She’s about to turn the corner and find all these jerks piled up around her van, when I yell, “Millie! Over here!”
Pulling down on the straps of her backpack, she changes her course of direction and heads straight for me with her smile pushing her rosy cheeks so high they almost touch the tops of her eyelids. “Hiya, Will!”
I smile. “Hey.” I hadn’t actually thought about what I might say to her once she was here, standing in front of me. “Congratulations on getting your license,” I say.
“Oh, thanks.” She smiles again. “That’s really sweet of you.”
I watch Patrick Thomas from over her shoulder as he pushes his finger to his nose to make it look like a pig’s snout.
I listen as Millie tells me all about changing her mom’s radio presets and pumping gas for the first time. Patrick zeroes in on me. He’s the kind of guy you hope never notices you, but there’s really no use in me trying to be invisible to him. There’s no hiding an elephant.
Millie talks for a few minutes before Patrick and his friends give up and walk off. She waves her hands around, motioning at the van behind her. “I mean, they don’t teach you how to pump gas in driver’s ed and they really—”
“Hey,” I tell her. “I’m so sorry, but I’m going to be late for work.”
She nods.
“But congratulations again.”
I watch as she walks to her car. She adjusts all of her mirrors before reversing out of her parking space in the middle of the near-empty lot.
I park behind Harpy’s Burgers & Dogs, cut across the drive-thru, and ring the freight doorbell. When no one answers, I ring again. The Texas sun pounds down on the crown of my head.
I wait as a creepy-looking man wearing a fishing hat and a dirty undershirt rolls through the drive-thru and recites his painfully specific order down to the exact number of pickles he’d like on his burger. The voice on the speaker gives him his total. The man eyes me, tilting down his orange-tinted sunglasses and says, “Hey there, sweetcheeks.”
I don’t have to wear a dress to work. There’s a pants option, too. But the elastic waist on the polyester pants wasn’t quite elastic enough to fit over my hips. I say the pants are to blame. I don’t like to think of my hips as a nuisance, but more of an asset. I mean, if this were, like, 1642, my wide birthing hips would be worth many cows or something.
I whirl around, holding my dress tight around my thighs and punch the doorbell four times. My stomach is squirming with discomfort.
The door cracks open and all I hear is Bo’s voice. “I heard you the first three times.”
My bones tingle. I don’t see him until he opens the door a little wider to let me in. Natural light grazes his face. New stubble peppers his chin and cheeks. A sign of freedom. Bo’s school—his fancy Catholic school with its strict dress code—let out earlier this week.
The car behind me at the drive-thru backfires, and I rush inside. My eyes take a second to adjust to the dim light. “Sorry I’m late, Bo,” I say. Bo. The syllable bounces around in my chest and I like it. I like the finality of a name so short. It’s the type of name that says, Yes, I’m sure.
A heat burns inside of me as it rises all the way up through my cheeks. I run my fingers along the line of my jaw as my feet sink into the concrete like quicksand.
He stretches an arm out toward me, like he might hug me.
The Truth: I’ve had this hideous crush on Bo since the first time we met. His unstyled brown hair swirls into a perfect mess at the top of his head. And he looks ridiculous in his red and white uniform. Like a bear in a tutu. Polyester sleeves strain over his arms, and I think maybe his biceps and my hips have a lot in common. Except the ability to bench-press. A thin silver chain peeks out from the collar of his undershirt and his lips are red with artificial dye, thanks to his endless supply of red suckers.