mostly good girls by Leila Sales

Author:Leila Sales
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Published: 2010-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Common people

like you

When I showed up at the Kendall Square Starbucks that night, Katie was already there, wearing a strappy purple tank top, sipping a latte, and leaning over the counter to talk to the tall, scruffy-looking guy at the cash register.

“Violet!” She waved me over. “Martin, this is my best friend. Violet, meet Martin.”

“Hi,” I said, shaking his hand across the counter, sizing him up. His black hair was a little too long and looked unkempt, like he hadn’t combed it in a while. On his chin was a couple days’ worth of stubble. He had thick plugs through his ears and an actual tattoo on his skinny wrist. I didn’t really see the “hot” that Katie had talked about, but at least he didn’t seem like a serial killer. He just seemed like someone who didn’t bathe very often. So far, so okay.

“Hey,” Martin said to me. He had a deep, gravelly voice. “I’m just about done here. Just gotta count down in back and then we can take off.” He popped the cash drawer out of his register and headed into the back room, untying his green Starbucks apron as he walked.

“So what do you think?” Katie demanded the instant he was out of earshot—or probably before he was even out of earshot.

I shrugged. “I’m probably not going to steal him from you, if that’s what you’re asking.” This was a joke: I wouldn’t know how to steal a boy if I tried.

“Martin is like everything I ever wanted in a guy,” Katie told me, taking the lid off her latte to blow on it.

“Uh, really?” This was news to me. “I thought Scott Walsh was everything you ever wanted in a guy.”

Katie heaved a big sigh. “You might not have noticed this, Violet, but Scott Walsh is taken. Which is not actually what I was looking for in a guy.”

She had a point, but I still didn’t get why she would invite some non–Scott Walsh guy into her life just because he happened to be available.

Martin emerged from the back room. Now that his apron was off, I could see that his T-shirt said ROCKET FROM THE CRYPT on it—whatever that meant—and had a tear down the side. He pulled Katie toward him and gave her a kiss, right there in the middle of Starbucks, with all the lights on and the MIT students working on their laptops and the homeless woman napping in an armchair. Katie kissed him back while I willed myself not to look. I’ve watched Katie cry and I’ve watched her sleep; I’ve watched her do one hundred sit-ups and I’ve watched her try on a Versace dress; I’ve watched her bite into a whole onion and I’ve watched her fight with her mother—but there was something just weird about watching her stick her tongue into some stranger’s mouth. Like she was a stranger herself.

“The guys are back at my apartment,” Martin said when they broke apart. “Want to go?”

“Yeah, sure,” said Katie.

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