Chapter 16 Daisy
Sixteen
Daisy
I’m in a total DAZE, Daze. We left Austria.
We’re in Germany now—we took an overnight train and it was like sleeping on an active construction site (horrible).
I got this postcard at a museum in Berlin.
It’s kind of a cool city, actually. I guess all I really knew about Berlin before was the wall.
We saw it, by the way. It’s . . . a wall.
But you’d like it. What remains of it. It’s covered in art.
Anyway, I’m rambling. We should travel together sometime.
It would be way better than this. I can just imagine the trouble we would get into.
Or okay, the trouble I would get us into, and you would somehow get us back out.
Hope your summer is maximally chill and that you’re sleeping in super late every morning and wasting as much time as humanly possible, because that’s what summers are for.
Wanna waste some time with me when I’m back?
Shit, gotta go. We are catching another train, this time to .
. . somewhere. I forget. Can you handle the suspense?
Owen
I laugh, thinking of the trouble we would get into together if we were traveling abroad, and tuck Owen’s postcard away, trying to go back to my shift. The restaurant
is totally dead today—the dreaded midweek slump—and Mateo hasn’t come by at all yet. Tre and I have been taking turns with the playlist, and
I’ve already refilled all the salts, peppers, and ketchups. Now I’m just bored out of my mind.
“What were you reading?” Tre asks, coming up to me where I’m standing at the cash register on the counter.
“Oh, nothing, just a postcard from a friend.”
“Was it funny? Can I read it?” he asks, putting out his hand.
I hesitate. “I mean, sure, why not.” I pull the postcard back out and hand it to him.
He reads it and then looks down at me with the funniest expression. “I can see why you like him.”
“What? I—I don’t like him. I mean—” I falter. I still don’t really know how I feel about Owen and that kiss. But in only a little over a week, it feels
like my whole life has changed, and there’s no going back. “We’re just friends!”
“Does he know that?”
“He’s the one who is friend-zoning me,” I explain. “Or was. But it’s mutual. We’ve been friends for years.”
“Well, he’s definitely in love with you,” Tre says, handing the postcard back.
I stare at it, baffled. “What do you mean? Why do you say that?”
Tre shakes his head. “First off, no straight guy sends a girl postcards if he’s not in love with her. It’s just not scientifically
possible.”
I roll my eyes. “You don’t know Owen. This is very Owen. He’s a postcard guy.”
“Oh, so he’s sending postcards to everyone?” Tre asks.
I pause. “Well, no. I don’t think so. But that’s because I’m one of his closest friends. . . .”
“Uh-huh. Right. One of his closest friends who he’s in love with.”
I laugh. “Whatever. You don’t know anything! You’ve never met him.”
“I’ve only finished argument one. Then there’s argument two, which is the content of said postcard.”
“There’s nothing romantic in here whatsoever, Tre.”
Tre shakes his head. “He talks about art. He talks about the future. He talks about a future with you.”
“He’s talking about a vacation.”
“Is he?”
“Yes! Like a college vacation you take with friends.”
“Uh-huh,” Tre says.
“Stop saying uh-huh like that!”
He laughs. “I’m sorry, girl, but I call complete BS with all of this. He’s in love with you and he wants to ‘waste time with
you.’ Be still my heart. If that’s not romantic, I don’t know what is!”
I reach out and push him in the direction of the kitchen. “Please go tend to the French fries, this conversation is over.”
He swats me away. “You’re not the boss of me!” But he heads toward the kitchen doors. “You’re the boss of Owen!”
“No, I’m no—” But the kitchen door swings shut before I can have the last word.
Tre’s teasing leaves me feeling off-kilter through the lunch shift, pondering what he’s said. I don’t want to think about
Owen liking me. I don’t want to think about me liking Owen, either. If I let all these thoughts take over, it could ruin our friendship completely. It could make things pointlessly awkward.
I’m already worried about it being awkward when we go back to school. I think—I can guess from his postcards—that he’s just
as eager to act like nothing has changed, and I’m all about that, too. I’ve wanted things to go back to normal this whole
time.
At least, I think that’s what I wanted. Because, obviously, it’s hard to evaluate what I really wanted before . . .
Before there was a Mateo.
I mean, the kiss with Owen was extremely good. And exciting. And fun. And the next morning, if you’d asked me, I probably would have happily agreed to do it again.
But Mateo is like this dark tide that’s overtaken my life.
I hate to say that I feel “swept away,” but I kind of do.
There’s so much I don’t know about him, so much mystery that feels impossible to fully unravel.
And I know it’s not just made up in my head.
Unlike Owen, Mateo has made it very clear he likes me back in that way, that he finds me attractive, he wants to spend time with me.
And he’s opened up about stuff that he normally keeps hidden
from everyone. He’s shown me glimpses of his true self in ways that even Owen, who I’ve known for years, hasn’t done.
And the fact that he’s best friends with the guy my sister will probably marry someday? I’ve never been one of those people
who believes in “fate” and all that, but if I were, there’d be no arguing that there’s something fateful and romantic about
me and Mateo.
And yeah, maybe it’s more than that. It feels good to have the attention of an older guy who could choose anyone but is choosing
to hang out with me. I’m so used to being the little sister, left behind when Georgia’s out living her cool, boyfriend-filled life. I like being
the chosen one—to be chosen at all. Is that so bad?
I’m still having this inner war with myself—I can’t even focus on book seventeen of the romantasy series, where Ronaldo the
vampire and Sahara the demigoddess have become each other’s sworn enemies after Ronaldo’s unspeakable betrayal—when my shift
finally comes to an end.
As usual, I wander out to the tennis courts to watch Mateo wrap up his clinic practice for the day. It absolutely poured yesterday
afternoon, but today the weather is brisk and the rain’s gone, though it’s still misty and gray.
As I watch Mateo play—the ripple of his muscles under his shirt, the huffs of breath that hint at the effort he barely shows, the concentration on his face—I fantasize about the last few days.
We didn’t mind the rain on Monday. We just drove around and talked about everyone who came to the party, and laughed, and played music, and then when the storm really started to get strong, we pulled over and made out in the car until my leg literally fell asleep from the weird position I was sitting in, half straddling the gearshift, half on top of Mateo.
It was like a scene from The Notebook or something. Less raunchy but still somehow steamier even than some of the scenes I’ve read between Ronaldo and Sahara (and
those get pretty dang steamy. Though sometimes the descriptions of anatomy are completely gross).
Yesterday, Mateo showed me a few tennis strokes and we volleyed for a bit, then went for a swim and got ice cream. We tasted
each other’s ice cream cones. It felt like we were in a movie montage where the couple in the rom-com fall in love. Which
I know sounds crazy, but in nearly two weeks of spending this many hours together . . . crazier things have happened.
After Mateo’s finished playing, he packs up his bag and holds my hand as we walk to his car. I could be sick with happiness.
I’ve literally never walked around holding a guy’s hand except once in third grade with Jordy Falmouth, and everyone made fun of us, and we never
played together again.
Once we’re in the car, Mateo looks at me, his dark hair framing his face. “So where to today, Miss Daisy? Your chauffer is
at the ready.”
“It’s kind of kinky, thinking of you as my chauffer.”
“Whatever you’re into,” he says with a laugh.
I’m into YOU, I want to say, but don’t. Because I don’t want to seem like a completely lovesick puppy. It’s too soon for that. Rein it in, Daisy.
“Seriously, though, are you getting sick of driving me around?” Nervousness cuts through my voice as it occurs to me that
he could be getting bored with me.
He taps his fingers on the wheel and shrugs. “I’m down for whatever.”
This is not super reassuring. I’d really prefer something more like I’d drive you anywhere, I just like being with you.
“There are some hiking trails,” I say, trying to think of ways to entertain him, show off more of Laurel. “A few lead to pretty
great lookout points. I know we went to one of them when Rhys was here, but there are better ones you can only get to by walking.”
He shrugs again. “Sure, that sounds cool.”
I wish I wasn’t so paranoid about him, paying attention to every little sign that he could be losing interest. I remind myself
this is always how Mateo acts. Chill and a little above it all, easygoing but sometimes distant. I remind myself it takes
a lot to get a person like him to open up, and he’s already done that with me, and I can’t expect him to be open every second
that we’re together. I like hanging out with him when he’s brooding; it’s sexy. I remind myself I liked hanging out with him before we started making
out.
Still . . . even now that I know he likes me, I feel like I have to worry about making sure he still likes me. Ugh. I’ve never felt like this before, and I can’t believe how stressful it is.
I direct him to one of the trailheads, and we get out of the car. “It’s kind of chilly. Do you have a sweatshirt I can borrow
again?” I ask hopefully.
He searches around in the back seat. “I didn’t bring one today. Sorry,” he says.