Page 79 of Better Than the Movies
It felt good to do something for her after the weirdness on Monday, but I kind of wished she’d come right out and asked me to get her one. Did she feel like she couldn’t? I felt bad if that was the case, and there was a very large part of me that wished we were closer.
I was such a conflicted mess.
She pulled out a twenty and shoved it in my direction. “Don’t care. Get me a double hamburger with everything on it.”
“No way can you eat all of that.”
“Bet.”
I shook my head as I took her money. “I’ll be home by eleven thirty or twelve, ’kay?”
“Be good, kid.”
Wes laid on the horn then, and Helena said, “He’s doing that on purpose, isn’t he?”
I glanced at her over my shoulder, picturing Wes pushing me into the seat that ensured I was sitting next to Michael in the minivan. “I’m pretty sure he doeseverythingon purpose.”
I ran out the door and got into Wes’s car. “I can’t believe you honked.”
“You can’t?” He smiled over at me and waited while I buckled my seat belt. “It’s like you’ve never met me. Nice shirt, by the way.”
“Thanks.” I buckled and tucked my hair behind my ears. “Someone told me that green is my second-best color.”
“That makes sense, with your red hair and all.”
I rolled my eyes again. “That isn’t a thing.”
“How can you not know the rules? I mean, Style 101.”
“And you would know this how, Mr. Jockshop?”
“Because I’m smart.” His mouth slid into a smirk as he put the car in reverse and backed out of the driveway. “Obviously.”
“And you do thiswhy?” Wes asked.
I smiled as I wrote my initials with ketchup on the napkin, encircling them with a big heart. “Tradition. Growing up, whenever we came here, I always wrote things with ketchup on the napkins while I waited for our food.”
“That’s weird.”
“No, it isn’t.” I surrounded the big heart with smaller hearts. “You have to try it and see. There’s something about the squirty ketchup tip that makes it great.”
“Um, I’m good, but thanks.”
“Oh my God, you’re too cool to write with ketchup?”
“Well, yeah—for sure I am.” He reached across the table and took the condiment from my hand. “But for the sake of being a good dinner partner, I will try your childish pastime.”
“Good.” I pulled some napkins out of the dispenser and laid them on the table in front of him. “And it isn’t wasting, because you can dip your fries in it.”
“I don’t like ketchup on my fries.”
“I don’t even understand you, Wes.”
He started making something on the napkin, and I noticed thatWheel of Fortunewas on the TV behind the bar as Tom Jones’s cover of “Kiss” wafted out from the antiquated jukebox. Stella’s was a greasy bar that had formerly been a house, and even though they served the hamburgers on napkins and the place was entirely lacking in atmosphere, you considered yourself lucky if you were able to get a table during the lunch rush.
My city appreciated a good burger and hand-cut fries.
I looked back at his napkin, and he’d totally drawn a cartoony dude. It was a face in ketchup, way better than the childish letters I’d made. “So how was baseball today?”
