I hug her, of course, and she and Theo kind of nod at each other, because how else are they going to great each other; shaking hands is entirely weird when you're both teenagers, and neither of them are really hug-on-first-meeting kinds of people.
“How was the drive?” I say.
“Windy,” she says. “And how about yours?”
“Oh, he lives like right around the corner.”
“I was joking,” she says.
“Oh. Obviously.”
She opens the sticky menu. “So what's good here?”
“Milkshakes.”
“Done.”
Theo's kind of searching for something to say. I probably should have left the driving question for him. When he says, “So do you have any other plans while you're here?” I'm very proud of him. That's definitely the kind of small talk a normal person would make. I know that's not his natural kind of small talk; one of the first questions he asked me was “So if you could be a robot, what kind would you be?” (I said a many-armed one with different attachments on each one, hands for dexterity, sticky pads for catching, hooks for my enemies, that sort of thing. When I asked him what kind he would be, he said, “Oh, you know, just your regular kind of robot,” which I enjoyed, because who the hell asks that question without having a funny answer prepared in advance? Theo Estival.)
He's continuing his trend of asking icebreaker questions he hasn't thought all the way through, however. “I'm only here for a couple of hours,” Aanya says. “Not a lot of time for sightseeing.”
“Right, yeah,” Theo says.
“Plus what is there really to do here?” she says. “It's not like a city or anything.”
“There's stuff to do,” I say.
“Yeah.” She ruffles the menu pages with her thumbnail a few times. “I'm getting cheese fries.”
So we get milkshakes and cheese fries and soup and I try to get Aanya to freaking relax by asking her questions about our school friends that I already know all the answers to, because I just saw her a few months ago. Then I ask her about Jake, to give her an opportunity to get excited about people's relationships.
“Oh, we're great,” she says. “He really treats me well, you know?”
“Yeah, I know,” I say, because of course I know. And then I realize she's not saying this for my benefit.
“He's always really there for me,” she's saying, and now she's not even going through the trouble of pretending to look at me instead of him. “He lets me know I always come first for him.”
“I'm not sure anyone should ever always come first for anyone,” Theo says. “What if his brother was drowning, then are you still first?”
“He doesn't have a brother,” Aanya says.
Theo starts to say something, but I squeeze his hand hard and he closes his mouth. “Good boyfriends are hard to come by,” I say. “We both got really lucky. Remember what a jerk Trevor was?”
“I don't know.” Aanya eats a fry. “He wasn't that bad.”
“What? He cheated on me.”
She raises her eyebrows, slowly.
God.
Thank everything Theo's phone rings then. He checks the caller ID, then says to me, “Is it okay if I...?”
“Yeah, go ahead.”
“Sorry, I'll be right back.” He kisses my cheek and ducks outside.
“Is that her calling?” Aanya says.
“Did you see me ask?”
“Jeez, calm down.”
“Me calm down? Okay, fine, I'll be more subtle, like you with your totally stealthy jibes about how Jake doesn't have any other girlfriends or how it should be totally fine that your ex-boyfriend cheated on you.”
“He didn't exactly jump to your defense,” he says.
“He's trying to be respectful! Of the fact that you're my best friend and he probably shouldn't call you out on being a dick the first time he meets you.”
“I'm just trying to look out for you,” Aanya says.
“Yeah, well, stop.”
Her face softens a little, and she reaches across the table and links her pinky with mine. “You know I can't do that,” she says, all gentle.
“He makes me happy,” I say.
“I get that, but can you actually tell me you wouldn't be happier if you had him to yourself?”
And I want to deny it, to snap something back, but I can't. Maybe because it looks like Theo's hanging up out there, or maybe because it's Aanya and I've already snapped at her way more than is comfortable. But...it might be because it looks like Theo's hanging up and I don't want to hurt his feelings, and because it's Aanya and I'm not used to bending the truth for her.
Because the truth is that I don't know. I just don't. The truth is that I do still daydream about what it would be like if Theo and Josey could somehow amicably break up and we could all stay friends but Theo would just be all mine. She'd be the friend he hangs out with when he's not hanging out with his girlfriend, the friend he sometimes impolitely blows off because people sometimes impolitely blow their friends off to hang out with their girlfriends. I'd be able to bring him home and introduce him to my parents, and we could plan a kind of future that I've always imagined for myself, and we could walk around holding hands at school and I would never have to steer into a skid ever
