“I love it back here.” Jordi takes pictures of houses cut into the hills. “My parents say it costs more than I realize to live up there, but after college, it’s exactly where I want to end up.”
“My parents always say things like that, too. ‘Abby, you have no idea how much we could get for this little house in today’s market.’”
“Yeah, today’s market.” Jordi laughs. “I hope to god I don’t grow up to care about today’s market.”
“I hope you don’t either.” I gesture to my favorite ice cream shop, Milk. “I hope this is okay. I love this place.”
“It definitely is,” she says. “I love it, too.”
“We love all the same places,” I say. “That feels like a good sign of compatibility.”
Jordi pokes my side as we get into the line stretching out past Milk’s door. “Were you worried about our compatibility levels?”
“Super, super worried.”
“Can you hold this a second?” She hands me her camera and I cradle it, honestly, more carefully than when I had to hold a baby cousin last year at Christmas. Jordi digs around in her black bag with intense concentration. I envision sewing her something new, but I don’t know how to create what I see in my head. Maybe Maggie can help me, and if not Maggie, the internet.
“Okay,” Jordi says, taking a little black paper bag out of her bigger black bag. “I made this and … I think it turned out okay. But you don’t have to like it. Promise me you won’t say you like it if you don’t.”
I hand the camera back to her and then open the bag. Inside is a bright blue acrylic pendant cut into the shape of a pineapple, hanging on a silver chain. “You made this?”
Jordi nods while I turn the perfect necklace over and over in my hands. “Do you … like it?”
“No,” I say. “I love it. I’m obsessed with it. I want to wear it with everything I own.”
I take off the heart-shaped necklace I’m wearing it, tuck it away in my purse, and start to put on Jordi’s necklace.
“Let me,” she says, and now I hold her camera as she fastens it around my neck. The necklace is cool against my throat, but Jordi’s fingertips are warm. I know we’re in a line for ice cream surrounded by children and older people, but suddenly I want her fingertips all over me.
Obviously I settle for standing in the grass together eating ice cream cones instead.
Jordi, of course, takes photos: the street, the hills, a dog we spot standing on a balcony above. And me, always me. Maybe it should be more distracting, but the photographs are also a record that this is real. And it’s still just a little hard to believe that this is in fact what’s happening to me this summer.
“Okay, I saved the best for last,” I say when our ice cream is a distant memory and Jordi’s camera has been silent for a few minutes. “Hopefully. If you’ve been there before, it won’t be that exciting.”
“I’ve been to Mixto and Milk before,” she says. “They were still exciting.”
We walk back the way we came, but I point us in a slightly different direction once we’re past the Reservoir. I don’t know why it matters so much to me that Jordi hasn’t seen this yet, but my stomach’s clenched in anticipation. I want badly to show her something new.
“Oh my god.” Jordi stares up at the chandeliers suspended from a tree just off Shadowlawn Avenue. “What is this?”
“It’s someone’s home,” I say. “He just did this because it’s beautiful.”
Jordi stares up at the different fixtures hanging from the wide-stretching branches. The golden glow glimmers within the leaves. “It’s incredible.”
I take my change purse out of my bag, because the man who owns the tree and the house installed an old-fashioned parking meter to help pay his electrical bill. I drop in all the coins I have and then Jordi does the same. Since her hands are in her bag, I assume her camera will come back out.
But it doesn’t.
“Not yet,” she says with a knowing smile.
Then we kiss underneath the glow of dozens of lightbulbs shimmering in a tree. And for just this moment, my world is a fairy tale.
CHAPTER 17
Jax texts me early on my next weekday off from the shop to line up burgers for lunch. I’d been hoping to make plans with Maliah or Jordi, but I realize there’s no sense of disappointment waiting outside for Jax instead.
Seriously, weirdest summer ever.
“Met this hot girl last night,” is how he greets me over the inescapable sounds of indie rock dudes yodeling.
“Good for you.” I buckle in. “Where to today?”
“I dunno, Abbs, the whole city’s our playground.”
I side-eye him before opening the note on my phone with a list of burger places. “We haven’t done In-N-Out yet.”
“Bam.” He tears off down the street and we slap each other’s hands trying to maintain control over the car stereo’s volume. “You wanna hear all about this girl?”
“What happened to Gaby?” I ask.
“That was not gonna happen,” he says. “Alas. So I move on.”
“Hmmm,” I say.
“Don’t judge me. We don’t all get the girl we’re after.”
“I was actually thinking that sounded pretty mature,” I say. “So, yeah, tell me about the girl.”
“One, super hot. Two, made a joke at Trevor’s expense so she won me over. Three, talked to me for like the last hour of the party until one of her friends made her take her home. Bam, I’m as good as in.”
“Sounds like it.” I wonder what it would be like to be Jax, with all the confidence in the world as far as girls are concerned. Would I have kissed Jordi a week sooner? Does that even matter now, when my life involves kissing Jordi Perez almost every single day as it is?
“So we gotta figure out my next move,”
