“I didn't say Latino,” I say. “I said Latina.”
“I'm not following.”
I sigh. “There are certain stereotypes about young Latina women. Particularly young Latina women raised by young single mothers.”
“Okay?”
“And I think it would be hard to convince my mother that dating a guy who has another girlfriend wouldn't be helping to perpetuate the stereotype of Latina women as...you know. The sexy Other Woman.”
“But you know that's not what this is,” he says.
“Yeah,” I say. And then it kind of hits me.
I do know that that's not what this is.
I am sitting here in damp, humongous clothes in this boy's car, and I know two things for absolutely certain:
He is not cheating on his girlfriend.
He thinks I'm pretty.
He is not going to try to have sex with me.
And I am not sure that I have ever been sure about those things with any other guy I've ever been alone with.
Theo says, “Well, I'm under strict orders not to try to pressure you.”
“Yeah, I got that feeling.”
“What feeling?”
“That she'd kind of given up on me.”
“It's not that so much...Hmm. Josey is...a very hard person to explain.”
“Yeah.”
“I mean, I get why she does everything. But I've known her for ages. She's my best friend.” He thinks for a minute. “The thing is that she is really not good at rejection, so she doesn't put herself in situations where she'll get rejected.”
“So I...made her feel rejected?”
“I mean, you literally rejected her. Not that I'm blaming you or anything, but—”
“No, no, I get it.” And it makes me feel powerful. And I kind of like that. “So she'd still...be open to it? I mean, if I changed my mind.”
“I'd be seriously surprised if not,” he says. “She really likes you. She spent all Saturday afternoon holed up trying to get that cookie recipe you told her exactly right.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, her house has like ninety cookies.”
“Are they as good as mine?”
He laughs a little. “No. They're not.”
“Innnnteresting.”
More laughing. “Can I say just one thing?” he says.
“Of course.”
“There are always going to be a million reasons not to do anything. Any decision you could possibly make, there are an infinite number of really good excuses for why that would be a bad thing to do.”
“Is this supposed to be comforting?”
“And there's really only one reason to ignore that,” Theo says. “And you just have to decide if that reason is enough for you. That one reason for why you should ignore all the millions of excuses and do it anyway.”
“And what's the one reason?”
He smiles a little, eyes on the road. “Because you just fucking want to.”
Alexis's mother is already waiting on the front porch with her when we pull up, cell phone in one hand and squirmy little girl in the other. It's the first time I've seen her, aside from in Alexis's baby pictures Dom has in an album. She looks very, very much older now.
She's either texting someone or playing some game on her phone, but she looks up when I get out of car. “You're Taylor?”
For some reason I'm surprised that she knows my name, which is ridiculous. “Yeah. Hi, Lexie.”
“It's Alexis,” her mom says, sharply.
“All right.” Dominic calls her Lexie. Maybe that's why they got divorced.
She stops squinting at me like she's trying to see my soul through my eyeballs and turns to the car, shading her forehead with her hand so she can see in. “Who's that, your boyfriend?”
“Just a friend who has a carseat,” I say.
She stands up and brushes her pants off, apparently satisfied. “Okay.” She scoops up Alexis and gives her a hug and a kiss on top of her head, then hands her off to me like Alexis is some baby who can't walk. Predictably, Alexis squirms out of my arms the second her mom's back is turned and stomps her little self over to the car.
“Hi, Alexis,” Theo says to her, while I buckle her into the carseat.
“He's not your boyfriend?” Alexis says, eyes narrowed like her mother's.
“No.”
“Hmmm,” she says.
7
We win our first swim meet. Theo isn't there because he has auditions for the school musical—Guys and Dolls—but Josey comes. She reads her book through all but my events and doesn't cheer, which I like. don't think I want her having that kind of enthusiasm about me, even if it were genuine, which I doubt. But she hugs me after while I'm still wet and squishy in my bathing suit, and she comes out to pizza with me and Mike and Elisha and shows me Theo's text when he tells her he got the lead in the musical.
He texts me eight minutes later. Eight minutes. Maybe the least intentional amount of time in existence. I watch Josey pull a piece of pepperoni off her pizza and drop it into her mouth, and no matter what Theo said in the car, I don't think anyone's ever been less intimidated by me than this girl right here.
Maybe she really is over me, now. Isn't the whole courting whatever supposed to be made of everyone being afraid of each other? God knows it always is for me. And God knows I'm still afraid of her, finger-pepperoni or not.
“Did you have boyfriends when you were my age?” I ask my Mom. We're on the couch cutting up bridal magazines. She's wearing Dominic's cotton bathrobe, and I'm curled up with my feet on Alexis's beyond creepy stuffed clown. It's unbelievably comfortable, but if she weren't at gymnastics she'd totally kill me for putting my “brick feet” all over her stuff, which is a pretty solid insult. Maybe Lexie has a future career as one of
