Pulled Under

The discussion about his parents brings down the mood of the conversation, and before I can come up with a new topic, he gets a phone call. The conversation is short, and when it’s over, he says, “Duty calls.”

He takes one last sip of his soda and stands up.

“What’s the problem?”

“There’s a pavilion at the playground where they like to have birthday parties,” he says.

“I know it well,” I say. “I believe I celebrated birthday number seven there.”

“Apparently some of the kids learned an important lesson about what happens to your digestive system if you eat massive amounts of cake and ice cream immediately before going full speed on the merry-go-round.”

“And you’ve got to clean it up?” I ask with a grimace.

“Like I said, my job is pretty much to do whatever nobody else wants to do.” He shrugs. “Let me take you wherever you were headed?”

“It’s not far, I can walk,” I say. “I don’t want to make you late.”

“I’m pretty sure it will still be there,” he says.

“Okay, I’ll take a lift to Surf Sisters.”

As we walk out to his truck, I manage to send a clandestine text to Nicole and Sophie. Make sure you can see the parking lot in three minutes. Trust me!

I slide my phone back into my pocket and ignore the vibrating of reply texts no doubt asking for an explanation.

“Thanks for rescuing me from boardwalk pizza,” he says as we drive down Ocean. “Luigi’s is without a doubt the best pizza I’ve ever had.”

“It was the least I could do,” I say. “And thanks for buying me lunch. You didn’t have to do that.”

“You can buy next time.” As he says it he flashes that oh-so-distracting smile, and I’m feeling good.

“Next time.” I like the sound of that. Of course, I’m not sure how to read the smile. Is he smiling because he’s polite? Is he smiling because he likes being with me? Or is he smiling because he just ate the best pizza in the world?

When he pulls up to Surf Sisters, I look through the windshield and can see that Nicole and Sophie are both looking out the window. They’re dumbfounded when they realize that it’s me in the truck with Ben, and it takes everything I’ve got not to react. It also makes me even more self-conscious as I try to come up with the perfect farewell line that will keep him thinking of me.

“Well,” I say with a goofy grin, “have fun cleaning up the vomit.”

Apparently that’s the best I could come up with. My first ever may or may not be a date ends with me turning to a guy and talking about vomit. I am so smooth.

“I’ll do my best,” he says. “Thanks again.”

I get out of the truck, wave good-bye, and watch him drive away.

I’m still not sure what to make of it all, but that does nothing to dampen the feeling of total triumph that I have as I walk into the store. For a moment the two of them stare in disbelief.

“Is there a problem, girls?”

“No,” Sophie says, trying to suppress a grin but failing miserably. “Where were you?”

“You know, just eating pizza at Luigi’s with Ben. No big.”

“Are you serious?” asks Nicole.

I smile and nod. “Absolutely.”

“Okay,” Sophie says, getting excited. “There are questions that need to be answered. Many questions.”

“No, there aren’t,” I say, trying to project cool for once in my life. “There’s just one question that needs to be answered.”

“What’s that?” she says.

I turn to Nicole, who’s working the register. “I’d like an official judgment on this. Which beach girl totally kicks ass.”

Nicole grins as she says it. “That would be Izzy Lucas.”

And she rings the bell on the register to make it official.

Since the shop is busy, the girls don’t get to grill me for information until after their shift ends and we’re all riding to the movie theater. Sophie’s driving and Nicole’s in the passenger seat. (One perk of being a six-foot-tall girl is that you always get the front seat.) She wedges herself sideways to look at me in the back.

“Explain again how this happened?” she asks.

“First I stopped by the Parks and Rec office to see if I could ‘bump into’ him there,” I say. “And I found out that he was taking his lunch break on the boardwalk.”

“I’m surrounded by stalkers,” Sophie interjects as she gives me a wink in the rearview mirror.

“So I went walking along the boardwalk and saw him in line at Beach-a Pizza.”

“BP?” says Nicole. “That’s disgusting.”

“Which is exactly what I told him,” I continue. “So I suggested that he should try Luigi’s and that was that. We were on our way.”

“Very nice,” says Nicole.

“See what happens when you actually talk to the guy,” Sophie says, giving Nicole a raised eyebrow.

“Can we get back to Izzy?” she protests, not wanting another lecture on how she should talk to Cody. “What’s Ben like?”

“I don’t know,” I answer. “I mean, he seems great. He’s fu

“I love that,” Nicole says. “Give me cute and goofy over slick and sexy any day.”

Sophie gives Nicole another look but decides not to press her on Cody. Instead, she looks at me in the mirror for a second and asks, “Does that mean you’re into him?”

I think about it for a moment. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

Nicole grins. “Her lips say ‘maybe,’ but the redness in her cheeks says ‘hell yeah.’”

We’re all laughing as Sophie parks and we get out of the car.

“Tell me that you picked this movie because it’s supposed to be good,” she says to Nicole. “And not because you think ‘you know who’ will be here.”

“He’s not going to be here,” Nicole says. “He already saw it last Saturday with some of the guys from Interact.”

Sophie stops. “And you know this how?”

“I’ve already been convicted of stalking and as such am protected by double jeopardy,” she says. “So lay off.”

Sophie and I share a look and shake our heads. Nicole really does need to do something about this.

“All I’m saying is that I pushed Izzy and it paid off,” Sophie replies. “I’d like the same good fortune to happen to you.”

“Slow down,” I say. “We’re not sure that it ‘paid off’ for me. Ben and I had pizza, but I have no idea if he likes me or not. He may just like the pizza.”

“Didn’t you see any signs?” asks Sophie.

“Yeah,” says Nicole. “I’ve heard there are supposed to be signs.”

“The signs were mixed,” I reply. “At some points it seemed like he was into me and at others not so much. It doesn’t help that his parents are going through an epic divorce. I think it may have soured him a bit on the whole idea of relationships.”

We reach the ticket window and Sophie turns to me.

“By the way, you’re buying my ticket.”

“And why is that?”

“Because you owe me . . . big time.”

I think about this for a second. “Because?”

“Because, despite it being a major hassle, I went through the computer and swapped shifts with you every Tuesday for the rest of the summer.”

It takes me a moment to realize what she’s saying.

“You mean . . .”

“You’ll be teaching all the summer campers how to surf, which should give you plenty of opportunities to read signs from Ben.”

I wrap her up in a giant hug, and because she’s so small it lifts her off the ground.

“You’re pretty awesome sometimes, you know that?”

“No,” she says. “I’m incredibly awesome all of the time. And as soon as you two realize that, your lives will improve dramatically.”

Needless to say, I am more than happy to buy her ticket.

On Tuesday morning I spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to select my surfing attire. Normally, this is automatic: wet suit in the cold months, spring suit on chilly mornings, bikini and a rash guard when it’s hot. My rash guard has two purposes. It’s a swim shirt that protects my skin from all the wax and sand on my surfboard. And, bonus, it keeps me from falling out of my bikini top whenever I wipe out.