friends. Thatâs all we ever really were. Wellâ¦â He shook his head and glanced out the darkened window. âItâs complicated. Or it was. But now itâs simple, and weâre friends.â
âOkay.â
âOkay?â he repeated, brows drawn together.
I pulled a wet tea leaf out of his hair and smiled weakly. âOkay.â
After I returned his wallet, we exchanged phone numbers and email addresses and work schedules. I thanked him for not making fun of me outside the anatomy lab. He thanked me again for not freaking out about getting splashed with tea. When we got to my stop, I wouldnât let him walk me home. I can take care of myself, first of all. And second, no one had ever walked me home. Not even Howard Hooper. (And thatâs not some veiled reference to sex, because Howard and I had plenty of thatâwell, maybe not plenty , exactly, but some . And anyway, it was 100 percent in his car ⦠and 100 percent disappointing.)
Besides all this, I wasnât sure I wanted to chance running into my mom on another unplanned shift break at home, mainly because Iâd have to lie when I explained that, no, Jack had nothing to do with graffiti in the museum, and gee, Iâm not sure why I failed to mention that Iâd met him on the Owl bus in the middle of the night when I was sneaking off to do something I was specifically warned not to do.
I donât like disappointing her, so I disappointed Jack instead. Not that I was conceited enough to assume heâd planned to throw me down on my front steps and kiss me like there was no tomorrow. But it was pretty obvious that Iâd hurt his feelings when I wouldnât let him walk me the measly block and half from the Muni stop.
âItâs not because I donât trust you,â I told him before I left, but I donât think he believed me. And that made me feel kind of rotten, especially when I turned around at the bottom of the street and saw his silhouette standing below the fog at the stop, watching me. I waved, but he didnât wave back, and my rotten feeling slipped into a general all-purpose melancholy.
When I made it back home, I discovered that Heath was out with Noah. Good thing I didnât need him to utilize Jackâs driverâs license, because not only would it be hours before he even noticed I was gone, but the photo I texted him was so out of focus, I couldnât read half the information on it. Still, I remembered Jackâs street name and searched for it online. It was on the western side of Buena Vista Park, and the houses there ranged in price from five hundred thousand to several million.
I wondered which one was his.
We used to live in a nicer place in Cole Valley, back before my dad took off. He was VP of academic affairs at the university hospital. Thatâs how my parents met. So, yeah, he made a crap-ton of money and couldnât be bothered to pay child support. Heath and I pushed Mom to take him to court, but she went ballistic and screamed at us about how she didnât need a handout from a cheater and a liar. Hey. No need to tell us twice. We never brought it up again, not even on the occasions when both Heath and I had to pitch in our own money to pay an extra-high electricity bill, or whatever. It wasnât oftenâmaybe a couple of times a year. And the three of us are all living here together, using the electricity, united in our stance against taking handouts from liars and cheats. So I didnât complain.
I just wasnât quite ready to look at Minnie again, so after stashing my sketchpad, I stripped out of my clothes and dug out the artistâs mannequin. Dad might or might not be a bigwig VP anymore, but this thing wasnât cheap. I turned it over in my hands and thought of everything Heath had told me about the card he found in the trash. Heath couldnât remember the Berkeley address, but it was surreal to think that after not
âOkay.â
âOkay?â he repeated, brows drawn together.
I pulled a wet tea leaf out of his hair and smiled weakly. âOkay.â
After I returned his wallet, we exchanged phone numbers and email addresses and work schedules. I thanked him for not making fun of me outside the anatomy lab. He thanked me again for not freaking out about getting splashed with tea. When we got to my stop, I wouldnât let him walk me home. I can take care of myself, first of all. And second, no one had ever walked me home. Not even Howard Hooper. (And thatâs not some veiled reference to sex, because Howard and I had plenty of thatâwell, maybe not plenty , exactly, but some . And anyway, it was 100 percent in his car ⦠and 100 percent disappointing.)
Besides all this, I wasnât sure I wanted to chance running into my mom on another unplanned shift break at home, mainly because Iâd have to lie when I explained that, no, Jack had nothing to do with graffiti in the museum, and gee, Iâm not sure why I failed to mention that Iâd met him on the Owl bus in the middle of the night when I was sneaking off to do something I was specifically warned not to do.
I donât like disappointing her, so I disappointed Jack instead. Not that I was conceited enough to assume heâd planned to throw me down on my front steps and kiss me like there was no tomorrow. But it was pretty obvious that Iâd hurt his feelings when I wouldnât let him walk me the measly block and half from the Muni stop.
âItâs not because I donât trust you,â I told him before I left, but I donât think he believed me. And that made me feel kind of rotten, especially when I turned around at the bottom of the street and saw his silhouette standing below the fog at the stop, watching me. I waved, but he didnât wave back, and my rotten feeling slipped into a general all-purpose melancholy.
When I made it back home, I discovered that Heath was out with Noah. Good thing I didnât need him to utilize Jackâs driverâs license, because not only would it be hours before he even noticed I was gone, but the photo I texted him was so out of focus, I couldnât read half the information on it. Still, I remembered Jackâs street name and searched for it online. It was on the western side of Buena Vista Park, and the houses there ranged in price from five hundred thousand to several million.
I wondered which one was his.
We used to live in a nicer place in Cole Valley, back before my dad took off. He was VP of academic affairs at the university hospital. Thatâs how my parents met. So, yeah, he made a crap-ton of money and couldnât be bothered to pay child support. Heath and I pushed Mom to take him to court, but she went ballistic and screamed at us about how she didnât need a handout from a cheater and a liar. Hey. No need to tell us twice. We never brought it up again, not even on the occasions when both Heath and I had to pitch in our own money to pay an extra-high electricity bill, or whatever. It wasnât oftenâmaybe a couple of times a year. And the three of us are all living here together, using the electricity, united in our stance against taking handouts from liars and cheats. So I didnât complain.
I just wasnât quite ready to look at Minnie again, so after stashing my sketchpad, I stripped out of my clothes and dug out the artistâs mannequin. Dad might or might not be a bigwig VP anymore, but this thing wasnât cheap. I turned it over in my hands and thought of everything Heath had told me about the card he found in the trash. Heath couldnât remember the Berkeley address, but it was surreal to think that after not
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