Aces Up, Page 8

  “I think that should work,” I say. “I have nothing definite going on.” “Nothing definite” is good. “Nothing definite” means I kind of sort of had plans but then nothing was confirmed. How did I come up with that under pressure? God, I’m smooth.

  “Who are you talking to?” Robyn asks again. At the table, my dad and Leonardo are having a heated discussion about the economy and the best way to fix it, and from what I can tell, Leonardo is, surprisingly, holding his own.

  “So, um, seven at Barnes and Noble?” I say to Max. “I think that should take care of the deets.” Oh, God. Deets? I’ve never used the word “deets” in my life. I heard Mackenzie say it to someone the other night, and I must have picked it up. How is that possible? That I heard something once and have now internalized it? My vocabulary has somehow turned into flypaper; apparently every crazy word is just sticking.

  “Okay,” Max says. “See you later, when you’re more awake.”

  “What do you mean, when I’m more awake?” I’m perfectly awake. I’m about to start studying, for God’s sake. I’ve already had a complete mini-drama, even, involving my sister’s boyfriend and some illegal poker playing.

  “Oh,” Max says, sounding startled. “Nothing, I just … I mean, I figured you might have just woken up or something. Since it’s so early. And, uh, because you sound kind of frantic.”

  “WHO ARE YOU TALKING TO?” Robyn practically screams.

  “Call you later,” I say to Max, and hang up before he can say anything else.

  “Max,” I say to Robyn. Just saying his name makes me blush, and Robyn’s eyes widen. “I know,” I say. “I’m tutoring him in math.” I suddenly get very busy pouring cream and sugar into my coffee.

  “You’re what?” Robyn shrieks. My dad looks up from the computer, where he’s pulling up some article to show Leonardo.

  “I’m tutoring him,” I say.

  “Who’s Max?” Leonardo asks, frowning.

  “No one,” I say firmly. “Just a guy I’m tutoring in math.” I look Robyn right in the eye. “We’re getting together tonight.”

  “He is not just a guy she’s tutoring in math,” Robyn reports. “He’s this guy who totally broke her heart last year. He almost kissed her and then never called her again. He almost kissed and ditched!”

  “That bastard,” Leonardo says, which kind of makes me love him a little bit. But not enough to stop being mad at him for being at the casino. Which makes no sense, since I was the one doing something wrong, not him. This is all getting too complicated.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Robyn asks. She bites her lip and hops from one foot to the other, her ponytail bobbing. Unlike mine, Robyn’s ponytail is perfectly smooth, except for one little flyaway that makes it look even cuter.

  “I just found out,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” she says, and she squeezes my arm. “Are you cool with it, though?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I’m totally cool with it.”

  “Don’t worry,” she whispers, leaning in close so that my dad and Leonardo won’t hear. “We’ll talk about it when I get home. And we’ll figure out the perfect tutoring outfit.”

  I am such a horrible sister.

  ? ? ? ?

  Later that night. Barnes & Noble. I’m sitting in the café, waiting for Max to get back to our table with our drinks. My math book is open in front of me, and I’m trying to concentrate on some sample problems, but this is hard to do, since a) the fact that I am spending time with Max is making me extremely nervous, and b) there is an annoying kid in the corner who keeps screaming about this dumb ballet book she wants.

  My sister, true to her word, spent more than an hour helping me find the perfect tutoring outfit: a light blue V-neck cotton sweater that shows just enough cleavage to be sexy but not enough that it looks like I’m dressed up, my best jeans, and a pair of Robyn’s black boots with a heel. I have on lip gloss and two coats of mascara, and my hair is shiny and falls down my back, thanks to Robyn’s diffuser and a deep-conditioning treatment (both her idea).

  Fortunately, Robyn and Leonardo’s hike took longer than it should have, so we didn’t have too much time to get into the whole Max thing. And as far as I can tell, Leonardo never mentioned to her that he thought he saw me at the casino.

  “Thanks,” I say as Max returns to the table and hands me a steaming cup of coffee. He insisted on ordering drinks for both of us when he got here, which was pretty sweet. Still, this is awkward. I mean, how am I supposed to act? Are we going to have to have a big talk about what happened before we can start working? Will we just not talk about it? Do we have to keep things professional, talking just about math? Or will we talk about other things, too?

  “No problem,” Max says, and I take a sip. Ow. Hot. I resist the urge to spit coffee all over the table, and try to pretend like I haven’t burnt my tongue.

  “Um, how much was it?” I reach into my purse and pull out a couple of dollars, but Max waves me off.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he says, and takes a sip of his own coffee. He’s drinking it black, which I find very sexy. It’s like he’s strong and doesn’t need to water down his coffee with sugar and cream. He can take it. I, on the hand, dump in about nine sugars and two tons of cream, which he totally remembered, because he made my coffee for me exactly how I like it.

  “No, really,” I say, shoving the money at him. “Take it.”

  “No way,” Max says. “I’m not going to be that guy.” Our hands touch as he pushes the money back at me, and my head feels all wobbly for a minute. Then I remind myself that even though he’s being nice now, deep down he’s a total jerk, and I should not fall for his supposed chivalry.

  “What guy?” I ask.

  “The guy who took two dollars from you for coffee.”

  “How do you know you’d be that guy?” I say, sliding the money back into my wallet and then sliding my wallet back into my bag. And furthermore, why would Max worry about being the guy who took two dollars from me for coffee, but not the one who totally blew me off after almost kissing me? I don’t say this, though. In fact, I force my voice to sound light. “Maybe you’d just be the guy who I tutored, all the way back in my senior year.” Or the one who blew me off after almost kissing me and never explained why.

  He grins, his smile all crooked and cute, and I have the urge to reach across the table and run my finger over his lips. Bad, bad urge. I distract myself by blowing on my coffee, and a little bit of it flies up and into the air. Damn.

  Why did I order boring old coffee? I should have ordered something like … I dunno, a chai tea. A vanilla chai tea. That sounds sophisticated and hip, like when Max and I stopped being friends, I changed my drink of choice from coffee to vanilla chai tea. Like I’m too cool for him now, and not the other way around. I wonder how much caffeine is in tea. However much is in this coffee is definitely not good for my nerves, because when my cell phone vibrates on the table with a new text message, I almost jump out of my chair.

  It’s from a number I don’t recognize.

  “It’s Cole, did u get home ok last night?” it says, followed by a smiley. Hmmm. I’ve been trying not to think about Cole all day. I have come to the conclusion that what happened last night was a onetime thing, something I should most definitely not be getting involved in. I mean, I almost got caught by Leonardo. On my first night. I can only imagine how many other horrible things I might get into if I keep this up.

  I know I shouldn’t respond to the text. But for some inexplicable reason, I kind of want to. And Max is looking at me, and if I don’t respond, he’s going to think he’s so important that I can just put my whole life on hold for him, which is definitely not the message I want to be sending.

  “I’m fine,” I text back. “And how did you get this number?”

  “Anything important?” Max asks.

  “Uh, no,” I say, shutting my phone. “So should we get to work?” I need to think about numbers to keep my mind f
rom thinking about … other things. Like Cole. And Max being so close.

  “Okay,” Max says. He hesitates and looks like he’s about to say something, and then he leans over the table and lowers his voice. “But can I ask you something first?”

  I swallow hard. “Sure,” I say. I take another sip of my coffee and wish I’d gotten decaf.

  Max leans in even closer, and I can see the little scar on the top of his lip, the one he got skateboarding when he was thirteen. “Look, I know this isn’t any of my business,” he says, “but why’d you need that fake ID and that birth certificate? Are you really a crazy gambler?” So much for the Chris Harmon School of Confidentiality.

  “Oh,” I say. I swallow hard, trying to move past the disappointment of his not bringing up what happened over the summer. “No, I just …” I’m about to make up an excuse, but my cell phone vibrates again.

  “Got it from Mackenzie,” Cole writes back. Ugh. Damn employee phone list. This time I decide not to reply.

  “I just need them for something,” I say lamely.

  Max looks at me skeptically. Then he slides something out from between the pages of his math book and holds it up in front of me. My fake birth certificate! It looks real and perfect, my name typed neatly across the top. Although, if I’m reading it right, it looks like Chris Harmon decided my dad’s name should be Mard Card. Which doesn’t make much sense. But whatever! My fake birth certificate! But what is Max doing with it?

  “Where did you get that?” I demand.

  “From Chris,” he says as I reach over the table and try to grab it from him. “Uh-uh,” he says, pulling it out of my reach. “First you have to tell me why you need it.”

  I make another grab for it, this time almost toppling over the whole table. The girl in the corner who was so upset about her ballet book a couple of minutes ago looks at us and screams, “ROUGHHOUSING IS NOT ALLOWED IN THE BOOKSTORE. MOMMY, THOSE TWO ARE ROUGHHOUSING!”

  Max and I look at each other and burst into laughter.

  And maybe it’s kind of sort of because I want to tell somebody, or maybe it’s because I felt so bad all day about lying to my sister, or maybe I just want to have a secret with him, to have some kind of connection back, or maybe it’s just because I really do want that birth certificate, but the next thing I know, I blurt, “I got a job waitressing at the casino and you have to be twenty-one to work there, so I had to lie about my age.”

  Max looks shocked. He doesn’t say anything for a minute, and at first I’m afraid that maybe he’s going to get mad and give me some kind of huge lecture. But then he laughs, loudly enough that it echoes through the café and causes a couple of people to look. “That,” he says, “is awesome.” He slides the birth certificate across the table, and I pick it up and slip it into my purse.

  “It is?” I ask, grinning. I decide not to tell him about the other shady stuff that’s been going on, as I’m sure he’d think that was decidedly less awesome.

  “Yeah,” he says. “I never would have guessed.” His voice gets soft on that last part, and I’m not sure if I’m imagining it, but it seems like maybe he’s sad he didn’t know.

  “Yeah, well,” I say. I shrug. The lightness of the mood from just a second ago is gone, and I take another sip of my coffee to distract myself.

  “I think it’s cool you took matters into your own hands,” he says. “I wish I could do something like that. I’m making, like, nothing at the gas station.”

  “You work at a gas station?” I ask. What gas station? Where? And how come I didn’t know about this? Well, obviously it’s because we’re not friends anymore. And actually, it’s probably a good thing I didn’t know. Too much stalker temptation, as in I might be tempted to get gas there all the time. I take another sip of my coffee and try not to seem like I’m the kind of girl who would stalk someone at their place of employment.

  “Yeah,” he says. “The one on Holcum Road. Ever since my mom got laid off last month.”

  “Wow,” I say. “I didn’t know that.” I’ve always liked Max’s mom. She has crazy red curly hair, and every time I went over there, she was always offering me food. The cool thing was it was never cookies she had just baked or anything; it was always store-bought stuff, which was somehow better, like she wanted me to be comfortable at their house, but she wasn’t putting on a front.

  I wonder what Parvati thinks of Max’s having to work at a gas station. I’ll bet she doesn’t like it. Unless she thinks it’s like a movie, where she’s sleeping with the pool boy or something, and everyone in her family will see Max’s potential, and he’ll end up rising to the top of her father’s company, and they’ll have a bunch of kids who will all have perfect teeth and perfect hair and get perfect scores in math. Ugh.

  “So, um, anyway,” I say, deciding that’s enough secret sharing for now, mostly because it’s making me feel really sad. “Maybe we should both work on the first three homework problems, and then we’ll go over them. That way, I’ll be able to see where you’re having trouble.”

  “Sounds good,” Max says.

  I’m about halfway through the second problem (and Max is only about a third of the way through the first problem, uh-oh) when my cell starts ringing. My heart stops for a second, because at first I think it must be Cole calling to ask why I never responded to his text. But it isn’t. It’s Mackenzie. Adrienne made me program her number into my cell on my first night of work.

  Why would Mackenzie be calling me? Unless she wants me to work tonight. Well, she can forget it. No way am I going to give up my tutoring session time with Max just to take a shift at work. Although I do need the money, I need to study, too. If my grades fall, I could lose my early-admission status with Wellesley.

  “Are you going to answer that?” Max asks. He takes another sip of his black coffee. He doesn’t even wince. Maybe he’s used to it from all those early mornings at the gas station, when he has to rush out of bed and grab some strong coffee as soon as he gets there. Then he switches to water in the afternoon, after he gets all hot and sweaty from working on cars all day. And then he goes in the back and takes his shirt off so he can—

  “Hello,” Max says, picking my phone up off the table and handing it to me. “It’s ringing.”

  “Oh!” I say. “Um, right. It’s, uh, someone from work.” I try to act like I wasn’t answering it on purpose, not like I was distracted by my daydream in which Max morphed from Friendly Neighborhood Gas Station Attendant into Hot, Sexy Shirtless Mechanic. I send Mackenzie’s call to voice mail, and five seconds later, I get a text. “I’M NOT GOING TO ASK YOU TO WORK,” it says. “NOW PICK UP YOUR DAMN PHONE!!!” It immediately starts ringing again.

  “Wow,” Max says. “You might have a work stalker.”

  “Excuse me for just a second,” I say. “Hello?”

  “Finally!” Mackenzie screeches into my ear. “I’ve been trying to call you for forever.”

  “You’ve been trying to call me for two minutes,” I say.

  “Whatevs,” Mackenzie says. “So, listen, we’re going out tonight.”

  “Who’s going out tonight?”

  “Me and you,” she says. “There’s this party up at UConn, and I totally have to go.”

  “You want me to go with you to a college party?” I say incredulously. I can’t just take off to a college party with her. I have to tutor Max. And besides, Mackenzie is the last person I want to go to a college party with. She’s a little crazy. Then I remember that Mackenzie doesn’t know I’m not in college, so I probably shouldn’t have used the words “college party,” because if I was in college, what other kind of party would I be going to? “I mean, you want me to go with you to a frat party?”

  “Yes,” she says. If she notices my slipup, she doesn’t say anything. “I need to find out if Lance is going.”

  “Why don’t you just call Lance, ask him if he’s going to the party, and if he is, you can just meet him there?” Seriously, is she that dumb? I smile at Max apologetically and
give him a look like “Crazy co-workers, what can you do?”

  “Because,” she says. “Lance is supposed to be studying tonight.”

  “So then why would he be at a party?” God, this is confusing.

  “Don’t you get it?” Mackenzie screeches.

  “No,” I say.

  “Lance said he was going to be staying in, studying,” she says. “But then I read on someone’s Facebook page that there’s a huge frat party tonight, and so I need to go.”

  “You want to go to the party to see if he’s lying to you,” I say as her horrible plan finally becomes clear.

  “Yes!” she says. “And I want to see if that Facebook skank is there.”

  “What Facebook skank?” I ask.

  Max raises his eyebrows at me.

  “I’ll pick you up in half an hour,” Mackenzie says, ignoring my question.

  “I can’t,” I say. “I’m, uh … I have plans.”

  “It’s okay,” Max says. “If you need to leave …”

  “Who’s that?” Mackenzie demands.

  “That’s Max,” I say before I realize it might not be the best idea to tell her his name.

  “Max who?” she demands.

  “You don’t know him.”

  “Well, he can come, too,” she says. “You both can come. I’ll pick you up, where do you live?”

  “I’m in,” Max says, slamming his book shut. Mackenzie’s talking so loud he can hear her through the phone. “It’s gotta be better than working on limits, right?”

  Oh, Jesus.

  ? ? ? ?

  Two hours later, I’m sitting in the front seat of Mackenzie’s car, worrying that this might just be the biggest mistake of my life. You know those Dateline NBC specials that are always on, about teens who end up in bad car accidents and/or get drunk at parties and have roofies slipped into their drinks? That’s how this feels, like we’re on our way to a place where, at any second, everything’s about to go wrong.

  “Don’t you just love Big Gulps?” Mackenzie asks as we pull off the freeway. As soon as we got in the car, Mackenzie announced that we were stopping for gas and Big Gulps. She made Max and me both get one. A Big Gulp, I mean. I got Sprite, Max got Dr Pepper, and Mackenzie got Diet Coke. I guess I should be glad she didn’t spike it with anything, but the caffeine is making her extra-hyper. Not me. The ice in my drink is all melted, making the soda taste watery, so I’ve mostly just been sliding my straw through it and wishing I was still drinking the coffee I had to abandon at Barnes & Noble.