Page 54 of Pride High

“Really?”she demanded.

“Well…” He tilted his head to the side and grimaced. “You know what would help?”

“What?”

“Combat boots.”

She snorted.

“I mean it!” he said. “You’d look so punk. And nobody would mess with you. Even the crazy guy who was yelling at the clouds earlier.”

Mindy managed a laugh that ended in a sigh. “I guess it’s not a big deal.”

“Your date doesn’t seem to think so,” he said with a wink. “If it makes you feel better, I’ll dump ketchup all over my shirt. Or mayonnaise, since that would show up better on black.”

“I’d rather you dump both on Omar’s head,” she grumbled.

“I know how you feel,” Anthony said as he leaned against the door. “In eighth grade he shook up a can of pop and gave it to me during lunch. It exploded all over, of course. For the rest of the day, everything was sticking to me. I probably looked like a ball of garbage by the time I got home.”

“He’s so stupid!” Mindy seethed.

“Sometimes. But not intentionally. Omar doesn’t always think things through. He’s a good guy though. I promise.”

She had plenty of evidence to the contrary, but that didn’t matter as much as this moment. Anthony was the actual good guy. That’s why he was standing in the women’s restroom right now, instead of the idiot who had done this to her.

“Thank you,” she said, zipping the jacket up. “You’re very sweet.”

“No problem. Do you want to go home? I think it would be fun to stay out, but I totally understand either way.”

She took one look at his gentle smile and decided that she wasn’t ready to give up yet.

— — —

Mindy was feeling better by the end of the movie. The Tivoli was an art house cinema, Omar informed them. She wasn’t sure what that meant exactly. That they only screened weird stuff, maybe. They watched an afternoon showing ofPaper Moon, which was about a con man and the scheming little kid he took under his wing. The story was surprisingly sweet and had her believing that love could be found in the strangest of places.

“How old was that movie?” she asked as they left the cinema.

“Not as old as it looks,” Omar replied. “It’s from the seventies, if I remember right, even though they filmed it in black and white. Directors should do that more often. I can’t imagine watching it in color. It wouldn’t be the same.”

She waited for him to make a dumb joke, but he didn’t. In fact, Omar hadn’t said a single word during the entire movie. Maybe he still felt bad about the dress.

The nice thing about being in downtown Kansas City is that everyone had their own style, so she wasn’t attracting as many stares as she’d feared. A woman even complimented her at one point. So when the others asked if she wanted to shop for a new dress or something lighter to put on over it, Mindy declined. Omar still looked stricken with guilt whenever the subject came up, but she didn’t go out of her way to reassure him. Not after all those times he’d called her No Milk Mindy. Junior high was ancient history, but as Maya Angelou had pointed out, you never forgot how someone made you feel.

“If I buy you a ring, does that mean we’re engaged?”

They were inside a jewelry store when Omar said this. Almost everything sold there was made by local artists, they learned. Mindy was browsing necklaces nearby. Anthony wasn’t far away.She noticed the way he stiffened at Omar’s words and frowned when Silvia responded to him.

“Sure! We can get hitched. I’ve already been married three times before, so I’m not picky.”

“Perfect,” Omar replied. “Hey, how about that one?”

Anthony rolled his eyes and went outside. Through the window she saw him look up at the sky, although he didn’t start shouting at it, thankfully. Instead he shook his head and seemed to notice something across the street. She watched him dodge traffic and enter a store she was familiar with.

“We’ll be across the street at the gay gift shop,” Mindy said to the others before following him.

Not feeling as brave, she went down the block to the pedestrian crossing and back up again to reach the store. She was already smiling as she went inside. There were all sorts of naughty things for sale. Greeting cards mostly, but also candy shaped like penises, edible underwear, flavored lubes, and other such items that were probably intended as gag gifts, but always made her wonder if people actually used them in the bedroom.

She found Anthony in a small section filled with books. He was peering intently at a cover that had a drawing of a leather daddy on it. “Any good?” she asked. “If so, I’m going to buy it as a present for my dad.”

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