I nodded. “So we can hang out and see if Andrew passes through.”
Mona studied me, her long fingers playing with one of her earrings. “You don’t sound very enthusiastic.”
“Oh, Ted’s great. And he’ll have the game on. I think Cabrera is pitching today.”
She laughed. “I’ve got to tell you, I’m not sure you’re even traveling to romance, at least when it comes to Andrew.”
I blushed.
“Want to spill it?” she asked.
Despite two refills, there was no ice left to stir in my glass. “Spill what?”
“Spill whatever is in your gut, whatever is making you hesitate when you answer my questions.”
I stared at my empty glass, then made a stab at explaining. “Sometimes I think that love is one big fairy tale. I wonder if people who say they are in love, if—really—they’ve just talked themselves into it. They want it so badly, they kind of make it happen. They fake it until they start believing their own story. Maybe that’s just sour grapes or something. Maybe because it doesn’t happen to me, I don’t want to think it happens to anybody else. You’re not arguing with me, Mona,” I said. “Tell me I’m wrong about love.”
She shook her head. “I started wondering the same thing about a year ago. I feel like I’m missing some kind of love gene. I think I’m falling for a guy, then he opens his mouth, and the spell is broken. I mean, if I find a handsome frog, the one thing I should not do is kiss it, because the frog will become a prince, and that prince will talk, and then I’ll want to dump him back in the pond!”
I laughed out loud, picturing Mona in a princess outfit, heaving a crowned jock into a swamp.
“Another iced tea, hon?” the waitress asked Mona, then me. We glanced at each other.
“No, no thanks,” Mona replied, then scooped up the camp materials she had spread on the table between us and stuffed them in her bag. “We’ll just take the check.” To me she said, “Well, now that we’ve gotten each other totally depressed, I guess we should go home. I’d still like a peek at Andrew. It would be fun to see what a walking romance character looks like. And we can check the baseball score with Ted.”
We left money for our food and a tip. By the time we reached my house, our bladders were bursting, and we raced upstairs to the bathroom, leaving Viktor flattened against the hallway wall and laughing. Then we headed next door.
I could hear the broadcast of the game and smell the fresh paint through the front screen door. “Hey, Ted,” I called, peering in. “Is it safe to come in?”
“It’s your head more than your feet you’ve got to worry about. You could end up looking like some pigeons have passed over.”
Behind me, Mona laughed.
“I’ve got to keep going for a moment, don’t want to lose my place,” Ted added.
Opening the door, I saw that he was on a ladder, painting a careful edge with a brush and shield at the corner of the ten-foot-high ceiling.
“I’ve brought Monalisa, my teammate from camp.”
“Hi, Monalisa,” he said, his back still turned to us, his focus on the strokes he was making where the ceiling met the wall. “Have a seat, but check it for paint splatters first. You might get polka dots on your behinds.”
Mona laughed again and we checked out the sofa. “You know,” I said, “this old couch looks better with the sheet on it.”
“No kidding!” He lowered his arms, examining the job he had just done. “The Orioles are winning…barely. Cabrera hasn’t had his stuff today, but—” he turned to look at us.
“But?” I said.
“But, uh, he was, uh—”
“Yeah?”
“Able to, uh—”
I waited a little impatiently as Ted stood above us, seeming unable to complete his sentence. In fact, he appeared unable to move and totally unaware that he was holding onto a wet brush rather than the ladder.
“Do you think you should put down that brush?” I suggested.
He glanced down at it. “Good idea.”
After placing the brush carefully on the paint tray, he turned back to us. “Hi.” The shy greeting was directed to Mona.
“Hi,” she replied in an equally soft voice.
“But Cabrera was able to what?” I asked, hoping Ted would finish his sentence.
“Uh, get out of the inning, I think. Yes. Twice, with the bases loaded.”
“Can you take a break, Ted?” I asked. “I think you’ve been standing near the ceiling too long.”
He glanced toward the ceiling, then descended the ladder and crossed the room. “I’m Ted,” he said to Mona and held out his hand. Mona shook it, as if she hadn’t noticed the paint on it, and maybe she hadn’t, for the next moment, they both looked down with surprise at their wet palms.
“Oh, sorry!” Ted said. “That was dumb, I’m sorry!” He glanced around, looking for a rag. “Here, wipe it off,” he said, offering his shirt, which, like all of Ted’s clothes, was sparkling clean, not a speck of paint on it.
“But I’ll ruin it,” Mona said.
He wiped his own hand on his shirt. “Now it’s okay,” he told her.
Mona laughed, then wiped her hand on his shirt as well.
What was wrong with him? I wondered. Either he had been inhaling paint fumes or—no, no, not him, not her. It couldn’t be!
Chapter 16
“So you’re Jamie’s teammate,” Ted said.
“Yes,” replied Mona.
“You, uh, are going to be coaching…basketball,” he remembered.
“Yes,” Mona said. “Both Jamie and I.”
“You, uh, play…lacrosse.”
Spit it out, Ted, I thought grouchily.
“Yes,” Mona replied sweetly.
“Jamie says you’re fantastic at it.”
“Yes…I mean, no!” Mona said, catching herself. “I play okay.”
Now I was wondering about her. What happened to wanting to dump a frog prince in a pond when he opened his mouth and had nothing to say? Not that Ted wasn’t fun to talk to, but at that exact moment he sounded like he was recovering from severe head trauma.
“So, would you like some iced tea?” Ted asked.
“Thanks, but if we drink any more—” I began.
“I’d love it,” said Mona.
Ted smiled. “I grow my own mint. And I make mint tea. From my mint,” he said.
“Cool!” Mona turned to me. “Let’s try some.”
“Already have,” I replied, then felt bad for my short answer. “But why not—it’s great.”
She and I followed Ted toward the back of the house.
“Hey, it sounds like the Orioles just hit a homer,” I called to them, suddenly hearing the roar of the crowd on Ted’s radio, and backing up to learn the details. Mona and Ted kept going. Sighing, I listened for the info and score, then joined them in the kitchen.
“It was.”
“Sorry?” Ted said.
“The Orioles. You know, Baltimore’s baseball team, the one you listen to every day, and Brian Roberts, one of your two favorite players—he just hit a three-run homer to put the Orioles ahead.”
“Good,” said Ted.
Had this been yesterday, we would have been dancing around, high-fiving.
“I didn’t know you were a baseball fan,” Mona said to me, momentarily becoming herself again.
“I told you I like to listen to games with Ted.”
I saw caution seep into her eyes. She glanced away, and I knew she was trying to remember everything I had said about Ted, then she focused on me again, as if trying to read my face.
No, no, no! I felt like screaming at her. He’s just a friend. I don’t want him to be anything else!
And I really didn’t, but I also didn’t want her to think of him as anything else. I was used to losing my guy buddies to another girl and could handle that just fine; they usually drifted back when it was all over. It was Mona I didn’t want to lose. I had finally found a soul mate, a girl who
was really interested in guys and who dreamed about romance, but who also thought that finding such a thing might be more difficult than earning Olympic gold. For fifteen minutes I was friends with someone who knew exactly how that felt, and now she was gone.
Of course, I knew how selfish and stupid I was being.
“So what school do you go to?” Ted asked Mona.
She hesitated, and I guessed that she didn’t want to admit to being in high school.
“Stonegate,” she said at last.
He nodded. “Off Lehman Avenue, where the camp is.”
“Yes.”
“Will you be a senior?” he asked hopefully.
“Yes.”
Good thing Ted never said that he wanted to dump a princess who couldn’t carry a conversation, the rotten part of me thought.
“So, uh, what position do you play in lacrosse?”
“Midfielder.”
Ted was impressed, I could see it on his face, because midfielders—which is what Josh was—did it all, defend, pass, shoot.
Be a friend, Jamie, I told myself. “You ought to see her play, Ted. She’s faster than anybody, and a great shooter.”
“I’d like to,” replied Ted, so earnestly, that for a second I wished I hadn’t said anything. If there was anyone who would be able to see all of Mona’s beauty, not just how she looked standing still, but her beauty in motion, it was a sports fan like him. I could picture the scene, the awed expression Ted would get on his face watching her play. He’d end up restricted to little more than a string of short sentences. Mona would leave him breathless. Why couldn’t I ever leave a guy breathless?
As we sat down at the kitchen table and sipped our iced teas—they sipped, I played with the sweat rings from my glass—the interview continued. They were curious about each other, but had a funny, almost charming shyness about saying or asking too much. When necessary, I filled in the awkward silences. I grew increasingly desperate to leave, but I wanted to be a friend and couldn’t think how to exit and, at the same time, encourage Mona to stay. While I was searching for an excuse, the back door opened.
“Well, hello,” Andrew said, looking surprised to see Mona and me. To his roommate he added teasingly, “And I was feeling guilty about leaving you home with the paint job. Next time, I’ll volunteer to do the ceiling.”
“You must be Andrew,” Mona observed. I saw her assessing him, as if she had finally recalled why we first came over. Andrew saw it, too, and seemed to take her interest as flattering. Ted saw Andrew’s reaction and began to look tense; he was afraid Andrew would impress Mona.
Well, he’d never worried about that with me, I thought. Why couldn’t a guy ever look at me and Andrew together, then want to strangle Andrew just for showing up?
“And you are?” Andrew asked his appraiser.
“Monalisa Devine.”
“Monalisa Devine,” he repeated, enjoying her name. “Two trochees and an iamb.”
“Excuse me?”
“Andrew is a poet,” Ted explained.
“Trochees and iambs are metrical feet in poetry—a description of rhythm,” Andrew said. “You have an inspired name.”
“My grandmother gave it to me.”
“As a birth gift,” Andrew guessed. “She wanted to ensure that you would be as beautiful and mysterious as DaVinci’s woman.”
Mona raised one eyebrow. “Actually, she was a fan of Nat King Cole, and ‘Mona Lisa’ was her favorite song.”
Ted laughed—a little too loudly, I thought.
“How clever of her,” Andrew remarked.
“Listen, Mona,” I said, “I forgot that I told my dad I’d call him—” I glanced at my watch—“between three thirty and four, and he’ll be disappointed if I don’t. But why don’t you stay and hang out?”
“Well,” she said, sounding indecisive for the first time since I’d known her, probably the first time in her life.
“May I have the honor of walking you home, Miss?” Andrew asked me gallantly. “We’ll take the long way,” he said, smiling and pulling my arm through the crook of his, guiding me out of the kitchen and toward the front of the house.
Passing through the living room, he eyed the open can, the brush with paint drying on it, and the unfinished ceiling. When we got outside, he asked, “Did I see what I think I did?”
“What do you think you saw?”
“Is something hot going on between them?”
“I don’t know,” I said, for some reason unwilling to share the details that I was mulling over in my own mind. “They’ve known each other for only forty-five minutes.”
Andrew smiled a different kind of smile than before, a sexy smile. “We’ve known each other for only a week. Things can happen fast. I missed you last night.”
“Did you?”
He looked into my eyes. “Very much.” He put his arm around my shoulder and led me in the opposite direction from my house, toward The Avenue. “The long route,” he reminded me, “at least around the block. Perhaps we could take a ride in my Jeep with the top down. It’s parked in the back.”
We walked in silence, his arm keeping me close. We must have made a striking pair—on The Avenue, people turned to gaze at us, and not in the usual way people look at me because I’m tall.
“Last night,” said Andrew, “I gave my most powerful reading ever, and I wished you were there for it.”
“I—well, maybe the next one,” I said.
“Afterward, people kept coming up to me, giving me compliments,” he went on. “They were really moved by the last two poems I read, the women especially. Or perhaps women are simply more comfortable about expressing their feelings and responding passionately to a poet. It can go to your head, Jamie.”
I thought, Perhaps, it already has.
“I’m glad it was such a great experience,” I said aloud.
“It would have been perfect if you had been there. What did you do instead?” he asked.
There’s nothing like bottled-up irritation to make you say things you wouldn’t normally say. “I shopped at Victoria’s Secret.”
His eyes widened. “Really!”
“I hope the weather is cooler tomorrow,” I said, changing the subject before I was asked to supply details.
“May I see you tomorrow night?” Andrew asked.
“Well, it’s my first day of camp, my first day of coaching.”
“You’re coaching?”
“Yes, I told you about it, remember? I’m coaching basketball in the morning and working as a camp counselor in the afternoon. I’m so excited!”
“I thought you were attending a lacrosse camp,” he said.
“That ended Friday, remember?”
He didn’t, I knew from the expression on his face, but I clearly recalled squeezing in an account of the last day of lacrosse as the waiter served our dinner salads and slipping in a brief description of my new job while we window-shopped in Fells Point.
“Sometimes you—just gazing in your eyes makes me very distracted,” he said.
“Oh.”
We turned the corner and I saw his Jeep parked against the backyard fence.
“It’s sizzling in the city,” he whispered. “Why don’t we find some cool country roads?”
Like a boat ride on a glittering city night, a drive with the Jeep’s top down on a summery country day was an incredibly seductive idea.
“I’d love it!”
“The seats are going to be hot,” he warned, “but at least they’re real leather and won’t stick to you like those of a cheap car. Here, you can use my shirt.” He opened the door on the passenger side, then removed his Tommy Hilfiger and spread it on the seat. He must have done his landscape work shirtless, or else he used a tanning salon, for there were no shirtsleeve or collar lines on his smoothly tanned body. I enjoyed looking at him and wondered to myself if some of the ladies who hired him for “private contracting” did as well.
Settled happily in my seat, I enjoyed the start a
nd stop of little breezes as we maneuvered through the city traffic lights, heading north, eventually passing the mall where my mother and I had shopped. About a half mile past it, the road became much greener, and began to dip and rise. I lay my head back against the soft leather seat, gazed up at the sky and the trees passing overhead, and sighed.
I heard Andrew laugh deep in his throat, then he reached for my hand. He slowly brought it to his mouth and kissed my fingers. We drove past horse farms—through steeplechase country, according to signs—and the rolling hills and drifts of wildflowers seemed to affect my head like wine. Now and then we passed beneath a tunnel of trees. Underneath a willow, Andrew pulled off the road.
“I don’t think you have to be a poet,” I told him. “I think that nature nurtures even ordinary girls like me.”
“You’re not ordinary, Jamie,” he replied.
I blushed.
“How could you be?” he added. “I would never fall for an ordinary girl.” Then his lips touched mine and he showered my face with light kisses. “Let’s sit on the grass,” he murmured between kisses.
He pulled a blanket off the backseat and spread it beneath the willow, with the Jeep shielding us from view of the road. Sitting on the soft cloth, he pulled me down with him.
As he started to kiss me again, I thought, If he had a blanket in his Jeep, he didn’t need to take off his shirt—which, I guess, was sort of unromantic of me to notice.
Andrew kissed my eyelids, then each ear. I felt his hands in my hair, expertly loosening it from its fasteners, taking it down slowly. Not like the guys at home, I thought, who rushed from a light kiss to an all-out effort, with no interest in warming up.
Andrew’s fingers lifted my hair and let it ripple. “My lioness!” he whispered.
The next moment I was flat on my back. So much for warming up.
I guess he didn’t need to—he was hot, very hot—in fact, his skin was sticky all over, and his kiss wet and smeary. I was totally turned off. Feeling his full weight on top of me, I knew I had to get him off.
“I don’t think I’m ready for this,” I said. With you, I don’t think I’ll ever be ready, I thought.
“Jamie, I want you so badly.”
“I’m sorry, I’m not here for that.”