Flower Read online

  “I didn’t want your number,” I tell him, glad that the darkness hides my telltale smile. I’m enjoying this too much.

  “I think you did,” he says. “Otherwise you would have hung up by now.”

  Several seconds pass and I can hear his breathing on the other end. It makes my stomach quiver and a warmth brush over my skin. “Is there a reason you stopped by tonight? I noticed you didn’t come bearing coffee this time.”

  “You want coffee, it’s yours,” he says. “But this time you’re drinking it with me.”

  “I—”

  “It’s Friday night, Charlotte. Go out with me.”

  There are countless reasons to say no. My mother’s past. My sister’s present. My future.

  “One date,” he continues, his voice low, almost hypnotic. “Say yes. What do you have to lose?”

  Everything, I think.

  But my chest flutters. My mind swims with delirious thoughts of being close to him again, breathing in his rich, heady scent—and maybe feeling his touch against my skin just one more time. That’s all I need, just one more moment with him and then I can forget about him completely. I know I’m bargaining with myself. But I don’t care. I can feel myself giving in. “If I go out with you once, will you stop coming here?”

  “I swear,” he answers, and I look to see that he’s pressed his hand against the glass of the door as if to seal the pact. My skin burns as if he’s touching me. I end the call, not trusting my voice to be steady.

  I deliberately make him wait as I finish up in the shop, needing a moment to regain my composure. When I finally slip outside, he’s leaning against the car, and my heart starts racing all over again. He smiles, and for a second, his face is more open than I’ve seen it before.

  “Well?” I say, hoping it’s too dark for him to see my flushed cheeks.

  “You won’t regret this, Charlotte.”

  * * *

  We walk up Sunset Boulevard, on the fringes of Beverly Hills, where cafes dot the sidewalk, yellow and red umbrellas raised over round tables, white linens, and people sipping cocktails in the balmy evening air. It’s a different universe from where I live in Hollywood, even though it’s only ten minutes away.

  Tate is quiet for several blocks and I like the silence. I’m afraid of what he might say if he speaks. Of what I might say in return.

  “Are you hungry?” he asks finally, running a hand over his shaved head, only the short stubble indicating what color his hair might have once been: dark brown, I think.

  “I guess,” I answer, scratching at my wrist, rubbing over the lopsided triangle inked there, a self-made tattoo of blue ballpoint pen.

  “There’s a great place a few blocks up,” he says. “Lola’s.”

  I laugh, but then I see he’s serious. One dinner at Lola’s probably costs more than I make in a week. “Will they even let us in?”

  “Why wouldn’t they?”

  “Because we’re...” I pause, searching for the right way to explain, then spot a couple walking toward us, hand in hand. The guy is wearing a sharp gray suit, talking on his cell phone, ignoring the girl on his arm wearing studded high heels. “Because we’re not them,” I point out, nodding only slightly as they pass, all elegance and sophistication.

  Tate glances at me sidelong, amused. “Good point,” he says. “Then we’ll sneak in through the back. I know a guy in the kitchen.” One corner of his mouth is drawn up, and his eyes are wild with something mischievous. I shake my head.

  But I don’t stop walking; I don’t tell him that I should probably go back to the flower shop, where my rusted powder-blue Volvo is waiting. That I should go home. I don’t want to admit it, but I like this feeling: the stirring in my stomach, the flood of warmth across my neck and cheeks whenever he looks at me. Just one date, I remind myself. One date won’t throw me off track. Just one date and he’ll leave me alone.

  I almost believe myself.

  The windows of Lola’s glow ahead of us, lit almost exclusively by candlelight. Carlos and I have strolled past slowly many times—Carlos hoping to spot any one of his many Hollywood crushes, me just along for the ride. But we’ve never been so lucky. It’s nearly impossible to see the faces of anyone inside anyway, because it’s so dark. Which I’m sure is the point.

  As we get closer, Tate grabs my hand briefly and pulls me down into an alley. His palm is warm and strong, and I suck in a breath at the unexpected contact. He thumps his fist against a metal door once, then turns back to look at me. He doesn’t smile, but his eyes seem ignited.

  The door lurches open, grinding against the concrete floor before it swings wide. A man in a white coat and blue plaid chef’s pants stands just inside, wiping his hands on a white dishrag.

  “Tate,” he says, his voice sounding more than a little surprised. He glances into the kitchen, then back at us, his eyes washing over me quickly. I have the feeling that we shouldn’t be here—that this man isn’t going to let us in.

  But then the man’s mouth lifts into a smile, he steps forward, and he and Tate embrace like old friends. “Hey, Ruben,” Tate says.

  “Good to see you, man,” Ruben replies. “It’s been a while.”

  “I know,” Tate agrees, patting the man on the shoulder as they release. “Do you have an open table?”

  The man nods, still smiling, obviously pleased to see Tate. “For you? Always. Follow me.”

  Tate takes my hand again, leading me through the kitchen, where all the prep cooks and servers stop to stare at us. Ruben pushes through a door out into the dining area and catches the attention of a hostess. Her gaze flashes over us, smoky eyes smudged with eye shadow; she’s wearing a slim black dress that dips down between her cleavage. For a moment she seems paralyzed in place, like she’s forgotten how to do her job, but then she smiles, revealing big, perfectly spaced movie-star teeth. “This way,” she says sweetly, eyes flitting over Tate and then to me once more like she’s gathering data, assessing my appearance—my clothes, my hair, my lack of makeup.

  After a moment, she guides us along the back wall of the crowded restaurant. A quiet symphony of clinking glasses and silverware fills the air, the face of every patron aglow from the candles adorning each table. Even in the darkness of the room, I can tell this is the not the kind of place where a girl like me sits down across from a boy like Tate. Yet here we are, sliding into a booth in a relatively private corner of the restaurant.

  Tate leans back, watching me like he expects me to speak first. As much as I hate to oblige him, I’m too curious about what we’re doing here. “How often do you come here?”

  “Often enough,” he says easily.

  I feel my eyebrows lift. “Apparently.”

  “This place has been around since the thirties,” he says. “Humphrey Bogart used to drink here. It was just called the Club back then. He and the cast would come here after shooting Casablanca.”

  “I’ve never seen Casablanca,” I tell him.

  “What?” Tate sits forward.

  “I know, it’s terrible. I just...don’t have that much time to watch movies,” I reply, embarrassed.

  “What do you do when you’re not working?” he asks me. When I hesitate, he presses on: “You don’t work at the shop every day, so what do you do on Thursdays after school?”

  “You know my work schedule?”

  “It’s not hard to figure out.”

  “You realize that’s what stalkers do...track their victims’ schedules.”

  “You think I’m a stalker?” His eyebrows lift, his expression a little hurt.

  “Let’s just say I’m reserving judgment.”

  “I didn’t mean to freak you out. I only know your schedule because I’ve been to your work a few times and noticed when you weren’t there.”

  “And my phone number
?”

  “That was just a matter of convenience.” Our eyes connect across the table; his mouth twitches, then breaks into a smile that looks a little too unrepentant.

  I don’t want to, but I smile back. I don’t really think he’s a stalker, but it’s obvious he knows more about me than I know about him. “Fine,” I relent. “I have an internship at UCLA on Thursdays.”

  “Doing what?”

  “You’d think it was boring.” I press my palms against the surface of the table, feeling the smooth white fabric tablecloth beneath my fingertips.

  “How do you know?” he asks. “You don’t know anything about me.” It’s the second time he’s thrown my words from last week back at me. But the dimple flashes as he says it.

  “I work in a lab at UCLA that studies how spores disperse from fungi in the environment. Specifically how wind affects the spores.” I stare at him triumphantly, as if I’ve just won some battle, proving that maybe if he knew how epically boring my life was, he’d want nothing to do with me.

  But he rolls right over my answer with another question. “Do you like it?”

  “The research?”

  He nods, his gaze intent. As if he actually wants to hear my answer.

  “I guess.”

  “Wow, that’s convincing,” he says. “Why do you do it, then, if you don’t love it?”

  “I don’t have to love it. It’s just an internship and it’s good for my college application.” I glance away, hoping he’ll get the hint that I don’t really want to explain my choices to him. Thankfully, a waiter walks by and Tate signals to him with a quick wave of his hand. But instead of coming over to the table, the waiter nods back—a silent understanding—then hurries away.

  Tate turns back to me, resuming his questioning. “So when you’re not at school or working or at your internship, what do you do for fun?”

  “You forgot to add the newspaper club after school on Wednesdays, and my French study group every other Tuesday,” I say, half bragging, half embarrassed.

  “I’m starting to worry you have no social life.”

  I smile and don’t answer him, instead glancing across to the next booth over, where a handsome dark-haired man sits with an equally beautiful woman. I swear I recognize him: the face of someone famous perhaps. “Carlos would die if he knew I was here,” I find myself saying.

  “That’s your best friend?”

  I nod. “He’s obsessed with celebrities.”

  “And you’re not?”

  “I don’t have time to keep track of all the famous people in this city. However, if we see anyone even remotely famous, even a reality TV star, I might have to embarrass you and go get their autograph for Carlos.” I keep my face serious. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all,” he says, tilting his head and grinning. “I’ll even help you get said autograph.”

  “Oh, really,” I say, half laughing. “You’ll have to let me know if you see someone, then, because I don’t think I’d recognize Brad Pitt if he walked through the door.”

  “No?”

  I shake my head, fingering the shiny silverware arranged on a white cloth napkin. “For a lifelong Los Angeleno, I’m tragically un-savvy in the celebrity identification department.”

  “Noted,” he says, his lips curving again and setting me off-balance.

  A man arrives at our table, wearing all black and holding a serving tray filled with plates. He arranges the dishes meticulously on the table and stands back. “The rest is on its way,” he says, smiling politely at Tate. “Please enjoy.”

  “Thanks, Marco,” Tate says as the waiter steps away.

  “We didn’t order anything,” I whisper across the array of what appears to be appetizers.

  “They know what I like,” he says.

  “Seriously, how often do you come here?”

  Tate just smiles and I give in, lifting my fork to taste everything in front of me—delicately wrapped summer rolls and mandarin salad, a curry soup and an artful tower of grilled vegetables. Tate watches me, his gaze flashing across the table to see my reaction as I try each new dish. When the main courses arrive, wide flat noodles that make the air rich with the scents of ginger and spice, I’m unsure if I can eat anymore. But it’s so incredible that my taste buds demand just one more bite...followed by another, and another.

  I sit back in the booth when I’m done, satisfied and full and really wishing Carlos was here to experience this. He would die if he could see me sitting in a booth at Lola’s...across from a guy like Tate—any guy at all, in fact. If it wasn’t rude, I would probably send him a text: Guess where I am RIGHT now? But I refrain.

  The waiter never brings a check, but he exchanges another covert nod with Tate as the plates are cleared, which seems to be the only form of communication in this place. Tate sits back, too, eyeing me.

  I think again how little I know about him, and how much he knows about me. Time to even the score. “Since I don’t have the same resources at my disposal as you do,” I say, repeating his earlier explanation for how he obtained my phone number, “I’ll have to figure out who you are the old-fashioned way.” He looks uneasy for a moment, even though my tone is light and teasing. His gaze narrows, like he’s not sure what I’m getting at. So I ask, “How old are you?” Because it seems like the most basic first question to ask—and an important one.

  He squints, folding his napkin carefully and placing it back on the table, then says, “I’m nineteen.”

  “So you’ve already graduated high school?”

  “Sort of...but not from an actual school. I had tutors.”

  Trust-fund kid, I think but don’t say out loud. Now it’s all starting to make sense. “Interesting,” I say instead, tapping a finger against my chin, as if I were a reporter piecing the story together.

  “Oh, is it?” he replies with a smirk, eyes igniting on mine. He sees what I’m trying to do: extract whatever information I can out of him.

  “How old are you?” he asks in return.

  “Just turned eighteen.” But I sense it’s entirely possible he knew the answer to that question already. “Have you always lived in LA?”

  “Not always. Only for the last few years.” A woman at a nearby table squeals and Tate flinches briefly, sitting up straight and glancing across the restaurant. But the squeal turns to a drawn-out laugh and Tate settles back in his seat, turning his attention back to me.

  “Where did you grow up?”

  “Colorado, originally.”

  It’s an answer I wasn’t expecting. He seems so LA. So in his element here. I thought he’d say San Francisco or Orange County or even as far away as Seattle. But it’s hard to picture him somewhere like Colorado, especially the way I imagine Colorado in my head—like one big ski commercial: white powdery slopes, small mountain towns, sipping hot cocoa in front of a giant stone fireplace. It’s probably an exaggeration, but I like the idea of it. A wintery, idyllic life.

  “I’ve never even seen snow,” I tell him. “It must be strange to live here after that. I can’t imagine.”

  “It is,” he admits. “But I...sort of needed to come here for work.”

  He’s never mentioned work before, and I tilt my head to examine him, like I’m seeing him again for the first time. He’s wearing one of his basic cotton T-shirts, yet it’s the kind of shirt that looks expensive. The type of thing you buy when you want to look like you don’t care about your wardrobe, but you actually do. “You’re a musician, aren’t you?” I guess.

  There’s a beat of silence and his hands tense on the table. “Why do you think that?”

  “It’s just what I assumed after I first saw you.” I shrug.

  “So you thought about me after we met?” His face glows in the candlelight, accentuating the lines of his cheekbones and t
he straight slope of his nose. He makes it hard to look away.

  “No,” I lie. “You just...looked like a musician. You had that vibe, I guess.” I don’t exactly know how to explain it, but he has that laid-back, artistic, don’t bother me because I’m writing a song in my head attitude.

  “I have a vibe?” he asks, a smile returning to his eyes.

  “So you are a musician.”

  His lips rise into a grin he can’t contain. “Nice detective work.”

  “What can I say? Some of us don’t need people to find things out for us. We just use our instincts,” I tease.

  He shifts his gaze away and looks uncomfortable for a moment, biting his bottom lip and tapping his fingers on the seat of the booth. I’m about to ask what kind of musician he is—if he plays in a band or if he’s a solo artist, if he’s a lead singer or a drummer—but he leans forward, elbows on the edge of the table, and speaks before I have the chance. “So you have good instincts—noted,” he says, his eyes smiling. “Now it’s my turn.” He peers across the table at me like he’s deciding what personal—and possibly embarrassing—question he’s going to ask. I keep my lips pressed into a tight line, trying not to smile at the way he’s eyeing me.

  “I know you’re a senior,” he begins. “But what happens after high school?”

  The question is not as cringeworthy as I had expected. “Stanford,” I say, relieved, then add, “if I get accepted. And if I can afford it.”

  “What do you want to study?”

  “Biology, I guess.”

  “What do you mean, you guess?”

  I shrug. “Bio’s a good major if you’re premed, which is what I’m planning on. It has a lot of requirements in common with the premed reqs.” This statement is the very same one I’ve given guidance counselors at school; I said it at the interview for my internship, and I’ve recited it in my head countless times like a mantra I won’t forget. This is the plan, I tell myself. This will give me the life I want. But unlike the counselors and the internship coordinators, Tate looks like he doesn’t believe me—like my well-rehearsed speech doesn’t convince him that I know what I’m doing with my life.