire? But no. It’s Rhys’s friend Mateo, standing just behind my table,
smirking down at me and swinging a tennis racket against his leg.
“Oh, nothing,” I say, an extreme blush creeping across my face as I flip the book closed so he can’t see the sex scene I was about to read.
Only to realize that now he can plainly see the book’s title.
He leans closer. “The Mercy of Thorns series . . . I feel like I’ve heard of that.”
“Georgia thinks it’s trashy. She calls them The Mercy of Porn books,” I admit, figuring I may as well just own the situation. “But the writing is good.”
“Huh, I’ll have to check it out sometime.” He laughs. Unlike Owen’s out-of-control, sometimes-verging-on-maniacal laughter,
Mateo’s is breathy and low. I notice he’s wearing athletic shorts and an oversized light blue T-shirt. He’s lanky, but through
the shirt you can see the shape of his chest muscles. His shoulders droop as if he really can’t be bothered to hold them up
all the way.
“Are you here to play with someone,” I ask, “or just taking inventory of what the kids are reading these days?”
He shrugs. “Not looking for a partner, sorry.”
“Oh, I wasn’t offering,” I tell him. “I mean, in addition to being way less good at tennis than you—understatement, I know—my
shift starts soon. I work here.”
“Yeah. Cool.” He nods, looking a little bored. Not necessarily bored with me, per se, but with, like, reality in general. “I’m doing the advanced clinic. Starts soon. I should be warming up. Just killing
time.”
“Well, I’m sure Time did something truly awful to deserve it.”
“Huh?”
“You know, since you’re here to kill it?”
Mateo’s eyes twinkle but he doesn’t laugh again. Maybe because we both know the joke was terrible. “Anyway, gotta go. See
you around, Georgia’s Sister. Enjoy those, um, thorns.” He winks and walks away.
At least, that’s what I think he did, though the sun is pretty bright out here right now, so it could have been more of a
half squint . . . or a flinch of embarrassment for me.
But I’m pretty sure it was a wink.
The same smiling tennis racket logo with dancing arms adorns the T-shirt that the club restaurant manager, this mom-aged woman
named Kristy, hands me at the start of my first training shift fifteen minutes later.
“Here. Throw this over your tank top,” Kristy says. “I’ll get you a few more because you’ll want to wear them for every shift.
Oh, and you might want to put that in a braid.” She gestures to my long, unruly reddish-blond mane.
I put the shirt on, which nearly comes down to my knees and completely hides my cutoff shorts, then do a quick side braid
while she shows me the ropes. I nod along through the ketchup refill tutorial and the cash register practice drills, trying
not to drop into an existential apathy like Mateo.
Once we’ve walked through all the basics, Kristy tells me to shadow Tre, this twentysomething guy who runs the snack kiosk.
Tre informs me I have the “lame shift” and I’m never going to make any money because I clock out in the afternoon.
It’s sunset that’s really hopping here at the club, he insists.
The bar opens at four p.m. and once cocktails are being poured, tips go up all around.
“Even if you’re not working the bar, you still make way more.
Rising tides lift all ships,” Tre explains like a sage.
Things are slow for a while, then get crazy busy as lunchtime approaches. Tre lets me practice working the cash register,
which involves a lot less spontaneous math than Kristy made it sound like, since most people charge everything to their club
account.
During lunch, I notice when Mateo pops in with a few other tennis players, but he’s focused on chatting with another guy in
his twenties and doesn’t say hi to me. He nods, though, and does that squinty maybe-wink thing again.
By two o’clock, everything slows down to a dribble, and after cleaning up the tables and counters, I’m back into the depths
of The Mercy of Thorns pretty much until the end of my shift. I text Georgia as I clock out, and while I wait to hear back from her, I wander over
to the tennis courts and sit on an empty bench. On the next court over, Mateo is playing against his lunch friend.
A coach hovers nearby, barking out feedback to both of them. “You’re muscling it, Sam. Stop muscling it! Easy on the wrist!
Stay low through the slice, Mateo. You’re popping up too early.”
The game seems to be wrapping up because Sam hollers in defeat at a missed ball and Mateo suddenly has a huge grin on his
face as he jogs over to the coach to break down her responses. While I’m staring at their huddle, it’s as if he’s got eyes
on the back of his neck—Mateo pops his head up and sees me watching him.
I quickly pretend to be scrolling my phone, but he saunters off the court and takes a seat beside me on the bench.
“What’s up, Georgia’s Sister?”
I roll my eyes and keep scrolling. “I was just texting Georgia, in fact.”
“That’s cool,” he says. I expect him to get up and go for another game or do some drills or whatever, but he stays right where
he is.
“You know, some people might call her ‘Daisy’s Sister.’ Like if they didn’t care to learn her actual name.” I realize I sound bratty, but honestly, it’s kind of annoying that he
can’t be bothered to remember mine.
“Noted.” He doesn’t seem to take offense. He’s just staring off beyond the courts, at the trees swaying against the bright
blue sky. “So, what’s it like having Georgia for an older sister?”
I look up at him in surprise. “What do you mean by that?”
He shrugs. “I don’t mean anything by it. Just curious.”
“Hm. Well, she’s a lot to live up to, if that’s what you’re implying.”
He nods thoughtfully, still staring out at those trees. “That makes sense. And what about that other one. The cousin with
the hot bangs.”
“Eden?” I ask casually. But what I’m thinking is: I knew it. He thinks Eden is cute. He wants to know if Eden’s single. In fact, I know exactly what his next question is going to be.
I’d bet money on it.
“Yeah, that’s right. Eden,” he says with a slow nod. “Does she have—”
“A boyfriend?” I say too quickly.
He turns to me with a half smile. “I was gonna say, the same last name as you guys?”