Loveseat Nights

3

wednesday, feb 3

Gooey cheese sauce drips onto my plate and I grimace. Maybe I should’ve gotten the Salisbury steak; the ‘mac’ looks half-frozen and the side of oatmeal cookie is, well, oatmeal-y.

“Let’s go out tonight,” Ally suggests during lunch. “I really want to see that new Joseph Gordon-Levitt movie.”

I panic, my spoonful of mac and cheese splattering onto the plate. “Uh…not tonight.”

“Okay, then tomorrow night.”

“Erm…” My brain flails for a response. “Not likely.”

Ally set her chopsticks down onto the sushi palate. “Are you okay? What’s going on?”

“Look, I just think that February...” No excuses are coming to my mind. Yeah, I’d love to go on dates with you, my hot girlfriend, but there’s this cockroach in my life that simply cannot be squashed. “My- my mom’s been leaning on me this month. I think she’s still mad about New Year’s Eve.” Coming home wasted at four in the morning is enough to warrant a two-month grudge, right?

Ally is silent.

“But I can try to get away some nights,” I quickly add on.

She smiles a little. “Okay, sure, whatever. You’re right, you shouldn’t get your mom too mad. She might not let you see me at all if you do.” Which is total BS, since Mom is absolutely in love with “the only good thing in your life, Adrien, and you better not screw it up,” but I’m not complaining as Ally leans in and gives me a satisfied smooch.

Paul slams down his lunch tray and startles the both of us. “What’s up, guys?”

“What is it with you and interrupting Kodak moments of mine?” I grumble at him, trying to remove the cheese splatter on my cookie.

“I’m not sure, I think it’s some kind of a genetic disorder,” he rambles on, and I immediately tune him out. I gaze at Ally as she laughs at whatever Paul’s still talking about, until something beyond her catches my eye.

It’s Mona.

She’s in line for the same thing I got, mac and cheese, and she looks disgruntled. Or worried. Or anxious. Probably a calamitous mix. Somehow, she always manages to have multiple expressions on her face at the same time.

Ally seems to notice me staring, and she follows my train of sight. “Adrien?”

“Yeah,” I say, coughing and mixing my macaroni and suddenly looking everywhere but Mona.

“You were looking at Mona Lieber,” she says.

“Who?” Maybe it’s best to play dumb at this point.

“Um...never mind. Just that girl over there, we used to be best friends.”

I do a double take and nearly choke on the mac I’m shoving into my mouth. “Whataghfurghiflio?”

Ally sighs and picks at her sushi. “Yeah, back before you came to Pasadena, Mona and I were inseparable. We were best friends since kindergarten, if you count being finger painting buddies, and once we hit high school things were just kind of rocky.

“I mean, at least our freshman and sophomore years were okay. I tried to convince her to try out for volleyball last year, because she was really good in our middle school team. But nope, she just liked to hang out by herself. I think it was part family issues and part the fact that she slowly became a lone wolf type.”

“That’s too bad,” I say, mostly to myself. “She seems...nice.” I try not to laugh at the last word.

“She is. Or was, I don’t know what’s she’s like anymore. I remember she used to stay home every Friday night and watch a movie. And it was always weird old movies, too.”