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It took the concentration of every single cell in my body to keep from bursting out laughing at the expression on Cal’s face.
“I’ll be back soon,” he told me, kissing me softly. Gigi made requisite gagging noises until Cal walked out the front door. We watched as he folded himself into the little green car and drove away.
I tried to tamp down my disquiet. He was just running to the post office. People did that every day … in broad daylight … when it was open. Still, it wasn’t as if someone was going to be lying in wait there just in case Cal caught a misdirected Post-it. But why had Cal given me the weird instructions? Why did he seem so worried?
And when he kissed me, why did it feel like good-bye?
When the brake lights cleared my driveway, I turned on Gigi. “What do you want?”
Her brow creased, and her blue eyes widened to the point where she looked like an animé character. I knew something was up. “Why would you assume that I want something?”
I crossed my arms and gave her a speculative once-over. “June 2007, you wanted your ears pierced a second time. Your grades improved to a three-point-four average without a lecture from me on responsibility or buckling down. November 2008, you wanted an iPod for Christmas. Without preamble, the garbage was routinely taken out without my nagging, and the laundry pile mysteriously disappeared from the office couch. June 2009, you wanted a car. The recycling miraculously sorted itself. History shows that your sudden willingness to share your car, which you’ve never even let me drive, has to be connected to some sort of personal goal.”
She winced, wringing her hands and bouncing on the balls of her feet. “I might have told Sammi Jo and Braelynn that I would meet them for ice cream tonight at ten.”
Excellent—mundane details to distract me!
“At ten? On a school night?” I exclaimed.
“They’re both in rehearsals for the spring musical,” she said, her tone tipping toward wheedling. “They won’t get out until ten. I haven’t seen them in weeks. Please, Iris, please! I’ve got all of my homework done, and I don’t have any tests tomorrow. I’ll be home by eleven.”
I checked my watch. It was around seven-thirty. Cal had told us to go somewhere public, with lots of witnesses.
“I tell you what, you and I will go see a movie, and I’ll drop you off at the Dairy Freeze on the way home. Can Sammi Jo give you a ride?”
“Yes!” she cried, hugging me. “Thank you, thank you!”
“Don’t thank me yet,” I told her. “I get to pick the movie.”
“Oh, no.” She moaned. “Come on, Iris, I can’t suffer through an Iris pick on a school night!”
“My movie taste isn’t that bad,” I protested as she grabbed her purse.
She snorted. “Says the girl who paid top dollar to see The Bounty Hunter in the theater.”
“I have an inappropriate loyalty to Gerard Butler,” I grumbled, shutting the door behind us.
“OK, but did you have to buy it on DVD?” Gigi chuckled.
“It was a Christmas gift. Uncle Clark grabs the DVD with the silliest cover and wraps it,” I shot back, climbing into the driver’s seat of the Dorkmobile. “I am willing to admit that Gerard Butler has single-handedly murdered the romantic comedy.”
Gigi snickered. “Gerard Butler took the romantic comedy to an orgy, accidentally strangled it during an air game, panicked, and dumped its body in the woods.”
I stared at her, gobsmacked. “That may be the funniest thing I’ve ever heard—” I spluttered. “How the hell do you even know what an air game is?”
Gigi preened. “Just because you put the parental locks on HBO doesn’t mean I can’t get around them.”
—
Gigi and I attended a showing of the Bollywood version of Pride and Prejudice at the Palladium. The once-great theater had fallen into disrepair over the years, becoming the local “throwback dollar movie” theater during the last decade. At Jane’s suggestion, Gabriel had bought the theater, refurbished it to its former glory, and turned it into a “nostalgia house” showing old black-and-white movies, eighties classics, and the like. Every Thursday was Jane Austen Night, to honor Jane’s fetish for all things Bennet and Darcy.
Having expected to see something loud and stupid at the multiplex, Gigi was not pleased with this turn of events.
“Why didn’t you ask Miss Jane to come with you?” Gigi asked as I bought tickets for Bride & Prejudice.
“Jane won’t do movies with me anymore. I went to her house for Sense and Sensibility night. And when I pointed out, quite rightly, that Marianne was a twit and Colonel Brandon would have been better off marrying Elinor, Jane turned gray and started yelling.”
“There better not be subtitles,” Gigi groused, leading me to the candy counter, where I was already eyeing a box of Goobers in the display case.
