Lovestruck Summer Melissa Walker (top 100 books to read .TXT) 📖

shout, waving at him. He looks at me for a minute, like he’s trying to decide whether to come over. Does he think he’s too cool to sit at a table with interns? He’s always so nice at the Amalgam offi ce. “Hey, Quinn,”he says, when he fi nally graces us with his presence. “Hey there, Jade.”She gives a barely audible “hi,”still not look- ing up. “Sit down,”I say to Rick, scooting over in the booth. It’s bizarre to see your boss out. It’s kind of like seeing a teacher in the drugstore, when you realize that he is a person who has a life outside of your classroom, and maybe he’s

125 even wearing normal clothes or laughing with his wife or something. It’s all very humanizing. And seeing Rick out is, of course, way cooler than seeing a teacher, because he’s an amazing indie- record-label boss. So I really hope he sits down. But he doesn’t. “I’m here to check out a band that’s on after Sebastian,”says Rick, looking only at me and not at Jade, I notice. She has her eyes down slightly. “I’ve got friends coming, so I’m just gonna wait at the bar.”And then, even though I know he’s my boss and I really shouldn’t talk back or question him or whatever, it has to be said: “You guys are being weird,”I say. “Did Jade get fi red or something?”I’m just joking but my comment is met with Silence. Jade’s head lowers like the top of the table is the most interesting thing she’s ever seen in her life. “You guys have a good night, okay?”says Rick, backing away. “I see my friends over there, so . . .”“Dude, what the eff?”I ask Jade after Rick

126 is out of earshot. I smile inwardly at the fact that I self-censored my language, just like Russ did the other day. But when I see Jade raise her head, I real- ize this is something serious. Her mascara is streaked in canals down her cheeks, and her bright red mouth is curved into an unnatural shape of angst. “Oh my God,”I say. “You did get fi red.”“It’s not that,”says Jade, reaching for a tissue in her black canvas bag. Her voice is one of those jagged whispers that only crying people do well. She puts the tissue over her nose and blows. “I looked up to Pitt,”she says. “Huh?”I ask. “Looked up to Pitt? You mean Brad? I guess he’s kind of a role model, but I don’t think he’s anyone to get obsessed with. He’s old, and he cheated on Jennifer Aniston.”Why do I know this stuff? Jade lowers the tissue and looks me dead in the eye. “I hooked up with Rick,”she says, slowly and clearly. “Oh,”I say. Ooooooh. This is bad. “Is that legal?”I ask.

127 “Yes!”she snaps. “I’m eighteen.”Okay, okay, I guess that wasn’t the best question I could have asked. But I’m not sure what to say here. “Do you guys like each other?”I ask, trying again. “Well, I like him!”she says, shredding, piece by piece, the poor, wet tissue as she stares down at the table. “Is he looking at us?”I glance over her shoulder at the bar, where Rick is sitting on a stool and slapping the back of some overweight guy with a leather jacket and a buzz cut. “No,”I say, not sure if that’s what Jade wants to hear. She rips the tissue in half violently. Over the next twenty minutes, I’m able to glean through sniffl ing tones that Jade has always had a crush on Rick, and that being in the offi ce together this summer was part of her seduction plan. They had been fl irting con- stantly and hanging out sometimes after work. Which explains why Jade never wanted to talk about her own love life, and never called me to do anything during the week. And then last

128 night it came to a head. She and Rick hooked up in the demo closet. “That actually sounds kind of amazing,”I say. I’m picturing me with a guy in the Amalgam closet, listening to the Walters’still-unreleased album over the stereo while I prop my leg up on a mid-level shelf and get hot and heavy among the indie rock. “It was,”says Jade, looking at me with intense eyes and bringing me out of my fantasy. “Until he broke away from me and told me he thinks I’m hot but that I’m just a kid.”“Ouch,”I say. “He said ‘just a kid’? Those words? That’s like a lame sitcom diss.”“Yeah,”says Jade. “It’s the worst. I called in sick today and I don’t know if I can go back.”“I’ll be there for you Monday,”I say. “You have to show him that you don’t care. That you’re young and smoking and can get anyone you want.”“You think?”she asks. “Of course!”I say. “He’s lucky you turned those sexy brown eyes his way for a moment, but if he isn’t smitten, he’s forgotten.”

129 I sound like one of Penny’s self-help rela- tionship books. But it seems like the right thing to say, because Jade is perking up. “That’s pretty harsh,”says Jade, her voice fi nally losing that crying edge. “I don’t know if I can turn my feelings around like that. I just always thought he was my ideal. I mean, he’s the head of Amalgam Records, the guy who knows everyone in town, who has so much power and is still such a great person.”“It also doesn’t hurt that he’s pretty hot for a near-thirty-year-old,”I say. She smiles. “That’s true too.”“You don’t have to turn off your feelings,”I say. “You just have to be the intern. Go to work, be your professional self, then leave. You’ll fi nd another guy—a much more ideal summer fl ing fi t.”“Like you and Sebastian?”she asks. “Yeah,”I say. But when I look over at him, although I know he’s so beautiful and all, I don’t feel totally excited. And then I realize that when I imagined the