My Kind of Crazy - Robin Reul Page 0,27
smoothing it down. “I’m in.”
“Hold up a second, Romeo. What about Amanda Carlisle?”
“I should have such problems,” he jokes as he picks up his pace and I trail behind him.
On the way, I catch sight of none other than Amanda, holding court at the center table, surrounded by her group of girlfriends. She’s mid-story, because she’s the only one talking, while the others sit there slack-jawed, hanging on her every word as usual. She glances in my direction and we seem to make eye contact so I smile, and I swear she smiles back for a split second before she looks away. It’s not as if I expect her to wave, though less than twelve hours ago we were having a conversation in the pouring rain like something out of a movie. Of course, it’s entirely possible that she didn’t see me just now.
Nick sets his tray down across from Peyton’s, leaving me no choice but to sit next to her. She doesn’t even look at me. I wonder if Peyton’s ever burned a blond Barbie with “Amanda” scrawled across it in black Sharpie—maybe last night, in particular.
“Well, hello there. We meet again,” Nick says. His voice is an octave higher than usual. He sounds like a prepubescent middle schooler. Smooth.
“Hey,” Peyton says and pushes at a blob of sour cream to make sure she has removed every last bit of unwanted tomato and olive. I’m wondering why she doesn’t bring lunch.
“You’re not gonna eat those olives?” Nick asks, eyeing them.
“How’d you guess?” She extracts yet another tomato embedded in the sour cream, then licks her fingers.
“I love olives. Can I have at it?” he asks.
She slides her napkin, which is piled with them, toward Nick, and he dumps the contents on top of his taco.
Peyton makes a face. “Olives are disgusting,” she says and pokes her fork around in the beans, stabbing them one at a time and eating them. At this rate, she’ll be done with lunch by dinner. “Not to mention they’re super high in salt. Salt can raise your blood pressure and cause heart attacks and strokes. Plus, they have skin and pits and taste gross. It’s so much work to eat them. I don’t understand why anyone would bother.”
“Most things with skin and pits are a pain in the ass to eat. Look at humans, for example,” I joke. I can see her fighting back a smile. The ice has been broken.
“I’m Italian,” Nick says. “If I didn’t love olives and tomatoes, my relatives would think I was adopted.”
“Don’t even get me started on tomatoes,” she says.
“Don’t you eat pizza? Or spaghetti?” I ask.
“Of course.” She shoves a bite of rice in her mouth, then crinkles her nose and takes a big swig of her chocolate milk.
“Last I checked, I’m pretty sure those dishes are made with tomatoes,” I tell her.
“Yeah, but they’re cooked down. No skin or seeds or runny, nasty bits. I gotta say, I don’t think anyone has ever taken this much interest in my eating habits except maybe my pediatrician.” She lifts her taco gingerly with her fork, and the bottom of the soggy shell sticks to her tray, causing reddish-brown meat to ooze out of the tear like a slow-moving lava flow. “This is foul. I cannot eat this.”
“You should come to my house for dinner sometime,” Nick says, popping an olive in his mouth like candy. “My mother makes a marinara sauce that will knock your socks off. My great-grandmother’s recipe.”
“Is that an invitation?” she asks, and Nick’s face flushes.
He beams, encouraged, his chest practically puffing out. “Yeah, absolutely. Anytime.”
“Can Hank come too?”
Nick instantly deflates, but Peyton doesn’t notice because she’s turned to look at me. And when she does, I can tell that she heard everything last night.
Every last word I said to those garbage cans.
And when she smiles, even though it’s kind of tight-lipped, no teeth showing, I know she’s forgiven me.
Nick looks at me, then her, then back to me. He’s trying not to seem ruffled by the fact that she invited me along on their date, which is most definitely a buzzkill. “The more the merrier,” he says.
“When?” she presses, putting him on the spot.
He raises his eyebrows. “When? Uh…how about Sunday night? My mom makes marinara for dinner every Sunday.”
“I’m free Sunday. Are you free Sunday, Hank?” She and Nick both stare at me, waiting for an answer.
“I don’t have anything going on,” I tell them.
“Do you ever?” Nick cracks himself up, and I