Page 13 of Just Another Meet Cute
“Yeah, I thought so, too. I guess I was wrong.”
“It’s okay. We can do this. We have to look for his social media. He has to have something. Twitter. Instagram. Nguyen … Ryan Nguyen.” Her tongue stuck out the corner of her mouth a bit as she typed on her cell phone. “God, why did he have to be a Nguyen though? There are literally thousands of them out there. I had four Nguyens in my sophomore class alone last year.”
“You beat me. I had three.” I held up three fingers like she was a kid who didn’t know her numbers. “Besides, you never know. We could have been Nguyens, too, if Bádidn’t get adopted when she was small.”
“No, we would have been Trans. Bátold me herself a while back.”
I rolled my eyes. “Like that would have been any better.”
“It would have been. There were only two Trans in my class last year.” She flopped back in her chair. The side of her shoe kicked against the leg of my chair. “I’ll keep looking, but this might take a while.”
As I watched Linh continue searching on her phone, her brows furrowed together. Something that she always swore would give her premature wrinkles someday. A pang of guilt hit me for stressing her out with my problems. Although this was kind of her fault, it still wasn’t her mess to fix.
It was mine. And even though it seemed hopeless, there was still one thing that I haven’t tried yet.
One last resort.
As the barista grabbed the different spices from the shelf overhead, she glanced over her shoulder and smiled. Her red ponytail bounced as she bobbed her head in time to the music in the background. “So, did you get a lot of writing done?”
“What?”
She shook something into the blender and pointed at the table I was sitting at. “I’ve noticed you sitting at the same spot with your laptop for the past couple of days, so I figured that you were a writer on a deadline or something. We get a lot of those in here.”
“Oh, right.” I glanced over my shoulder at the booth by the window and coughed nervously. “Yeah, I was writing … a novel. A romance novel.”
“Nice. What’s it about?”
My fingers twisted around the straps of my bag. “Hmm, a girl and a guy. Obviously. Who just met and fell in love within a day, but then they lose contact with each other, so she goes to find him in his hometown. You know, check out all the places he likes to go. That kind of stuff.”
“Sounds interesting. Hope she finds him.”
I forced myself to smile. “Yeah, I hope so.”
After we hit a dead end at the gym, I knew I had one last resort to find Ryan, and that was the Golden Cleaners on Fifth Street. The one that he said he needed to pick up his sisters’ stuff at this weekend.
So I basically camped out all day at the Coffee Bean across the street from the dry cleaners. Even got a nice cushy booth by the windows with a perfect view of the street. Basically, go full-on stalker mode, like Linh said. The only thing I was missing was my night vision goggles.
Finally, the barista slid the cup toward me. “I think there’s a writer’s group or something that meets at the library on Thursdays. If you want, I could ask around and pass them your email address or phone number.”
“NO! No, I’m writing for fun. Nothing serious. It’s not something I—” I cleared my throat and glanced down at my phone. “Oh, I have to go. Thanks for the drink. I mean, making the drink.”
Before she could ask any more questions, I grabbed the cup, even though it was scorching hot, and rushed out of the coffee shop. A couple of burned fingers were a small, although painful, price to pay to avoid answering more uncomfortable questions.
If only I could avoid Mom and Dad just as easily.
“So, uh, how was your day, Nina?” Mom asked as she passed me the bread plate.
“It was okay.”
“Just okay? What did you do?”
That was a hard question to answer. I stuffed a giant hunk of bread into my mouth so I wouldn’t have to respond to her right away.
Two days. For the past two whole days, I’d been at the coffee shop, and all I had to show for it were a dozen solved sudoku puzzles, an impressively high score on Candy Crush, and enough coffee to last me a month. But no Ryan. So basically, it was all for nothing. At least I was able to rewatch my favorite movies on Netflix, otherwise, this whole weekend would have all been a total waste.
Finally, I swallowed. “Oh, I hung out in town. Walked around the mall. That kind of thing.”
“By yourself?” Dad looked startled like even he was surprised by what he just said. He scratched at the stubble on his chin and looked away. “Not that there’s anything wrong with hanging out alone. It’s not … weird. You do whatever you want to do.”
