Page 7 of Just Another Meet Cute
“Right. Ian. I met him on the hike.” Great, now I sounded like a parrot. My mind scrambled to find something else to say. “He’s nice. Really nice.”
Mom laughed. “Well, I’d hope so if you’re going out with him. I guess this means that we can’t go on a camping trip after all then.”
Squealing inside, I let out a disappointing sigh that I was proud to say was halfway convincing. “Yeah, too bad.”
“Oh, well. Some other time.” She took the bread plate and headed toward the dining room. “But maybe you can bring Ian home. I’d like to meet this guy.”
“Uh …” Shooting an alarmed look at Linh, I shook my head. “I don’t know about that. It’s just a casual date. Don’t want to scare him off or anything.”
“I promise we’ll be on our best behavior. Invite him over next week. I’ll tell your dad. I’ll even try to cook something half as delicious as Linh’s food.”
“No, Mom, seriously, I couldn’t—” I stopped short when she turned around and gave me The Look. I could only count a handful of times when she had given it to me before. Mostly since she and Dad started dating again. “I’ll try.”
Waiting until Mom left the kitchen, Linh gave me a half salute and a cheeky grin. “You’re welcome, by the way.”
Blinking rapidly, I gaped at her. “You’re wel—why did you tell her that I had a date with Ian? I don’t have a date. I don’t even know the guy. And now they want tomeethim.”
She chewed on her lower lip. “Yeah, that is kind of a problem.”
“It’s a HUGE problem! A titanic, astronomical, gigantic problem.” My palm hit my forehead with each word.
Linh’s hand shot out and caught my wrist before I gave myself an evenbigger headache. “All right, Ms. Thesaurus, maybe instead of showing off your vocabulary words from English class, you should focus on a solution.”
“Like?”
“Like, didn’t you say that you still had his jacket?”
“Yeah …” It took a couple seconds for it to sink in.
With a smirk, Linh switched off the stove and rubbed her hands against the side of her jeans. “I think that if you want your solution, you need to find Ian. And you better do it fast.”
After Linh and I escaped the Dinner from Hell with our parents, we retreated back to her room. I grabbed Ian’s jacket from the laundry heap in the corner while she flopped on bed. Her head was bent down as she fiddled with something on her phone.
There wasn’t anything in the side pockets, but I could hear some jiggling when I shook the jacket.Jackpot!Pulling out a pair of keys in the inside pocket, I let out a happy sigh. “Thank God I didn’t do the laundry this morning like I was planning to.”
Without looking up, Linh raised a fist in the air. “Procrastination for the win. What did you find?”
“A couple keys with a dog key chain. A library card. A flash drive. And a card to … something.” I squinted at the tiny, faded words on the tiny gray key fob. “At least we know he’s a dog person.”
“See? We’re finding stuff out already.” Finally done with whatever she was doing on her phone, Linh clapped and held her hands out. “I’ll take the passes and you check out the flash drive. Maybe you’ll find something useful on there.”
“Like a phone number?”
“Right now, I’d settle for a whole name. But a phone number would be nice, too.”
I unhooked the flash drive from the silver ring and tossed the keys to her. “Okay, so let’s say this actually works. What’s the plan? We track him down and drag him back to our house for dinner? ’Cause that’s just weird.”
“I think we’ll figure it out once we find Mr. Unicorn. Minus the dragging.”
“Mr. Unicorn?”
“A guy who carries around tampons andisn’tgrossed out by the thought of us having our periods every month?” Linh wrinkled her nose. “Sounds pretty mythical to me. I’m still not positive that he’sreal. I mean, if it wasn’t for the jacket, I’d think you had a heat stroke and imagined him.”
I couldn’t help laughing even as I rolled my eyes. “Okay, that nickname is pretty perfect. Mostly because, like an actual unicorn, I’m positively certain it will be impossible for us to find him.”
“Challenge accepted,” she murmured, always having to have the last word in.
If I didn’t love her so much …
