Relying On Ben and Jerry (Waltham #1)

Chapter Twenty-Four: From The Outside

“Why do you come to me for these kinds of problems?” Aubrey demanded impatiently. “They have people who are qualified for this. Like mailmen, or the dudes who work in the dairy section of the grocery store.”

“I’m freaking out right now,” I screamed at her, flailing my arms. “What if he doesn’t like me?”

“He wouldn’t try to kiss you if he didn’t like you, stupid,” she told me, rolling her eyes, but her rational thought didn’t quite touch me in a moment like that. I shook it off like a horse shakes off flies before I returned to my nervous pacing across my room, hyperventilating.

“What if I’m not skinny enough? Or pretty enough?” I demanded, horrified. “Maybe I don’t have enough kills on Call of Duty to be worthy of him. I mean, guys care about that kind of stuff, right? Video games and whatever is like God to them, right?”

“It is if we’re talking about your lazy ass of a brother,” she told me, “but when it comes to most people . . . No.”

I let out a frustrated scream and buried my head in my comforter, hoping to smother myself.

“Anyway,” Aubrey said, “didn’t this happen, like, a week ago or something?”

“Yeah,” I muttered.

“So . . . why are we talking about it?” she demanded.

“Because he asked me if I wanted to go into Boston tomorrow and I can’t decide if it’s a date or not,” I moaned, burying my head in my hands. “He didn’t mention the kiss or anything, and he didn’t try to kiss me again, but he was like, oh hey Lena you’re in my class fancy that. Then he was like, hey while you’re here want to go to the MIT market with me this weekend. And I was in my head all, what is an MIT market? But then he looked at me and darn it Aubrey he has an amazing shade of eyes and I panicked! And I said yes!”

“So what?” she demanded, obviously not seeing the dilemma to all of this. “It’s been a week, Lena. He asked you to go into town with just him. Even if he didn’t say that it’s a date, it’s written all over it in red Sharpie.”

“But what if it’s not?” I replied.

“It’s a date,” she told me, and since it was Aubrey and she felt that her word was kind of among the rank of the words of Jesus and the Mad Hatter, she explained no further.

“But what makes you so convinced about that?” I asked her, but she didn’t seem to hear me.

“Oh, dear,” she said. “I think I hear my dearest mother calling for me. Coming, Mother! Don’t worry, your darling daughter will be there in only a few more painful moments of separation!”

“Aubrey,” I said flatly, because I don’t think she realized that I could hear loud and clear that her mother wasn’t calling for her. I don’t even think she realized that I knew that her mother was still at work. Or maybe she did, and she was just being a horrible person.

She didn’t even look at me when she said, “Bye, Lena darling!”

“Aubrey!” I hissed, but the video call had already ended, and I was alone again.

I let my head fall back as I screamed up at the ceiling.

There was a soft knock at my door before my mother cracked it open, peering in through the space. “Is everything okay in here?” she asked soothingly, glancing around as if looking for a masked man holding a butcher knife or something. “There’s been too much screaming going on for my taste. Is it that time of month?”

“No,” I replied with a heavy sigh, closing my eyes. “But everyone is no help.”

“Oh,” my mother said lamely, before she shrugged. “Well, good luck with that.”