Mark whose calls she’d sent to voicemail twice today.
Sam absentmindedly patted his cowlick down, showing a flash of white above his armpit.
Even Sam’s armpit was hot.
“Do you want to have dinner with us?” Jude asked him.
“Can’t,” he said, and stood up suddenly. “Work.”
Jude nodded, her disappointment apparent. “Maybe next time?”
“Sure,” he said distractedly as he excused himself.
? ? ?
“Daaaaaamn,” whispered Mallory, ogling Sam as he left.
Daaaaaamn, thought Penny.
“I didn’t know Uncle Sam was such an intellectual,” Mallory breathed, fanning herself dramatically with her hand.
“Ew, stop.” Jude swatted her best friend’s leg. “That’s literally my father’s brother.”
“Former stepbrother, by marriage, for, like, five minutes,” corrected Mallory. “And he’s not old.”
“He’s twenty-one,” said Jude.
“First cousins marry,” said Mallory.
“Wow . . . ,” said Jude, shaking her head.
“What?” shot Mallory. “Seriously, what’s the deal? He’s so hot. Dark, but hot. And you.” Mallory turned to Penny. “What’s with your awkward bullshit and then pulling out your flirtation A game?”
“Yeah, you guys seemed to get along,” said Jude. Both pairs of eyes studied Penny with new interest.
“I’m being neighborly,” Penny demurred. She turned to Mallory. “I can be friendly as long as strangers don’t go rummaging through my personal effects.”
“Ha,” Mallory said. “Whatever, what’s his type?”
“Mal,” warned Jude.
“What?” Mallory blinked innocently.
“Mallory, you are not allowed to go for my uncle,” said Jude.
“Allowed?” said Mallory. “But what if he goes for me? Uncles love me.”
“Don’t.” Jude turned to face her friend. “I mean it. You know I don’t need any more drama with my family right now. I’m invoking an ironclad friendship ask.”
“Family?” retorted Mallory. “I’m about as related to Sam as you are at this point.”
“You know the rules. Ironclad asks don’t have to make sense,” said Jude, waving her hand dismissively. Her mouth was a firm thin line. Penny knew that face. It was when you were so mad you had to train everything to keep still or you’d cry.
“Whoa,” said Mallory. “Jude Louisa Lange. Do you have sexual feelings for your former uncle by marriage?”
“Stop!” hissed Jude back.
“It’s the only explanation,” countered Mallory.
“Ew. No. That’s not it at all. . . .” Jude sucked down the last of her coffee. “Friends hooking up with family makes things awkward and complicated. So can you not?”
“Aw, babe,” said Mallory, finally wrapping her arms around Jude. “Okay. Ironclad friendship ask invoked. You can’t fault a girl for wanting to be your best friend and your aunt.”
Jude laughed.
Penny eyed the two girls. Either Jude did have a crush on Sam and wasn’t admitting it, or something was up with her family for real. She couldn’t imagine Mallory backing down easily otherwise. Penny recorded the information in a new folder in her head.
“Besides,” continued Jude. “I think he had a rough summer too.”
“Why?” asked Mallory.
“Well, he didn’t exactly tell me and he’s impossible to spy on most of the time, but . . .” Jude opened Instagram on her phone. “Look . . .” She searched and found the page of a MzLolaXO and kept scrolling.
“I think he has girl trouble . . . ,” said Jude.
Penny wondered why “girl trouble” meant some dude had dating drama and that “women’s trouble” was about periods.
“Oooh, she’s super hot,” said Mallory.
MzLolaXO was hot.
In fact, Lola’s look was psychological warfare. She was pretty, by scientific and mathematical standards. The kind of attractive that compelled cornballs to come out with flouncy terms like “ravishing” or “exquisite” to describe women. They also almost always referred to them as “creatures” and definitely “females.” Lola was long and thin in the way that certain beautiful people “forgot” to eat or else only nibbled on aesthetically pleasing morsels like Ladurée macarons or sliced kiwi.
But it was also the way she dressed—incidentally—as if her destroyed denim skirt were placed to protect the modesty of a prudish audience. She was Instagram famous in the way that some girls just are. As if they were designed to indiscriminately detonate insecurities in other women. Basically, she was the perfect stylistic match for Sam. No wonder Sam dodged Jude’s offer for dinner. He probably had way better things to do than hang out with them.
Jude kept swiping, a terrorizing merry-go-round of Lola doing things while looking attractive.
“But who even has this many selfies?” said Mallory, wrinkling her nose. “Other than a total narcissist.”
Penny was willing to bet Mallory had more than this many selfies. They admired Lola stretching in a crop top to where the dagger tattoos on her rib cage showed.
“See,” said Jude. “Sam’s in literally every fifth picture from here. . . .” She continued scrolling up. “All the way to here.”
“That’s years,” said Mallory, impressed.
“That’s what I’m saying,” said Jude. “He was in this perfect relationship and now he’s not, and honestly, I’ve been talking to Dr. Greene about it and she thinks he’s depressed.”
“Dr. Greene is Jude’s therapist,” said Mallory.
If that were true, depression suited Sam.
“So, don’t confuse him, Mallory,” she finished. “He’s very vulnerable.”
Penny thought about the types of girls who loved vulnerable guys. Or else misunderstood ones. They were generally the types to marry serial killers on death row.
“Fine,” Mal relented. “I have a boyfriend anyway.”
“Thank you,” said Jude. “You, too.” She nodded at Penny, smiling broadly. “Please don’t date my uncle.”
“Pfft,” scoffed Mallory.
Jude reached over and tucked a tangled strand of Penny’s hair behind her ear and patted her cheek.
SAM.
Knowing that your only computer was about to crap out on you despite not having nearly enough money to replace it can only be described as horror. Horror and terror. Torror.
Sam drummed impotently on the trackpad a few times and pounded hard. The pinwheel of death persisted.
Shit.
He calmly closed the sticker-covered laptop, briefly considering rolling into a ball and ugly-crying for the rest of the day.
The ancient machine—his trusted steed since junior year of high school—already didn’t qualify as a laptop because it had to be plugged in or it would die. Plus, the colors bled together on-screen so you felt as though you were on hallucinogens no matter what site you were on.
But if a computer was at a virtual standstill on the information superhighway, it had to be taken out back and shot.
Sam breathed deeply and raggedly counted to ten.
By his tabulations, he didn’t have enough in his checking account to get money out of it. An ATM wouldn’t dignify you with a response unless you had the minimum of twenty bucks and Sam had seventeen dollars. Minus the two bucks for the ATM fee.
The catch-22 was demoralizing. He needed the laptop to take an online film class through Alamo Community College so he could learn what he couldn’t from YouTube tutorials—how to block a shot like Roger Deakins, the best cinematographer in the world. Or to light in the style of Gordon Willis, who’d DP’d The Godfather. Okay, so he knew he wouldn’t learn exactly that in a sixteen-week course, but forking over the $476.00 for class and access to supplies was cheaper than camera and gear rentals for four months. Only now he couldn’t torrent any of the required watching.