and hell if I’m not reacting like she’s unzipping my jeans.
I edge away, scratch the back of my neck, which doesn’t itch, a little dizzy.
She pulls my arm to her stomach, holds it steady, and plasters on the patch. “Change it once a day. Different location. Six to eight weeks.”
“Did you have a secret vice, Alice? You sound so knowledgeable.”
“I read directions. Another thing guys rarely do.” Patting my arm, she flips my sleeve back down, hesitates a second before meeting my eyes. “What you’re doing is tough, Tim. Not drinking, no drugs. Living on your own. Add quitting smoking. I admire you for it.”
I stare at her. “For real?”
“Of course. I’m nineteen and still at home. This is no easy thing” – she reaches out and taps where the patch is under my shirtsleeve – “but you don’t always have to take the hard way. Not when there are easier ways.”
My throat tightens. Of all people I expected to . . . whatever, Alice might be dead last. I swallow. Her green-brown eyes are sincere. I lift my hand a few inches toward her cheek. Then drop it, shove it in my pocket as I stand, jingle the loose coins in there.
Alice inspects me sharply for a sec, school-marm-over-her-glasses-style, then licks her lips and looks away, wiping her palms on her scrubs. She stands up. “What’s it with you and the Grape-Nuts? Besides pizza, it’s almost all I ever see you eat.”
“I like Grape-Nuts.”
“You live on Grape-Nuts. That’s more than liking. It’s obsession.”
“You sure are getting worked up about this.” To keep my dangerous hands occupied, I pour myself a bowl, get milk out of the fridge, sniff at it.
“Well, it isn’t rational.”
Her tone is mad huffy. Why? What’d I miss?
“All this emotion over cereal? What do you care what I eat?”
“You’re all thin and pale, Tim. You look like you’re not sleeping. People worry about you.” She lobs her droopy, too-big purse back over her shoulder. “I should get going. I’m on babysitting call tonight.”
I move between her and the door before I can think. “Okay, Alice. I’ll grant that worrying people has always been a talent of mine. But my family’s pretty much given up. You’re the one who came all the way over here to save my ankles and so on. Are we talking worrying people . . . or are we talking worrying you? ” The words rush out, hover in the air. I’m noticing again how little Alice is, aside from those curves, barely coming up to my shoulders. Five two? Five four?
She yanks her purse onto her shoulder again, looks down. Her cheeks go pink.
“Well?” I ask, because I’ve pushed it this far already.
One finger after another, she ticks things off. “You’re my little brother’s best friend. Though sometimes I have no idea how or why he puts up with you. You’re a minor. You’re a potential, if not an ongoing, disaster. You –” Then she sighs, shuts her eyes. “Listen, I have a long day tomorrow. Three classes, a clinical. When I get through it” – her voice drops to a low mutter, like even she doesn’t want to hear what she’s saying – “could we just meet for dinner? Like a . . . sample date?”
This goes through me like an electric shock.
A date.
With Alice Garrett?
Wait.
A sample date?
“What would we be sampling?”
She looks like she might laugh. Doesn’t. “Not that. I don’t do hookups.”
“I didn’t mean that. I never thought that for a second.”
She gives my shoulder a shove. “Of course not.”
“Okay. But it was like a millisecond, a nanosecond. Then I remembered how much I respected you and that I would never –”
Alice puts her hand, her fingertips, over my mouth. “Tim. Stop talking now.”
I snap my mouth shut.
“We’d be sampling dinner. ”
Then I remember a certain two-hundred-and-fifty-pound boyfriend. Who apparently already hates my ass. “Wait. Is this a setup? Are you trying to get my ass kicked by ol’ Brad?”
She shakes her head quickly, pulling her hand away from my face and burying it in the pocket of her scrubs. Her purse strap falls down again. My hand goes to slip it back up, but then no, I shove it back in my pocket.
Alice hesitates for a second, then: “This has nothing to do with Brad. He wouldn’t mind, anyway.”
“Then he’s even more of a putz than I thought. Hard to believe.”
Her eyes flick to mine, then away. “It’s not like that.”
It’s not? Okay. So that makes me . . .
Dinner.
“Meet me at Gary’s Grill in Barnet. Six thirty. Tomorrow night.”
Barnet is three towns away. Apparently Alice isn’t prepared to be seen in the immediate vicinity with her underage, recovering alcoholic sample date.
I say I’ll meet her there. She nods, gives me a subdued version of her sexy, crooked, smile, then her lips brush my cheek. That Hawaii smell. Oh, Alice.
“See you then.”
I nod, speechless, and shy-Alice morphs back into take-charge-Alice, jabbing a finger at me. “Don’t you dare be late. I hate it when guys pull that, like my time doesn’t matter. Like they’re all casual and time is a relative thing while I’m sitting there with the waiter pitying me.”
“Should we synchronize our watches?”
“Just don’t let me down.”
Waiting out in front of Hodges, school number one of my three, is bizarre. I’ve been back for Nan’s this-or-that achievement awards, but my neck still starts to itch as I stand there, like I’m stuck in the old uniform, gray flannel pants and stiff white shirt.
Here to pick up Samantha, offered to walk with her to the condo she and her mom moved into a week ago – ol’ Gracie’s brilliant plan to get her away from Jase and the Garretts next door, by relocating crosstown. Out of sight, etc.
She comes out of the big-ass oak doors, down the steps with the stone lions, spots me, waves, then halfway down the path, gets called over by this cluster of girls. They’re laughing and gesturing, and in their matching outfits, long straight hair, prep-clean looks, Hodges could slap ’em right on
