AllFreeNovel
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I nodded toward a white van, parked crookedly in its space. “The entrance is through that van. They’ve built an underground club. Literally.”
“You know, I’ve actually been to one.”
“A van club?”
“I mean, I wish. I meant I’ve been to a speakeasy. In Paris—Candelaria. It just looks like this little taqueria, but through the back there’s a bar.”
“Wow.” I nodded, trying to pretend like this was just normal for me. Like my friends were also always talking about their time in Paris going to bars. “It’s cool that they let you in.”
He laughed. “I wasn’t worried about that. I was with my… my cousins.”
“Oh.”
“They’re twins,” he explained. “And very cool. Astrid and Artie. They’re the best.” He smiled, like he was calling them to mind. “Have you been?”
“To Paris?” I shook my head, suddenly feeling out of my depth. But then a second later, I remembered Russell had said his mother was French. This suddenly didn’t feel quite so intimidating—maybe he’d been there visiting relatives. “Non. Not yet, I mean. Hopefully someday.”
“I just thought… because your mom.” I looked at him sharply. “Because she was in London—I thought maybe when you would visit her, you guys went over there.”
“No,” I said, keeping my voice light, ready to move far away from this subject. “I’ve only been out of the country a few times. Mexico, Prince Edward Island—”
“Where’s that?”
“Canada,” I said, trying not to sound as scandalized as I felt. “It’s where all the L. M. Montgomery books are set.” Russell just looked at me, his expression blank. “See, this is how I can tell you don’t have sisters. She wrote Anne of Green Gables, the Emily books…”
“Oh, right! Got it.”
“And then we went to Panama a few years ago.”
“Panama?”
We moved forward a step in line. The line really wasn’t moving very fast, but I found I didn’t particularly mind. “Yeah, my dad got their tourism account and was trying to help them rebrand. The official slogan before had just been ‘Panama!’ with an exclamation point. He was trying to come up with something a little more specific.”
“That’s so cool he’s in advertising.”
“It’s fun to be around. Like when I was younger, I’d hang out at the offices a lot. I’d just be trying to write a book report on Wonder, and I’d hear adults going into full-blown meltdowns about what cereal mascots would and wouldn’t say. And when he was working at home, during the pandemic, he’d let me pitch on taglines or concepts.”
“That’s awesome.”
“It really was.”
Russell looked at me, his head tilted slightly to one side. “But…?”
I was a little taken aback by the fact that it seemed like Russell was able to read me so easily already—but then a second later, I realized this was a good thing. This was how these nights went, right? You got to know the other person fast. How else were you supposed to be in love by sunrise? “But,” I continued, giving him a smile, “it’s just… not what he set out to do. He wanted to be a novelist. There was this whole sci-fi story he was working on, back when I was in elementary school…”
“Did he ever try to get it published?”
“I’m not sure. I just know one day he was working on this book, and talking about it at the dinner table, and then it was like none of that had happened. I think maybe it just got to be too hard? Raising me, doing his job, and writing a book…” I wasn’t about to tell Russell this, but it was ultimately one more thing that Gillian had taken away.
“Well… maybe he’ll be able to now? Now that you’ll be off to college?”
I nodded, even though I doubted it. Because I could practically see what the house would look like when I was gone—my dad sitting alone at the kitchen table. Me in Connecticut, him in Raven Rock, both of us unhappy.
“Next!” the woman called, and we all took a step forward.
Now that I was a little closer, I could see that by the table, there was a cooler filled with ice, with waters and cans of soda sticking out, and I edged up a step, trying to see more clearly. “You think she has Sidral Mundet?”
“What’s that?”
