Was it Christy Vargas, the person whom Paige shared a short-lived friendship with in eighth grade? Christy Vargas, an image of the most dramatic year of Paige’s life? Christy Vargas, the one person in the world that Paige truly hated and feared at the same time?
Paige had sworn she would never see her again since The Incident, with Christy’s family moving a lot because her dad was in the Marines. But there she was, with her dark brown curls tied in a high bun, as she stared back at Paige. Again, what the fuck was she doing here, of all places? It was where The Incident happen, so why come back to the place that brought back those miserable memories?
Christy Vargas, who actually looked better three years older than when they first met, lifted a corner of her lips. “Weird to see you here,” she began. Her left eye wandered inward, just like Paige remembered.
She tried to put on a face as stone-cold as Christy’s even though her hands shook underneath the table. “What are you doing here?”
“I did enough stalking to get a job here on the exact night you’d be here. And you know I’m here to wreck the rest of your life.”
Paige shook her head. “Stop it, please.”
“Geez, calm down. I applied for a job here after I moved back.”
“Why?”
“Because my family is broke as fuck and I need to help provide.”
Paige shook her head again. “Why did you come back?”
Christy’s expression softened for a millisecond before she put back on her stone-cold-bitch face. “None of your business. But I’ll be honest, I actually didn’t expect to see you at work tonight. I wanted to carry out my plan of revenge as soon as I started school.”
“Please tell me you’re still kidding.”
But Christy just shrugged. “It’s not like it hasn’t been something to think about in the last three years.” And with that, she left to wait on a table near the bathroom.
A headache struck Paige’s head, and she rested her forehead on her fist. Just like that, she was depressed again. This night was an incredible roller coaster with twists and turns and climbs and drops.
Then Andrew came back, but Paige didn’t want to deal with him anymore. Her headache was making her thirty times crankier.
“What did you and Colette talk about for the past hour?” she asked while resisting the urge to add more sarcasm in her voice.
He raised his hands up. “Hey, that wasn’t an hour, okay? We just talked about her job. And how Gary might like her.”
“Pft. Gary doesn’t have crushes.”
“Yeah, he better not. I can’t see him with Colette, period.” He shook his head and folded his arms.
Did he really have it that bad, and during this date? She sat back and wondered how anyone, even his best friends, could deal with someone like him.
As soon as Mark, while carrying plates on his hands, came out from the kitchen and headed to their table, her spirits lifted right away. She remembered she needed to give her number somehow. Flat-out asking in front of Andrew sounded acceptable at this point.
As Mark set down the food, he looked at Andrew messaging on Snapchat and turned to Paige. She nodded with her lips forming a thin line.
“Hey, um, do you have a pen?” she asked.
“Yeah.” He searched his pockets and handed one to her.
She wrote her number on her napkin and gave it to him. “If you ever get lost or need a date, feel free to ask me.”
“Sweet. I got something for you, too,” he said, winking. “I’ll come back later.”
Paige still had her smile on as she ate when Andrew put away his phone.
“Why the smile?” Andrew asked as he forked a scallop.
She half-shrugged. “The food’s good.” Or was it because their cute and punny waiter served her pasta? After all, the pasta was the cheapest and least appetizing one on the menu, so it was most likely because of Mark. She wondered if a certain body part of his tasted good, too.
He finally appeared from the kitchen with a tiny bowl of gelato. Chocolate?
“Yum,” she commented.
“It’s on me. Hope you like it.”
Cutie was serving her free gelato? It couldn’t get any better than this.
She ate a spoonful and nearly squealed at the sudden coldness, but it was pretty good. It had a different kind of chocolate flavor, though. Maybe gelato tasted different? She never tried until now since it was so expensive.
“Why don’t I get free gelato?” Andrew pouted.
“Maybe he’ll get you one too.”
“Pretty sure it’s only for you. And he’s looking at you.”
On reflex, she turned around, and sure enough, he was leading a family into the restaurant while he stole a glance at her. She felt as though her cheeks were gonna hurt for the rest of the night.
“Are you sure you don’t know him?” Andrew asked.
“No. Well, not until now. And F.Y.I., he’s new to the school, so be nice to him.”
“Oh, really?” He put down his fork and studied Mark. “He actually looks familiar.”
“Or maybe he looks like any other Hispanic kid you know.”
“Hey, hey. I only said that once, okay? I just thought Diego looked like my gardener’s son. I don’t get how everyone recognizes me ‘cause of that one racist thing I said.”
Paige smirked as she scratched her left inner elbow. “Okay, well, I’m pretty sure Mark is new.”
“Okay, fine. He’s new.”
Paige took another spoonful of gelato, but her inner elbow got so itchy she put her spoon down just to scratch it some more. Oh, shit. Was she having an allergic reaction?
She checked her tiny purse if she had her allergy medicine. Crap, she might’ve left it at home. She forgot it sometimes, but did it have to be today of all days?
“What’s wrong?” Andrew asked.
“I think I’m getting an allergic reaction.” But the last half of her sentence was less audible.
“Huh?”
Her tongue had a numbing sensation and grew bigger in her mouth, and her other arm started getting itchy. But she didn’t eat any nuts, did she?
Then she looked at the gelato, her eyes widening.
“Can you try that?” she asked Andrew.
“Can I what?”
“Eat it!” she almost yelled. “What flavor?”
He ate a spoonful, seemed to think for a moment, and said, “Chocolate and...something nutty. I think.”
“Hey, something wrong?” Mark asked, giving her a mini heart attack.
She glared at him. “What flavor?”
“Chocolate hazelnut.”
Oh my God, this was so embarrassing. She could feel tears forming in the back of her eyes. “I’m allergic to nuts.”
“Allergic to what?”
“Nuts!”
“Oh!” He slapped his mouth with his hand. “Crap, I’m so sorry! What should I do?”
“No, no. It’s fine.” Her face grew hot as the people around them started to notice.
“I’m so sorry,” Mark repeated. “My sister said she knew you and that you liked chocolate and hazelnut together.”
She stared at him. “Your sister?”
And right before Paige could come to the conclusion, Christy appeared from behind him with a smug look.
Just like a rollercoaster, this night just got to the biggest drop that made her heart pump faster and Earth’s gravity suck her to the ground. Then she’d land in the middle of a street and get run over by cars until turning into a pulp. And even if that couldn’t happen, she knew exactly how it would feel like.
Her eyes started to release tears, which seemed to prompt Christy to snicker.
“I see you finally met my baby brother. You didn’t get to last time ‘cause, oh yeah, you never cared.” She laid an arm around his shoulders, but he shrugged them off and glared at her.
“This isn’t funny, Chris,” Mark muttered.
“It’s funny enough for pics.” She took out her phone and snapped a few pictures.
Andrew seemed to be encouraged as he pulled out his phone too. “Snapchat will totally dig this.”
Paige rushed to the bathroom, all while trying to will the tears back into her eyes. Even trying to will all the new information she just processed out of her brain wasn’t gonna work, so what was the point? The pictures of her crying with her gigantic tongue sticking out would reach every person in school before the next day, just like the nudes did.
She remembered Andrew saying Mark looked familiar, and now it all made sense. Andrew might’ve seen Mark during the few months when he and Christy went to Paige’s school. As for why she didn’t recognize him, maybe she only saw him a few times, especially since he was a grade lower than her? But the bigger question that really annoyed Paige, was how come she didn’t know who he was?
Coming to think of it, of course Paige never would’ve known, because Christy didn’t talk about herself. Paige managed to tell Christy about her nut allergy, yet Paige hadn’t even seen Christy’s home at the time. Their friendship was the shortest Paige ever had, yet it always had a way with guilt-tripping her every time the worst of the past visited her thoughts.
Ignoring a few rude stares, Paige took a long look at the mirror. She saw a raccoon face with the eyes and nose reddening. All she could do was wipe off the black smudges around her eyes and reapply her eyeliner.
After blowing her nose with toilet paper, she checked herself in the mirror one last time. She was going to leave the restaurant as soon as possible. Besides, she wasn’t hungry anymore.
As she approached the table, Andrew stood up as soon as he saw her. “Hey, are you alright? Do you need anything?”
She shook her head. “Can we leave now?”
“Uh, yeah.” He looked behind her, and she turned to see Mark walking toward her with anxiety in his eyes.
“Hey, um, some guy in the kitchen gave me this. For your allergies.” He handed her an antihistamine cream, which helped with rashes.
“Thanks,” she said, avoiding eye contact. She took a good amount of cream and handed the tube back to him. “Can we pay now?”
“Oh. Um, yeah.”
No more words were exchanged between the three as Mark gave them their bill, and thank God Christy stayed out of sight. At least Andrew paid for everything, since that was pretty much the only decent thing he did.
Paige continued to keep her eyes away from Mark, and he seemed to understand, for he didn’t try to talk to her again. There went her chance of finding something more between them.
Right before she and Andrew exited the restaurant, a hand grabbed Paige’s arm. She expected it was Mark, but instead it was Christy.
“There’s more where that came from, Connelly,” she whispered. “Watch out.”
Paige ripped her arm out of Christy’s grasp. “You should too.” And she stomped out of the place and went straight to Andrew’s car.
The whole ride to her house was filled with the faint sounds of the engine revving and the blinkers for turn signals. Fuck Andrew for having the smoothest and quietest ride she’d ever experienced in a car.
When he parked in front of her mom’s boyfriend’s two-story house, he stayed silent.
“Thanks for tonight,” she said out of her teeth. At least her tongue was less swollen.
“Sorry for what happened. And sorry for taking pics of you without your permission. Mark told me that was a dick move.”
That forced a laugh out of her. “I like how me getting an allergic reaction was what finally made you decent.”
“What?”
“Nevermind.” She sighed as she opened the door and stepped out. “See you at school?”
“Yeah. And B.T.W., I deleted the picture from my Snapchat Story. And no one saw it, so don’t worry.”
“Oh, okay.” She didn’t how she felt about that, maybe because the whole scene itself scarred her for life. “Thanks.”
After she closed the door and watched him drive away, she dragged her feet to the front door and searched for her keys. She couldn’t see shit, though, so she just leaned against the wall with self-hatred and shame and sadness surrounding her. She didn’t know how long she was there, but probably a while, since Mom just arrived from her seven to eleven o’clock shift at Starbucks.
“Why didn’t you go in?” Mom asked as she got out her keys to open the door.
Paige stared at her mom’s bright red ponytail and her black barista uniform. “I didn’t feel like getting out my keys.”
“Where were you tonight?”
“I had a date.”
“No fun?”
“Nope.”
“Come inside and sleep it off. It’s freezing outside.”
She watched as her mom entered the house. Paige’s phone buzzed in her purse, so she took it out and checked the screen.
A text from Andrew read, “Hope you feel better” with an emoji blowing a kiss.
And the picture following the message shocked her so much she immediately turned off her phone.
Did tonight really have to end with a dick pic?
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