I Kissed Alice - Anna Birch Page 0,29

and everyone inside the diner jumps in their seats. “They’ve been fighting, I think.”

“Who has been fighting?” Iliana appears like a ghost on my left, cranky and looming with all her curly blond hair stuffed into a net. “Sit wherever you want. SARAH.”

No answer from the back.

“SARAH!” She turns on her heel to march back to the counter, stuffing her ticket book into the front of her apron.

“I can’t believe you talked me into eating here.” I throw myself into one of the booths like I’m throwing myself off a bridge. “You could have had shitty patty melts back at the caf.”

“I can’t believe you don’t know your roommate’s work schedule,” Griffin says.

He puts a finger to his mouth and points to the kitchen. The place is so small, we can hear Iliana and Sarah bickering in the back.

“Your friends are here. You want the table?” Iliana’s voice is predictably shrill. Unmistakable.

“Sylvia’s got me doing inventory.” Sarah’s voice is softer.

I have no idea what I did to upset her again. I don’t believe her, and I don’t think Iliana believes her, either. Griffin is already gathering himself to leave. I wave him back down into the booth.

“We can’t leave now,” I hiss.

I want to leave, though.

The last thing I want is to have this conversation with him in front of an audience—but leaving would be giving Iliana what she wants.

There is low-level grumbling in the office, and finally Iliana appears through the kitchen door a second time. She’s still in her clothes from school: a frilly top that clashes with the war in her eyes and the kind of tight jeans that cause both Griffin and me to glance a second, then a third, then a fourth time before we remember that she’s a harpy and her legs in denim will never fix her craptacular personality.

Griffin and I catch each other looking. We both flush, and simultaneously become Very Interested in the Formica tabletop between us.

The thing about being out to your family that no one ever prepares you for is the specific kind of horror that comes with having the same taste in girls as your little brother. The idea of Griffin as a sex-having person makes me want to vomit.

The idea of him thinking about Iliana and sex in the same line of thought makes me want to vomit—because of course that’s what he was thinking about; we were both staring at the same ass.

The fact that the thought crossed my mind … Well, I don’t really know what to do with it at all. The way she treats me has always been made worse by the fact that there was a time that I desperately wanted her. It feels like a hundred years ago, but every once in a while my body remembers.

Iliana slaps laminated menus down under our noses.

“Well?” She’s shifted her weight onto one hip, and she waits, poised, with the pen positioned over the pad in her hands.

I glance at her thighs again.

She notices, but she doesn’t blush away. Instead, a brow pops up toward her hairline and she can barely bury the wicked smile inching its way across her face.

Great—more ammunition. One more thing to tease me about.

“Oh, uh. Sorry.” I glance over the menu. I can’t make my eyes focus on anything. “Coffee? And, um, pancakes.”

“It’s a dollar-twenty-five after the second cup,” Iliana says.

“That’s a rip-off!” Griff glares up from his menu. “Everyone else does free refills on soda and coffee. It’s just, like, law.”

“Take it up with the management.” She’s completely unperturbed. “What do you want?”

“Coffee.” The sour expression on Griffin’s face would make me laugh if I were in a better mood. “Hash browns, scattered. Covered in cheese, with ham. And grits with cheese. And bacon, cooked crispy but not burnt. Are you getting all this? Repeat it back to me.” He throws me a conspiratorial glance. I choke down a laugh and cough into my fist instead.

“Hash browns. Scattered, covered, oinked.” She reads through her teeth. “Side of grits with cheese and bacon. Crispy but not burnt.”

“Okay, but be sure the grits and bacon are separate,” he says as she’s jotting it down. “It sounds like I want bacon in my grits.” He nods and shifts to pretending she isn’t standing six inches away.

Once upon a time, he didn’t think Iliana was as vile as I do. She reminded him of the bitchy, driven girls he shared a studio with as a dance-track student, and he thought a girl