Phoebe Will Destroy You by Blake Nelson

Author:Blake Nelson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon Pulse

22

I was in a strange mood at the car wash on Monday. I did my work. I vacuumed the cars and swept the office. During breaks I sat with my coworkers but didn’t speak. I guess I was excited about Phoebe. But I was also a little in shock. What had happened exactly? And what did it mean?

At noon I walked down to Freezie Burger and got everybody lunch. Later, when I finished my shift, I slipped out and walked to the coffee shop and got a caffe mocha. I sat by the window and watched the people walking by. These were tourists mostly, forty-year-old parents, their ten-year-old kids, the ages when nothing really happens in life. Not like the age I was now, when everything happens, everything important at least.

The skinny guy who made the sandwiches saw me as he was wiping down the tables. He’d seen me at the party. He gave me a little head nod, and I nodded back. But I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I wanted to think about Phoebe.

This went on for the next couple days: my body numbly going through my daily routine while my brain immersed itself in the concept of Phoebe. Oddly enough, I had no desire to actually see her. That would break the spell. For now, I just wanted to think about her.

I made up conversations in my head, long talks we would have at some time in the future. I thought about dates we could go on (did a girl like that even go on dates?). Best of all, I replayed every detail of our time on the couch: her fingers in my hair, the look on her face as she came in for the kiss, the smell of her, the warm softness of her slender body.

Occasionally I’d have to interact with other people. This was an annoyance. To talk to Aunt Judy or Justin or the customers at the car wash required that I shut down my Phoebe dreams and refocus and listen to what they were saying. This I found highly irritating. And what they wanted was never important anyway. Nothing was important except Phoebe.

* * *

And then one night, as we were closing, Emily and Jace pulled into the Happy Bubble. The sight of Jace’s car snapped me back to reality.

Emily came into the office. “Jace and I are going to the Sandpiper,” she said. “Do you want to come?”

“Yeah,” I said quickly. “Sure.”

I hadn’t seen Jace since Kelsey’s birthday party. I hoped this meant we were all going to be friends again. Despite the Phoebe stuff, I missed hanging out with the two of them. They had become my two best friends, in a way.

I finished my closing duties and went out. I got in the back seat of Jace’s car. “Hey,” I said to Jace, making sure to catch her eye in the rearview mirror.

“Hey,” she said, looking back at me. Our eyes met and held for a moment. It appeared we were back on good terms.

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