How to Love

“Ladies,” Sawyer says gallantly. He’s got another Slurpee in his hand, enormous, pink and bright through the clear plastic cup.

“Ladies?” Shelby snarls. Shelby has never been afraid of Sawyer. Shelby has never been afraid of much of anything, so far as I can tell. “Seriously? Two years later and the best you can do is ladies?”

“I was going for casual,” he tells her, wrinkling his nose and smiling, half bashful. His mouth is faintly red with the dye. “Did I overplay? I overplayed.”

“A little bit.” Shelby rolls her eyes. “I’m going to need a drink.”

“Really?” Cade looks up from across the dining room and frowns, but doesn’t actually make any move to stop her. Cade’s always been a little gobsmacked by Shelby. “We’re not even open yet.”

“Bloody Marys!” she says cheerily, heading for the bar. “I’ll make you one, too, Kincade.” She flips up the partition, nudges my brother out of her way. “What about you, Sawyer? Can I offer you a strong alcoholic beverage to help take the edge off being yourself?”

Sawyer and I snort at the same time; he looks over at me, smirking, and holds up his Slurpee like a toast in my direction. “I’m good,” he says, eyes on my face.

“Really.” Shelby’s eyebrows hitch as she reaches for the tomato juice. “What are you, off the sauce?”

“As it were.”

“A bartender who doesn’t drink anymore? How romantic.”

“Yeah, well.” Sawyer nods and slides onto a barstool. “I’m a romantic kind of guy.”

Oh, come on. Cade looks like he’s about to projectile vomit all over the restaurant and, frankly, I don’t blame him. I’m feeling a little queasy myself. I get up and head back to the office to punch my time card, then set about completing as many menial tasks as I can find: folding napkins and stacking glassware, refilling ketchup bottles, which grosses me out to no end. I keep my hands busy. I work. We’re slammed for brunch every Sunday, the wait skyrocketing to an hour or more, and once Shelby opens the doors it’s bread and smiles until midafternoon. When I finally have a minute to glance over at the bar, Sawyer’s disappeared into the teeming crush of bodies, like maybe he was never there at all.

10

Before

“Who with?” was the first thing my father wanted to know when I told him I was going out for a bit after work—a fair enough question, seeing as how I’d spent the last eight months hanging out with no one so much as the pizza delivery guy from Papa Gino’s. He’d been chatting with the drummer in the band and he smelled like coffee and cologne, familiar; it was a smell I thought I’d miss when I left home.

“Allie,” I blurted, not knowing I was going to lie until I did it. “With Allie.”

I don’t know why I didn’t tell him. There was no reason to think he’d say I couldn’t go: Sawyer was his godson, after all, heir to his musical talent in practice if not by blood. Still, he’d have wanted to know the wheres and whys and the what are you doings, and a thousand other things I could only begin to guess. For now it just seemed neater not to say.

“Allie,” he said slowly, slipping one bearlike arm around my shoulders. “There’s a name I haven’t heard in a while.”

“Um,” I said. “Yeah.”

My father shrugged, nodding at one of the waiters to comp a round of drinks. He trusted me. He’d never had a reason not to. “Have a good time,” he said, lips against my forehead in a distracted good-bye kiss. “Home by curfew.”

“Yeah,” I said again. “Of course.”

I found Sawyer in the back hallway, leaning against the door to the office and scrolling through his phone, vaguely bored. “Did you just lie to your dad about me?” he asked, smirking a little.

“Yes,” I said.

The smirk bloomed into a grin. “Well, okay then,” he told me, perversely delighted. “Long as I know where I stand. You ready?”

“Sure,” I said, hoping against hope that he couldn’t tell what a big deal this was for me—that just the thought of being alone with him had my stomach doing the kind of gymnastic tumble that would have made Bela Karolyi proud.

Sawyer held the back door open and I followed him across the parking lot to his ancient Jeep. He didn’t talk. I had no idea where we were going, and at this point it felt a little late to ask: I opened my mouth, hesitated, shut it again. Sawyer didn’t seem bothered at all.

I glanced around the Jeep as surreptitiously as I could manage, beginning a list in my head as he hit the gas. Floor of Sawyer LeGrande’s car, a complete inventory: empty Snapple bottle, peach iced tea, check. Duke Ellington Live at Newport 1956, check. Dashboard: sunglasses, check. Tree-shaped air freshener still in the package, check. Mix CD with Allie Ballard’s handwriting on the label, check.

I closed my eyes for a second. Allie used to make me mixes all the time, songs for my birthday and Christmas and springtime and Tuesdays. My favorite was called “The Bad Behavior Mix”: sixty minutes of ridiculous hip-hop capped with Phil Collins’s “A Groovy Kind of Love,” presented to me on the occasion of our first high school dance. We ended up back at my house by nine thirty that night, making brownies with Soledad and shouting along with Kanye, doubled over in hysterical giggles.

I didn’t mean to sigh, never even heard myself do it, but I must have, because Sawyer glanced over at me as he turned onto A1A, sharp features lit reddish by the neon lights on the dash. “Long day?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said, letting him think that it was the monotony of service work getting me down and not the absolute hopelessness of being in this Jeep with him, his eyes glittering a hundred thousand adjectives beyond green. “Kind of.”

Sawyer nodded. “You want ice cream?”

I blinked. “Ice cream?” I repeated. I don’t know what I’d been expecting, but it … wasn’t that.

“Yeah, princess, ice cream.” Sawyer laughed as he pulled into a parking spot, not bothering to wait for my answer. “What did you think I was gonna offer you, like, some glue to sniff?”

“No!” I said, although to be honest, he was probably closer to the truth than not. I unbuckled my seat belt and climbed out of the car. “No.”

“You think I’m so sketchy.” He bumped my shoulder with his as we crossed the parking lot, so lightly I thought it was probably an accident. “Like, way tougher than I actually am.”

I shook my head and looked away. “I really don’t,” I promised.

“Okay,” he said, in a voice like he thought I was full of shit but didn’t particularly mind. “Whatever you say.”

We ordered at the counter and I dug in my purse for my wallet, pulling out a set of house keys and my Lonely Planet to get to the bottom of the bag. Sawyer pushed my hand away. “I got it,” he told me, handing over a wrinkled ten to the cashier. He nodded at my book. “Planning a trip?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I mean, no.” It suddenly felt enormously stupid, this game I played with myself, like hopscotch or Barbie. “It’s for my admissions essay.”

“To college?” Sawyer raised his eyebrows, licked the dripping bottom of my cone before handing it over. It was an old-fashioned shop, wood paneling and knickknacks on the walls, an antique cash register that sprung open with a loud ring. I smelled sugar and cold air. “Already?”

I nodded. “Northwestern,” I told him. “I’m graduating a year early, so I’m going to apply in the fall.”

Sawyer tilted his head to one side. “That’s ambitious.”

“I’m ambitious.”

“I know,” he said, taking his own ice cream and herding me back toward the door, holding it open with one foot as I scooted through. “So that’s what your essay’s about, then?” he asked as we crossed the lot toward the