“Trust me,” he says, and I find that I do trust him.
“Okay.” I wave at the waiter to order the vanilla custard pie. Which is divine, and I ought to know.
“Wow, I am so full,” I say. “You’re going to have to roll me home.”
For a minute neither of us says anything, the words hanging in the air between us.
“Thank you for today,” I say finally, finding it hard to meet his eyes.
“A good birthday?”
“Yes. Thank you, also, for not blabbing to the restaurant so they would come over here and sing to me.”
“Wendy said you would hate that.”
I wonder how much of this day was orchestrated by Wendy.
“What are you doing tomorrow?” he asks.
“Huh?”
“I have tomorrow off, and if you want I could take you to Yellowstone, show you around.”
“I’ve never been to Yellowstone.”
“I know.”
He’s just the gift that keeps on giving. Yellowstone sounds loads better than sitting at home channel surfing, worrying about Jeffrey, and trying to lug a big Christian-sized duffel bag into the air.
“I’d love to see Old Faithful,” I admit.
“Okay.” He looks suspiciously pleased with himself. “We’ll start there.”
Chapter 15
Tucker Me Out
Our trip to Yellowstone is marred only by me accidentally speaking Korean to a tourist who’d lost track of her five-year-old son. I help her talk to the ranger, and they locate the kid. Happy story, right? Except for the part where Tucker stares at me like I’m a mutant until I lamely explain that I have a Korean friend back in California and I’m good with languages. I don’t expect to see him after that, assuming that my birthday gift from Wendy is all used up. But Saturday there’s a knock on my door and there he is again, and an hour later I find myself in a large, inflated raft with a group of out-ofstate tourists, feeling enormous and bloated in the bright orange life jacket we all have to wear. Tucker perches on the end of the boat and rows in the direction of the rapids, while the other guide sits at the front and shouts orders. I watch Tucker’s strong, brown arms flex as he tugs the oars through the water. We hit the first set of rapids. The boat lurches, water sprays everywhere, and the people in the raft scream like we’re on a roller coaster. Tucker grins at me. I grin back.
That night he takes me to the party at Ava Peters’s house and stays by me through the entire thing, introducing me to people who don’t know me past my name. I’m amazed at how being with him changes everything for me, socially speaking. When I walked the halls of Jackson Hole High, the other students looked at me with careful disinterest, not entirely hostile, but definitely like I was an intruder on their turf. Even Christian’s attention in those final weeks hadn’t made much of a difference in getting people to talk
While Tucker goes to the kitchen to get me a drink, Ava Peters grabs my arm.
“How long have you and Tucker been together?” she asks with a sly smile.
“We’re just friends,” I stammer.
“Oh.” She frowns slightly. “Sorry, I thought. ”
“You thought what?” asks Tucker, suddenly standing beside me with a red plastic cup in each hand.
“I thought you two were an item,” says Ava.
“We’re just friends,” he says. He meets my eyes briefly, then hands me one of the cups.
“What is this?”
“Rum and Coke. I hope you like coconut rum.”
I’ve never had rum. Or tequila or vodka or whiskey or anything but the tiniest bit of wine at a fancy dinner now and then. My mom lived during Prohibition. But right now she’s a thousand miles away probably sound asleep in her hotel room in Mountain View, completely unaware that her daughter is at an unsupervised teen party about to guzzle down her first hard liquor.
What she doesn’t know can’t hurt her. Cheers.
I take a sip of the drink. I don’t detect even the slightest hint of coconut, or alcohol. It tastes exactly like regular old Coca-Cola.
“It’s good, thank you,” I say.
“Nice party, Ava,” Tucker says. “You really pulled out all the stops.”
“Thanks,” she says serenely. “I’m glad you made it. You, too, Clara. Good to finally get to know you.”
“Yeah,” I say. “It’s good to be known.”
