After the improv show, Matty met me in the lobby in a different outfit. Thank god. I didn’t want to go to dinner dressed as a sad mime couple.
“What did you think?” he asked.
“It was great!” I lied, trying to be nice.
“Really?” Matty asked, smiling back. What was this, twenty questions? I already said it was great.
“Totally,” I replied, using his favorite word. What were Fabián and Ruth doing? Probably watching something funny at Fabián’s. I’d tried so hard to get this date set up, but after pretending to politely laugh for the last hour, I was already exhausted. Maybe dinner would be better.
“All right, let’s go get some food. I’m starving,” Matty said, taking my hand.
He took my hand.
I was holding hands with a guy in public! It made me feel like I was walking on air, especially since Wesley and I had never really gotten to that moment, except for that one day on the beach.
I tried hard to hold in the huge smile on my face, but since Matty was walking in front, I let some of it slip out. I would take my victories wherever I could.
■ ■ ■ DINNER LATER
Horror of horrors, I forgot that dinner was the part of the date where there were no distractions and it was up to the two of us to make conversation. Normally, talking was really easy for me, but for some reason our conversation at the restaurant kept stalling. Probably because I’d never said more than a handful of words to Matty before.
Things we discussed:
The weather
Classes at school
Band
The shape of the saltshaker on the table
Whether the burger was a good bet, or maybe the grilled cheese?
By the time our food came, I was desperate for real conversation.
“Grilled cheese,” I said out loud. “Yum.”
“Totally,” Matty replied. He ate his burger easily, not thinking about whether bits of the sesame bun would get in his teeth, or whether it would be weird to be eating so much food on a first date. Even the way he tore into his burger was adorable. Dang it.
I picked up my grilled cheese. It came with a side of tomato soup, and I dunked bits of the sandwich into the bowl before taking a bite. I had considered getting a salad, something all women in the movies seemed to eat in every date scene, but then I remembered I didn’t need to try that hard anymore. I could order the most garish and obnoxious thing I wanted.
“Whoa,” Matty said, commenting on my submerged sandwich. “Does that taste good?”
“Yes!” I beamed, glad to have something to talk about. “My mom used to make this for me since it’s pretty easy. But it tastes better if you use sound effects.”
Matty gave me a look like, Huh?
“Oh no! Don’t drown me!” I demonstrated in a high-pitched voice, soaking the grilled cheese in the soup. Then, in a lower voice, I replied to myself, “‘It’s too late, Captain! She’s gone too far! She’s fifty percent tomato now!’ ‘Ack, we’ve lost another one to the soup!’” I switched between the different voices of what must have been a very panicked crew aboard the SS Grilled Cheese, who for some reason sounded Scottish. And then I took a huge bite. “Nooo!” I whimpered, pretending to be the innocent passengers on board.
I grinned at Matty, waiting for my applause. Instead, he stared at me like I’d grown another head. Huh, Fabián and Ruth always thought that was funny.
We ate quietly for a little bit, Matty not commenting on my excellent interpretation of the Titanic. Lord help me, this was so awkward.
“So . . . ,” Matty began again. “What do you want to be when you graduate?”
Oh god, I was only fourteen! How was I supposed to know? I wasn’t like Amir who was probably already drafting his first novel, or Fabián who was going to sign with a manager soon.
I swallowed a spoonful. “Um. I don’t know yet.”
Matty nodded like I’d said something really interesting. “Totally.”
“How about you?”
He stared thoughtfully at the wall next to me, thinking of an answer. I considered stealing a fry from his plate, then wondered whether he’d laugh like a normal person or just stare at me like I was weird again. “I’m not sure either yet, but I’d love to be an actor, or a singer-songwriter, if I could.”
I nodded. “That’s cool. Is that what you want to study in college?”
Then Matty launched into this big spiel about how he was going to apply to liberal arts universities, then from there try to make it in New York or LA with his music or his acting, but I wasn’t really paying attention. Suddenly, I wished my friends, and not Matty, were sitting across from me, and we were talking like it was the easiest thing in the world and they had laughed at my soup escapade. We could have been brainstorming our Halloween costumes, or deciding what we wanted to do after Homecoming. It had been a while since the three of us had hung out on our own outside of school or our houses. And then I wondered what Amir was doing again, and I wished it was him sitting with me, too.
“So, yeah,” Matty continued. “It’s been cool working with Fabián. He has an interesting process.”
“Hmm?” I had zoned out. My ears perked up at the mention of Fabián’s name.
“For the school play? We’re doing Twelfth Night. Fabián got Orsino, which I wanted, but playing Sebastian is going to be cool, too.”
“Yeah,” I replied. “That’ll be cool.” How many times was I going to use the word cool?
“And we get to make our own set designs, which
