Make you one?"
We'd agonized over the last sentence, worried it was too suggestive and implied he'd be with me for breakfast because we'd spent the night before together. I wondered if maybe I wanted to imply it. Not that I was actually suggesting we do anything like that ... but maybe it was okay to let him know I thought about him that way.
I bit my nails until Archer texted back. (:-P). A grimace face. If he'd noticed the innuendo, he didn't say anything about it. I didn't either. We spent the rest of the weekend texting more and more bizarre food items to each other—until Monday morning when I walked into school and handed him a shoebox.
"For you. I made them myself."
Archer slowly pried off the top. "Is this a fast-acting poison, or will my death be lingering and painful?"
"Lingering and painful, for sure."
He peered into the box, which I'd lined with wax paper and filled with one of my favorite delicacies.
"Is that peanut butter and ... cream cheese?" Archer winced.
"Spread on green apple slices, then rolled in Cap'n Crunch cereal. Try one!"
He looked like he'd rather eat mud, but he lifted one of the apples to his face, cringing away from it until he closed his eyes and forced himself to bite.
He didn't want to admit it, but I could see he was hooked. He even took another bite.
"See!" I crowed. "I know what I'm doing. Two weeks, tops, and you'll be begging to dip your fries in my shake."
"You think?"
It took me a second before I realized I'd done it again. My mouth seriously needed a chaperone.
After school I assumed we'd head to the mall, but Archer had a different idea. "Ping-Pong," he said. "What are your thoughts on Ping-Pong?"
"As a general rule, or are we talking about something specific?"
"Do you play?"
I laughed. I may have even cackled. "'Play' is far too friendly a word for what I do at Ping-Pong. We had a table in our basement in Yardley. I am an unstoppable Ping-Pong machine."
"That is a stunning coincidence," Archer said, "because I am an unstoppable Ping-Pong machine. Which means one of us is going to be in for a very rude awakening this afternoon."
"You know where there's a table?" I asked.
"My house. Follow me there?"
Follow him to his house? His house? Wasn't this a step beyond meeting at the mall? Was Archer trying to tell me something? There was mischief in his eyes, but that could just have been his wild misconception that he could possibly beat me at my ultimate sport of choice.
I met his gaze. "You're on."
It killed me that I couldn't talk to Claudia while I drove, but I had to follow Archer closely to find his place. After about ten minutes, he pulled into the driveway of a cute brown townhouse in a row of other identically cute brown townhouses.
"Ready to meet your destruction?" he asked, opening my car door.
"I'm assuming you were asking that of your own reflection."
Despite its cookie-cutter exterior, the inside of the house was vibrant and alive, its décor a wild mix of colors and textures. A large gold statue of a many-armed woman sat in a corner, tapestries and framed canvases draped the walls, and a host of curiosities fought for space on every horizontal surface.
"It's a little messy," Archer apologized.
"No, it's beautiful!" I crossed to a quilted and beaded art piece that looked like an umbrella, but there was no way you'd ever take it out in the rain. I ran my hand over its soft golden tassels. "I love this."
"Really?" a woman's voice called from the kitchen. "I'm so glad! I got it on my last trip to see my mother in India and had to fight Lila tooth and nail to stop her from taking it back to school with her."
The woman was a little shorter than me, with thick, straight black hair that fell all the way to her rear end. She wore jeans and a white cotton shirt with a bit of embroidery at the collar. It was simple, but on her it looked lovely and breezy. She wore no makeup, but her smile and eyes sparkled as if she found the whole world endlessly amusing.
"I'm Bina, Archer's mom," she said in her slight British lilt. "You must be Cara. I can't even tell you how happy I am to meet you; we've heard so much about you!"
"You have?" I asked.
"Of course! Come." Bina took my arm. "If you like the