“Well, they’re fried,” he said. Sam wondered what constituted “all the time.”
“Even better.” Jude pulled out her phone. “I’m going to tell my friends to come by.”
Sam nodded.
Jude was good about that sort of thing. Sharing and sometimes oversharing. They’d been thrown together at family functions a few more times and he’d eventually grown to enjoy her consistent stream of conversation. It was a nice respite from the rancor of the grown-ups, and even after the split, Jude never allowed Sam to lose touch. And he’d tried. Jude remembered birthdays and sent silly messages at the holidays with unsolicited updates from her life. Her congeniality was unflappable. Sam meanwhile had no idea when her birthday was ever since he deleted all his social media accounts.
“Do you want a coffee or something?” he asked.
“Iced please.”
“Milk and sugar?” Another fact he didn’t know about her.
“Tons,” she said, beaming.
• • •
“Yaasssssssssssss!!!!!”
A tall brown-haired girl dressed as if she were attending a desert festival galloped in, trailed by someone bearing an uncanny resemblance to the tiny Asian girl from the Japanese horror movie The Grudge.
“Yasssssss!!!” shrieked Jude back, hugging the brunette as the tassels on her shirt jangled.
“Bitch, finally!” yelled the taller girl. Their long knobby limbs reminded Sam of king crabs clasped in an embrace.
The Asian girl smiled at him for a second, then changed her mind. He responded with a grimace.
Jude untangled her tanned arms and lunged for the shorter girl.
“Hiiiiiiiiii,” sang Jude into her hair, practically lifting her off the floor. “Yay, it’s Penny.”
The girl patted his niece’s back twice—pat, pat—and locked eyes with him helplessly.
“This is my best friend, Mallory,” Jude said. “And my roommate, Penny.”
“So, you’re Uncle Sam,” said Mallory, reaching for his hand. She had a firm handshake. The sort that quickly became a contest.
“I’m Mallory Sloane,” said Mallory Sloane.
“Pleasure,” he said, refusing to acknowledge her grip. She bit her lower lip in a seductive manner. Sam smiled and quickly said hi to the other one. She waved at a spot slightly left of his ear.
“So, what can I do for you ladies today?”
“Can you make me a flat white?” asked Mallory, who kept her sunglasses on inside.
Sam loathed the arbitrary taxonomy of fiddly coffee drinks and had long since learned them all out of spite.
“Sure,” he said, grinding beans for a short shot.
“Do you know what that is?” she challenged.
“Yep,” he said. “Latte with a modified espresso to milk ratio. With microfoam.”
“Nice try, Mal,” said Jude.
“What are you having,” he asked. “Penny was it?”
Sam followed Penny’s sight line to her shoes. Which, coincidentally, were exactly his shoes though smaller.
“Great taste,” he said, nodding at her feet.
Penny’s mouth made the shape of an “O,” but no sound escaped.
Dorm lotteries made for the funniest groupings. Sam’s old freshman roommate, Kirin Mehta, used to sleepwalk and sleep-pee in a corner of their living room every weekend. Sam hoped that these two girls—the mute and the sexpot—got along for Jude’s sake.
“Let me guess,” he said to Penny. “You want a bone-dry half-caff cappuccino with a caramel drizzle?”
Penny cleared her throat and nodded.
“What are the odds?” he asked her, fairly certain that it wasn’t at all what she wanted.
Sam studied Penny out of the corner of his eye. Her messy hair lent her an air of zaniness. She looked like a scribbled-in-graphite drawing.
“Actually, may I have an iced coffee?” she piped up.
“Of course you may,” he said pointedly.
“Oh, Uncle Sam?”
He swiveled to see Mallory leaning toward him, elbows hooked on the bar. Her not-insignificant boobs were hoisted to where they almost hit her chin. She lowered her sunglasses with a silver-painted talon. Clearly, too much time had elapsed since Mallory was paid attention to.
“What’s up?”
“Is it true that you bake?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Maybe someday you’ll bake something for me,” she said, suggestively tilting her head.
He tilted his head to mirror hers.
“No maybes about it, Mallory,” he said. “Eat off Jude’s plate right now and I’ll have baked that for you. Happy trails.”
“You’re funny,” she tittered, sashaying off to follow her friend.
Sam shook his head. There was no way he was going to mix it up with a freshman. Let alone a friend of Jude’s. Even he wasn’t that dumb.
PENNY.
The three girls sat on a floral couch toward the back with Jude in the middle. They set down their drinks, and Penny noted that Jude’s femur was almost twice as long as hers.
“So.” Mallory leaned to address Penny. “Jude mentioned you were an only child too.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“I have two little sisters,” Mallory continued, sipping her coffee. “Whereas Jude hasn’t had to share anything in her life, let alone a room.”
Jude jabbed her friend in the ribs and grabbed another donut.
“What Mal’s so subtly trying to tell you is that I’m a slob.” Jude took a bite, spraying crumbs in her lap to prove her point. “Look, I’m way too busy living life to mull over something as dull as cleaning. Besides, everyone knows geniuses are messy.”
Mallory plowed on.
“It’s just that I happened to notice earlier that you were highly organized,” she said. “It’s going to make things interesting. I live in Twombly, but you should expect me around a lot.”
Ah, Twombly. Rich-bitch housing.
Penny wondered why Jude couldn’t just visit Mallory at Twombly. They had a Pilates studio in the basement and a screening room that showed movies that were still in theaters.
Sam met them with an espresso and set it down on the coffee table.
“Can you visit more with us?” Jude asked him.
“In a bit,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
The girls watched him go.
“Whoa,” said Penny, realizing what should have been obvious. “It’s not just the shoes,” she whispered.
“What?” asked Mallory in an outside voice. Penny huddled closer.
“Me and your uncle are wearing the same outfit.”
Jude and Mallory craned their necks. It was true; they were both wearing black T-shirts with three-quarter-length sleeves, black belts with burnished silver buckles, and skinny black jeans with holes at both knees and black high-top Chucks.
“Oh my God,” said Jude. “He was such a skater when we were kids. I didn’t realize he’d crossed over to the dark side.”
Mallory snorted.
“Remember in sixth grade when you had the wallet chain and those enormous, disgusting khakis?” asked Mallory. “God, you were obsessed with Uncle Sam. Watch, Jude’s going to start dressing in mourning garb now.”
Sam was arranging dirty mugs on a tray. He had a cowlick on his head. An unruly little curlicue that rose off his otherwise very cool hair. He probably hated it. Penny loved when that happened. When a single detail rebelled against the package. She wanted to touch it. Penny looked away before she got caught staring.
Mallory bit into one of the donuts. “Ack,” she said, sticking her tongue out like a baby. “I hate pistachio.” She removed the offending clump from her mouth with her fingernails and set the damp mass on the table.
Penny silent-screamed.
“Then why pick the one that is clearly pistachio?” asked Jude. “It literally has visible pistachio pieces on it. Mal, it’s green!”
Jude picked up the offending pile of mash with her bare hands and looked for somewhere to deposit it.
Penny silent-screamed harder.
In a flash, Penny removed a package of wet wipes from her backpack and handed one to Jude. Then she squirted hand sanitizer in her hands since she couldn’t bleach her brain. Best friends were one thing, but this was perverse. Who touches someone’s half-chewed food? And who spits out half-chewed food in public in the first place?
“Thanks,” said Jude, bundling the lump into the wipe. “How’s the pie?”
“Good.” Penny passed the rest off and took another half a donut before Mallory tainted the rest.
“Shit.” Jude bolted upright. A lurid red dollop of filling toppled onto her white shirt.
With her free hand, Penny offered Jude another wet wipe and a stain stick.
“Seriously?” Mallory grabbed Penny’s kit from her lap before she could protest. “Clown car much? Are you going to pull out a ladder and a Volkswagen bus next?”
Penny wanted to ask who in the hell would put a bus in a car but was distracted by whether or not she’d packed anything mortifying in her go bag.
“Good Lord, it’s like doomsday prepping in here.” Mallory pawed through the pouch. “Band-Aids, ChapStick, tampons . . . I’ve heard of teen moms, but you’re a teen grandma or something. Let me guess—you have little packets of Sweet’n Low and coupons too? How adorable.”
“So adorable,” repeated Jude, smearing the stain stick onto her shirt.
Penny despised the word “adorable.” It was trivializing.
Mallory continued laying out the contents of Penny’s emergency crap bag onto the coffee table as if they were surgical instruments. Hand sanitizer, ear plugs, thumb drive, Advil, Q-tips, bobby pins, sewing kit, tiny IKEA pencil . . .
“Ooooh, and a single condom.” Mallory held the foil square between her thumb and forefinger.
That was it.
Penny snatched back the condom and the bag, gathering her things off the table.