Page 14 of Better Than the Movies
“Shutup!” I died laughing then, leaning into the memory of those good times. They were pure, in a way, untouched by mystressful senior issues that had stained the memories we’d been making this year. “Did it kill you not to take credit for it?”
She nodded, stood, and went over to my closet. “Big time, but I knew we’d come out looking like obsessed stalkers if I confessed.”
I watched as she flipped through my dresses, and then she asked, “Where’s the red checked dress?”
“It’s buffalo plaid, and it’s on the other side.” I pointed and said, “With the casual shirts.”
“I knew the layout, but I would’ve pictured it with the dresses.”
“Too casual.”
“Of course.” She looked through the other rack, found the dress, and then pulled it off the hanger and draped it over her arm. “So what’d you do tonight? Just homework?”
I blinked, caught in the headlights, but Cass and Kate weren’t even paying attention, and Joss was looking at the dress. I cleared my throat and muttered a quick, “Pretty much. Hey—do you know how much ofGatsbywe’re supposed to read for tomorrow?”
Cass said, “Guys, we need to hit it” at the same time Joss said, “The rest of it.”
“Thanks,” I managed, while my friends made their way to the window and scrambled out the same way they’d come. Joss was about to swing her leg over when she said, “Your hair looks supercute like that, by the way. Did you curl it?”
I thought of Wes’s living room and how drenched my hair hadbeen when I’d arrived. “No. I, um, I just got caught in the rain after school.”
She smiled. “You should be so lucky every day, right?”
“Yeah.” I pictured Wes’s cartwheel and wanted to roll my eyes. “Right.”
CHAPTER THREE
“You’re late.”
“You’re stunning.”
“You’re forgiven.”
—Pretty Woman
It was seven fifteen and Wes hadn’t shown up yet.
“Maybe you should walk over there.” My dad looked up from his book and stared directly at my tapping fingernails. “I mean, itisWes.”
“Translation,” said Helena, giving me a smirk. “Your tapping is driving him to distraction and he thinks your date is capable of forgetting you entirely.”
“This isn’t a date.”
My dad ignored my comment, set his book down on the table beside him, and gave Helena a grin. “Actually, her tapping is driving me to distraction and Wes Bennett is capable of anything.”
My dad and Helena started doing their hilarious banter thing on the love seat, and I had to fight to hold in the eye roll. Helena was awesome—she reminded me of a blond Lorelai Gilmore—but she and my dad were sometimes a lot to take.
He’d met her in a stuck elevator—for real—exactly one year after my mother had died. They’d spent two hours in forced confinement between the eighth and ninth floors at the First National buildingdowntown, and they’d been inseparable ever since.
It was the epitome of irony that they’d had the ultimate meet-cute and seemedmadefor each other, because she was the polar opposite of my mother. My mother had been sweet, patient, and adorable, like a modern version of Doris Day. She’d loved dresses, homemade bread, and fresh-cut flowers from her garden; that was all part of what my father had fallen madly in love with.
He’d said she was enchanting.
Helena, on the other hand, was sarcastic and beautiful. She was jeans and a T-shirt, let’s-pick-up-takeout, I-don’t-like-rom-coms, yet my dad was lost to her the minute that high-rise elevator malfunctioned.
In an instant, I’d lost my grieving buddy and gained a woman who was nothing like the mom I’d cried for every night.
That had been a lot for eleven-year-old Liz to handle.
