“Hang on.” She sits down at her desk and opens her MacBook. “I can show you.”
“What about this?” I gesture to a canvas that’s been brushed over roughly with countless shades of red and textured bits of other items, like feathers and torn papers, captured within the paint. “Did you paint this? Or … create it, or however I should say it?”
“I did,” she says.
“Jordi, seriously, you’re so good.”
“Sit down,” she says with a smile, and we somehow perch together on her desk chair. The photos from the other week load in thumbnails, and then Jordi scrolls through each one, letting it fill the screen. The street, the sidewalk, parking lots, and me.
“That’s cool,” I say, because in the third photo of myself she shows me, my hair is caught in a breeze and extending horizontally across the frame. “I look like I’m magic.”
She pulls gently on a lock of my hair. “You are magic. Do you want me to send you all the photos?”
“Maybe not all of them,” I say. I’m still getting used to looking at myself like this. When you take a selfie, you control the angle and the frame and how much you reveal. I was out of control for these photographs. “This one, for sure.”
She continues scrolling, and it feels like more and more of the photos are of me. There are angles of me I’ve never seen, and I can’t say that I like all of them. It feels unfair that other people can know more about sides of you than you can. But then I stop worrying if my butt looks big or if my upper arms are too chubby, because I also look happy. It shows in my smile and my eyes and even how I’m standing with an ease I have never actually felt in my bones.
And, also, Jordi is sitting next to me and she looks happy, too. We kiss for a few minutes until there are parent footsteps in the hallway. But the good news is that lunch is ready, and there’s something incredibly satisfying about eating something you had a hand in making. Food is Mom’s domain at home, but here it feels like something the whole family shares.
After lunch, Mr. Perez loads up a huge Tupperware container for me, and Jordi asks her parents if she can walk me home. (Thank god they say yes.) When we arrive back at my house, I find a note scrawled in my dad’s handwriting that says my parents are off to see “Maliah’s dad’s friend’s movie.”
“What does that mean?” Jordi asks me.
“George Clooney,” I say, but I don’t want to explain more because I have an empty house and a girlfriend in it.
CHAPTER 15
When I walk into work on Monday morning—alone because Jordi has the day off thanks to Saturday night’s fashion show—there’s a big box sitting on the desk in front of the computer.
“Surprise!” Maggie says.
I peer into the box, which holds a sewing machine. “Why?”
“It was just sitting around my house, and it’s not heavy duty enough for what I need,” Maggie says. “But it’ll be a good starter machine for you to make some skirts and dresses.”
“Thank you so much.” I stare at the machine. I’m not sure anyone’s ever given me such a nice and spontaneous gift before. “It’s hard to explain to you how bad I was the time I tried sewing, though.”
“You hear yourself, right?” She grins. “‘The time’? The one time? You’ll learn. I’ll teach you.”
“Maggie, thank you. You really don’t have to.”
“I’ll feel selfish if I don’t push the girl with the great style to at least try,” she says, and I think about the fact that it’s how Maggie sees me. I know she’s not in high fashion in Manhattan or anything, but this is her world. And I’m not the fat girl or the loud girl or the girl who asks too many questions.
“The fashion show was really fun,” she tells me.
“It sounded like it,” I say, and then I’m not sure if it’s weird I talk to Jordi if we aren’t dating, which is of course what Maggie would think. “I mean, from seeing Instagram and everything.”
“I’m sorry we couldn’t bring you,” she says. “But I’m sure you did something more fun with your night.”
“Ha!” I say. “Unfortunately, I had to help my parents with Eat Healthy with Norah! stuff.”
“Oh no,” she says. “Though I’m afraid that’s how I’ll make Sam spend his weekends when he’s a teenager.”
“Do you have a kid?” I ask, though that might be way too nosy of a question.
“Yes, I try not to bore you guys with him because I could go on and on forever,” she says, bringing her phone over to me. “He’s six and he’s amazing.”
She scrolls through a few photos of an adorable boy who looks a little like Maggie but with darker, curly hair and his front teeth missing. Also, he’s dressed a little better than Maggie, but most people are.
“Sam’s a good name,” I say, and Maggie smiles.
“Why don’t you see if Paige needs anything out front, and if she’s caught up, we’ll go through the basics on the sewing machine,” Maggie says. “Sound good?”
I suspect Paige won’t need any help, and I’m right. While Laine seems to enjoy having Jordi and I assist her, Paige probably thinks that she can get more done without any teens hanging around. It would bother me more if today it didn’t mean that I got more one-on-one time with Maggie.
“You don’t have to show me this right now,” I say, because while of course getting a sewing lesson from one of my favorite local designers is a dream come true, it’s not really why I’m here. “I could be working on social media stuff.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Maggie says, as though she’s letting me off the hook. I try to relax because, seriously, I’m so lucky right
