“No. Is that bad?”
“He’s probably still sleeping.”
“Okay.” I reached for my phone, then paused. “Should I text him? What should I say?”
“What do you want to say?”
“That I …” I had no idea. “I’m terrible at this!” I cried, tossing my phone onto the couch. “I don’t even know what to say! Why can’t they teach this in high school? I’m good at so many things, why can’t I be good at this, too?”
“We all shine in our own special star way,” Roux assured me.
“No, I should know how to do this!” I protested. I got up off the couch and started to pace across the dark hardwood floors. “I mean, I’ve done some really difficult things before! Like, really difficult! And now all I have to do is text someone and it’s like my thumbs are broken.” I held up my hands in front of Roux and shook them. “Look, broken thumbs!”
Roux gave me the side eye. “Do you need something?” she asked. “Because my mom’s got a stash of pills in every color of the rainbow.”
“No, I’m fine,” I said.
“Really? Because your eyes look like they’re spinning counterclockwise.”
“I’M FINE!” I took a deep breath. “I’m fine. I just feel like I’m screwing up a lot of things here.” Talk about understatement.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” Roux announced. She looked much better than she had when I first arrived, and I realized with a start that she must have been really lonely before I arrived in town. This girl-talk thing was right up her alley. “You’re going to text him and say something about the ring or the ice cream. Visual cues, if you get what I’m saying.”
I held my phone in front of me. “Just like, Thanks for the ice cream?”
“No. That’s lame. Try something like—”
But she was interrupted when my phone started to ring. It was Jesse’s number.
“It’s him!” I screamed. “Oh my God, what do I do? Do I answer?”
Roux jumped up on the couch, screaming along with me. “Answer it! No wait, don’t, don’t!”
“Why not? It’s still ringing!”
“Voice mail! Voice mail!” Roux was so excited that she spilled her coffee all over the couch.
“WHY?”
“Trust me!”
“AAAHHH!”
Roux did a victory dance that looked a lot like the Funky Chicken that my dad sometimes did to embarrass me or cheer me up. “He called you first! He wants to talk to you!”
“And now he probably thinks I’m lost in Siberia or something because I didn’t answer it!”
“Lost in Siberia?”
“It’s a lot more possible than you might think,” I informed her.
“Whatever. You don’t want him to think that you’re just around whenever he calls.”
“But I’m totally around! I was even holding the phone!”
“No, let him wait. Let him think you’re busy with other things. Guys love the chase.”
“Okay, seriously? This is the twenty-first century. That’s ridiculous.”
Roux shrugged. “You came here for my advice and sweet company. Now you have both.”
I looked at my phone. No voice mail. “He didn’t leave a message. He hates me. He’s going to ask for his ring back.”
“Never return the ring. These are gems I’m giving you here!” Roux flopped back down on the couch next to the coffee stain, not even bothering to try and clean it up. “Call him back in two hours, after you run those errands for your mom.”
“The errands? Oh, right, right.” In all of the excitement, I had forgotten that I was supposed to be meeting with Angelo. “Are you sure?”
“Look, I realize that you met me after I achieved social martyr status, but trust me. I still have the touch. This kind of gift doesn’t just disappear.” She finally dabbed at the stain with a napkin, then gave up and tossed it on the hardwood floor.
“Do you not have a housekeeper?” I finally asked. “Or at least some stain remover under the sink?”
Roux just shrugged. “Inez doesn’t work on Sundays. She has a family.” She looked a little lonely when she said that, and I realized that if it weren’t for me coming over this morning, Roux probably wouldn’t have talked to anyone all day. I wished that I could invite her over to dinner, or at least maybe tea with Angelo, but there was no way. I had already mixed enough business with pleasure this weekend.
“—when you call him back,” Roux was saying, and I forced myself back into the conversation, “just act cool. Answer questions, don’t ask them.”
“I can do that,” I told her, and it was true. If there was one thing I could do, it was draw information out of people without giving up too much of myself. Finally, being a spy was paying off in at least one romantic area.
Roux looked unconvinced. “Really?” she asked through another mouthful of bagel. “I find this hard to believe.”
“Have faith,” I told her, then started to get up off the couch. “I gotta go meet—run those errands.”
“But you didn’t even finish your bagel.”
I felt terrible, but I couldn’t keep Angelo waiting, either. “Yeah, my parents are really pissed that I came home so late last night.” Roux’s face fell even further. “No, I mean, they’re not mad at you or anything.”