fondly. “Sometimes I watch him holding a glass and I’m like, damn. Wish I was that glass.”
“Everett has very nice hands,” Teddy said, but so quiet that neither of her friends heard her.
The song ended, and Everett dropped the mic and jumped off the stage. People patted him on the back, and Teddy assumed this was it; he’d go back to his group of friends and head off into the night, and she would be able to continue her crush on him from afar.
But he didn’t head back to his table. In fact, he locked eyes with Teddy and moved straight toward her. The rest of the crowd turned blurry and faded and Everett was the only thing she could see. He was the color in a black-and-white room and he was headed right toward her.
“Holy crap,” Teddy muttered.
And then he was there. She’d known he was tall, and she knew from a lifetime of being in her own body that she was relatively short, but she was unprepared for the physical feeling of him standing directly in front of her. He took up all the space in the room, swallowed up all her attention and still asked for more, blocked the sun and was the sun all at the same time. He was Everett St. James, and he was looking at her.
“Hi,” he said, his wide, guileless smile, the same one he used for puppets and children, on his face.
“Mmmph,” Teddy said.
“I loved the song,” he said. “Pat Benatar rules.”
There were several things Teddy could have said. Maybe I loved your song, too. Or I like your show. Or even, if she was feeling bold, We’ve been sharing our innermost thoughts via email for a while now.
But what she actually said was “I’m sorry, I have to go throw up.”
And then she turned and fled.
* * *
—
“PLEASE TELL US what happened back there.”
Teddy was in the backseat of the Viking’s car with Eleanor, while Kirsten twisted around in the front seat to talk to them. The Viking had been kind enough to pick them up after Kirsten and Eleanor decided Teddy was too much of a puke risk for an Uber.
He turned up the local metal station, and Kirsten reached over to turn it down. “Not now, babe,” she said gently. “Teddy’s having a crisis.”
“Sometimes Pantera helps,” the Viking muttered, but he didn’t turn the radio back up.
“I’m not having a crisis,” Teddy said to her lap.
“Teddy, a man talked to you, and you said you had to puke and then ran away. That sounds like a crisis to me,” Kirsten said.
“In her defense, she did have to puke,” Eleanor said.
“I really did,” Teddy mumbled.
“Oh, I know. I was there,” Kirsten said. “But, like . . . what was up with you and that guy?”
Teddy sighed, looked out the window, then glanced back and forth between her two best friends (and also the Viking, who occasionally looked at her with concern in the rearview mirror). If she couldn’t tell the two people she loved most in the world and also one of their boyfriends about her bizarre, secret Internet pen pal relationship, then who could she tell?
So she told them.
She told them the whole story, about how she had emailed Everett in a fit of despair and it had scared her, but over time emailing a strange man she knew only from TV became less scary and more . . . comforting. Easier. Like talking to a friend. Like he was a friend now.
“Huh.” Eleanor tapped her chin. “Well, this is an interesting development.”
“This is great,” Kirsten said. “He’s cute. And he’s tall. And he seems nice.”
“Caring,” Eleanor added.
“Good with kids,” Kirsten said.
“Gentle,” the Viking added.
They all looked at him. “What?” he asked. “I watch TV, too.”
If tonight hadn’t happened, maybe Teddy never would have told everyone about Everett. It wasn’t that she thought they’d make fun of her, but . . . Well, okay, she kind of thought they might. After all, there was a part of it that was odd or at least unexpected. But she should’ve known her friends would never make her feel bad about something that mattered to her, even if the night did end with her vomiting in an alley.
“But he would never be into me. I mean, not me, me. The me in email, maybe. But ME?”
Eleanor scrutinized her. “You’re still drunk. How? You puked so much.”
“I mean . . .” Teddy sighed and looked out the window at the lights of