The Arrival of Someday Page 7

  “Your plan does not sound boring,” he says.

  “Boring is the enemy.”

  “Yeah, I can see that.” He gestures at my bright red boots, peeking out from under my long puffer. They have embroidered dragons climbing up their sides.

  I purse my lips to hide my grin. This might be the longest non-BA conversation I’ve had in days, and it lets me feel like me again. We’re reaching the business district now, where cute local shops line this stretch of road. I catch my reflection in one of the storefront windows and my posture is tall, my shoulders back, my stride easy.

  A bubble of happiness catches in my throat. I might not be thrilled that Alex took it upon himself to send Will my way, but I have to admit it’s not been terrible so far.

  As we turn the corner, I steal subtle peeks at Will’s reflection too. I used to be able to conjure him from memory, but the most recent glimpse I’ve had of him before tonight was probably a picture on my brother’s Instagram feed from a visit Will made to Alex’s campus for Halloween. That photo clearly didn’t do him justice.

  Will was always on the skinny side, and though it’s hard to tell just how much can be attributed to his winter coat, it looks like college has bulked him up. He’s wearing his black hair a little longer than I’ve seen it before—I can’t tell, but it might even have product in it—and unless his sunglasses are prescription, he’s ditched the specs too. I always liked those, actually, but I can’t help appreciating that he’s done some growing up of his own.

  “So, uh . . . ,” he begins as the bakery comes into sight. The note of hesitation in his voice is so out of character that I swing my head to meet his eyes.

  “Yeah?”

  “I know I didn’t give you much choice in my tagging along here.”

  “Oh, so you’re willing to admit you bullied me?” I tease.

  “Okay, maybe some would call it bullying, even if it was only with the best intentions. Although we both know you don’t take BS from anyone.”

  I offer nothing more than my best Mona Lisa smile.

  “But honestly, are you gonna get in trouble if you show up with me?” he asks. “Should I pretend not to know you or something?”

  “How exactly do you plan to properly assess my state of well-being if you’re pretending not to know me?” I respond, curious for his answer.

  He scrunches his nose. “Yeah, I don’t know. Body language?”

  I can’t help but laugh. Welcome back, laughter! I’ve missed you! “It’s fine, Will. You can hang with me while I work. Lemondrop’s mostly dead on Saturday evenings, so it’s usually just me and this grad student, Jumoke. I’m pretty sure he requests this shift so he can log quality study time; he’ll probably be relieved he won’t be duty-bound to make small talk with me. Plus my friend Sibby tags along a bunch anyway. She would have tonight too, if I hadn’t insisted I wanted some alone time.”

  That had more to do with my still not wanting to confront Sibby on the Prom with a Purpose stuff, but if my words have the added benefit of giving Will a twinge of guilt for being so intrusive, I wouldn’t complain. No reason for him to know I’m warming to the idea of having him here with each minute I get to be Badass Amelia, instead of Dying Girl.

  But also? I might have, um, oversold the whole concept of “job” a little. Can something you only do for a couple hours once a week count as legitimate employment?

  “Of all your abandoned obsessions, I can’t believe you stuck with the lettering one,” Will says. “Although having heard you play the ukulele, I think you made the right call.”

  I elbow him for that and he yelps and rubs his arm. Whatever. He deserved it, although . . . he’s not wrong. The aforementioned presidential phase was preceded by a passion for all things dog-related, until I finally grasped the reality that my parents were never getting me one of my very own (Mom’s allergies and Dad’s fear of what one would do to Babi’s floors). After presidents came Percy Jackson fan fiction. Then there was the regrettable six months where I decided to take up the ukulele and became consumed with teaching myself to play using YouTube tutorials. Alex scored noise-canceling headphones from my parents that Christmas.

  Hand lettering was my middle school obsession and it turned out I had a hidden talent for being able to perfectly shape a letter by sight. Out of sheer boredom one day, I started “fancying up” the chalkboard easel my dad places on the sidewalk to advertise the daily bargains. It attracted the attention of some of the neighboring stores and a little side business was born.

  “How long have you been doing this as a job?” Will asks, deliberately putting more distance between us as he side-eyes my elbow warily.

  “A few years now. Most consistently for Lemondrop, but I sometimes get calls from other local places.”

  “It’s pretty cool you get paid for your art.”

  I shrug. “Not that much.”

  It usually hovers around minimum wage, depending on the intricacy of the design and how much time it takes me to complete—but as far as quasi-jobs go, it’s fun and absorbing and just creative enough to keep it from feeling like actual work work. Plus, I can easily fit it in around my more recent obsession of roller derby (which is already three years strong and counting). Though I guess “used to fit it around roller derby” would be the more accurate verb tense these days. The thought sends my BA to the forefront of my brain. No. Not tonight.

  “But I won a grant to paint a mural on the side of a restaurant and it comes with a cash award, so that’s pretty cool.” I tell him this in part to redirect my own thoughts, but mostly to impress him, so I’m gratified when he whistles low and long.

  “That’s amazing, Decks. Seriously.”

  “Thanks,” I murmur, turning my face from his so he can’t see my blush.

  As we reach the bakery I hold the door open, swatting him away when he tries to take it from me. “Just get in there.”

  He holds up his hands in surrender and steps inside. I follow.

  Lemondrop is everything you’d want a tiny neighborhood bakery to be. The walls are white shiplap and the floor is also white planks, but enhanced by a pale yellow diamond pattern. A high shelf acts as a border along the tops of all four walls, displaying Martin and Miguel’s impressive and colorful cake stand collection. A counter has been installed across the front window, with a handful of stools lined up under it. Other than that, there’s only enough room for two café tables and a small wooden hutch that’s been turned into a coffee prep station, because the massive bakery case takes up the rest of the space. The entire wall behind it (with the exception of the cake stand border) is reserved for an enormous framed chalkboard menu: my domain.

  Jumoke flips a textbook shut and straightens behind the register. Catching sight of me, his posture eases from eager employee to friendly coworker.

  “Hey!” he greets me. “Did you trade the Kiwi girl in for a new model?”

  I raise my fist to meet Jumoke’s bump, ignoring the teasing waggle he does with his eyebrows over the fact that I’ve arrived with a—gasp!—guy. He’s not the least bit subtle about it and I catch Will’s smirk from the corner of my eye.

  “Sibby would kick your ass if she ever heard you mistake her for a New Zealander. You know that, don’t you?” I gesture to my tagalong. “This is Will. My brother’s friend.”

  I make sure to overemphasize the word brother’s. Will doesn’t react, but Jumoke rolls his eyes at me, then turns his attention to the boy in question. “Nice to meet you, Will, friend of the brother.”

  Will gives him one of those guy nods as I squeeze past Jumoke and slip behind the counter.

  “Where’s the best place for me, so I won’t be in anyone’s way?” Will asks.

  I point to a spot where the bakery case meets the wall, close to the far left of the chalkboard and Will drags a stool into place. He straddles it so that his legs fall behind him and his elbows prop on the top of the glass case. Jumoke takes his seat at the counter’s far opposite end, untangles a set of e
arphones from his sweatshirt pocket, and slips them in. “Yell if there’s a customer I don’t notice,” he murmurs into his textbook.

  “Sure thing.” I slide my chalk markers out of their box and drop them into a cup by Will’s elbows.

  “You did all this?” Will sounds impressed as he points to the menu board, and I bite back a satisfied smile as I sweep my eyes over it with pride.

  “Thanks. Just trying to leave my mark on the world,” I joke.

  Truth is, Pinterest and Instagram provide most of my design elements, with only minimal tweaks from me, but I do like the approach I’ve taken recently. I’ve divided it into three sections and made the middle one the main menu, which I usually only update with different lettering every month or so. On the left panel I’ve been doing a quote of the week, typically something about baking or from a famous Cambridge resident. This week I have one about cake from Julia Child, who lived only a couple streets over from my house, so I’m checking both boxes at once. On the right panel, I do illustrations of the combination of ingredients that go into a particular recipe. It might be something like: milk bottle, plus sign, butter on a dish, plus sign, bag of sugar, plus sign, eggs, equal sign, cupcake.

  I come around front to grab my own stool.

  “I could have passed that over,” protests Will.

  “True, but I’m an independent woman,” I shoot back, winking. I haven’t flirted in ages. I don’t even know if I’m flirting now, at least not with any particular goal in mind, but what I’m not doing is holding back from enjoying myself.

  “Touché!” He laughs and it tickles my insides.

  I climb up on my stool to bring myself to eye level with the top of the menu. The legs wobble a few times and I glance down to find Will’s fingers twitching like he’s fighting an urge to reach over the case and steady me. I prop an elbow on the wall and raise an eyebrow in challenge. “Can I help you?”

  He rolls his eyes but adds a smile.

  I use my chin to signal my messenger bag. “Actually, you can help me. Grab the iPad out. My password is my birthday: ten—”

  “Twenty, oh-one,” he finishes, before I can. Our birthdays are exactly two weeks (and two years) apart, and I remember this, but I’m surprised he does too.

  “Uh, yeah. Right,” I say. “It should have Pinterest open already. Can you turn the screen this way and kind of prop it up on that napkin holder, so I can see the design I’m copying?”

  He does as I ask, while I uncap a white chalk marker and make a few light strokes to outline the art deco border I’ll use on the top and bottom. I double-check my proportions, then get to work, trying not to be conscious of Will’s eyes following my every move.

  “Do you need to concentrate, or . . . ?” he asks after a minute.

  “Nope. Just don’t be offended if I’m not making eye contact.”

  “Right. So, uh, catch me up on all other things Decker. Are you still determined to be the first female president? Seeing as how the job title is, unfortunately, still up for grabs?”

  I snort. “Ha! No way! I’m all for fighting the good fight and I wouldn’t rule out public service of some kind, but I think that level of politics might have become too brutal even for me.”

  I move on to the lettering itself. Once done, my Julia quote will read A party without cake is just a meeting. The first a will form a tiny apple and the whole phrase will sit atop a cake stand.

  “So what you’re saying is that you don’t have an inauguration speech written out and tucked into the bottom drawer of your nightstand?” Will asks.

  “My nightstand is a hanging shelf I made myself. It’s a thing of beauty, but . . . no drawers.”

  Zero need to confess my speech is actually in a shoebox underneath my bed, along with my other mementos from elementary school.

  “Anyway, there actually was a female president for a little while,” I continue. “Even if she doesn’t get credit for it in the history books.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  I spare him a quick smirk, then resume shading in the apple in green. “Yeah. In 1919, Woodrow Wilson had a bunch of strokes that left him partially paralyzed and almost blind, but he refused to step aside, so instead he had his wife, Edith, run things for him. People called her ‘The Presidentress.’”

  There’s a smile in Will’s voice as he says, “I see you still retain an impressive inventory of presidential trivia from your formative years.”

  “Equally cool, she was a direct descendant of Pocahontas,” I reply, before acknowledging his statement with, “Never know when they might come in handy.”

  “Like right now, to impress a stranger from your past?” he asks. “Hit me with another.”

  “You’re not exactly a stranger, Will.”

  “Thank you for that.”

  I’m so surprised by how quietly he says this that I glance over at him again, but his expression reveals nothing.

  To steer us back to safer territory, I quickly scroll through an inventory of presidential factoids taking up space in my brain, trying to settle on one Will would find funny. “Okay, here you go. Grover Cleveland became legal guardian of his law partner’s orphaned daughter when she was eleven, and then he married her when she turned twenty-one. So basically, he out–Woody Allened Woody Allen.”

  “Um, eww?”

  “I know, right? Plus she had to kiss his Vulcan jaw.”

  Will coughs. “I’m sorry, what?”

  I nod. “His jaw was partly made of vulcanized rubber after a secret surgery he had done on his friend’s yacht.”

  “Why are they wasting time teaching us about cherry trees and boring ‘cannot tell a lie’ stories when there is genuinely interesting stuff like this out there? We’re failing the youth of America, dammit!”

  I raise my fist in solidarity and relish my buoyant mood. I’ve missed fun and lightness and easy-breezy. I exhale, testing the airiness in my chest and find it holds up. It’s an unexpected gift, like that first day of warm weather, when you realize how much you’d been drawing your shoulders in tight all winter only after noticing what it feels like not having to anymore.

  Using the dampened corner of a rag, I clean a smudge along the edge of the cake stand I’m drawing.

  “Another,” Will demands.

  “Really? You want more?” Yes, more. I will tell you a thousand random presidential facts and you’ll keep on shielding me from reality. I am more than prepared to make that deal.

  “This is our country’s sacred history we’re talking about,” he says. “As a first-gen, I’m duty-bound to put all you ‘my relatives came over on the Mayflower’ snobs to shame with my superior citizenship and knowledge of American history. Help a guy out, Decks.”

  “Ha! Okay, one more, but that’s all you get.”

  Will’s only response is to prop his chin into his hands and lean forward on his elbows.

  “In the seventies, there were two assassination attempts on Gerald Ford in one seventeen-day span and both were by women,” I say.

  “Oh my god, my mother would love that one.” He quickly clarifies. “Not to suggest she’s homicidal or anything. She just appreciates stories about interesting women.”

  “I miss your mom. How is she?” Will and Alex played soccer and baseball all through school and I used to hang in the bleachers with Mrs. Srisari whenever my parents both had to work, before I was old enough to leave home alone. She taught me to celebrate the boys’ wins with her by cheering, “Chai-yo! Chai-yo! Chai-yo!”

  “She’s great,” Will answers. “I’m sure if she knew I was seeing you, she’d send hellos and want me to make sure you’re eating enough.”

  “Ha! Yes! Every time I used to see her she’d ask if I was hungry.”

  Will grins. “And now you know what it is to have a Thai mother.”

  We’re interrupted when a customer wanders in. After handling her transaction, Jumoke decides to take a study break and chat with us as I finish up the left panel and move on to t
he right side. It doesn’t take me much longer to complete the design, and Will helps me gather my supplies as Jumoke packs him a complimentary box of yellow macarons for the road.

  My mood is still warm and fizzy, even as we exit into a night that’s way colder than it was earlier. The chill makes us walk briskly as I regale him with a description of last year’s junior derby championship, trying not to be too effusive about my role in it.

  “So . . . ?” I ask, as we near my street.

  “So what?”

  “Are you satisfied that I’m not on the precipice of any abyss? Does Alex get a good report?”

  In response, he nudges my arm with his. “I don’t think trivia and small talk necessarily counts as delving into the depths of your soul. But you seem like you’re holding up okay.”

  I smirk.

  Then his voice drops and he adds, “It was pretty shocking when Alex told me everything.”

  A prickle crawls along my neck and I increase my pace even more, forcing him to do the same. No, no, no, no. He’d been doing so well. Tonight let me completely forget for a few blissful hours and that’s a relief I’m not even sure I can properly explain.

  Please don’t ruin things now, I telegraph.

  He’s quiet for a long minute and then he says, “Do you want to turn around and get some coffee or something, and maybe talk about—”

  I cut him off before he can finish the thought. “Scout’s honor, remember?”

  I feel his eyes on me but refuse to look up. We’re nearly in front of my house now and the light from the lantern at the edge of our walkway stretches our shadows.

  Will sighs. “Right. I did promise, I’m sorry.”

  I pause at the bottom of the porch steps and force a casual smile to change the mood. “So, I’d say thanks for hanging with me tonight, but that might make it sound like I had any choice in the matter.”

  He answers with his own grin. “Tell your parents I said hi.”

  “And you let Alex know ‘hey’ from me. Also, warn the meddlesome prick he’ll be hearing from me.”

  I shake my fist in mock anger, my real annoyance having mostly faded at this point.