Boyfriend From Hell (Falling Angels Saga) (2 page)

That wasn’t exactly true. I did care about her going on a date. But if I told them how I really felt, I’d appear selfish.

Erin reached for the ketchup. “It’s just that you’re lucky to have a mother who’s your friend. The only time my mother ever talks to me is when she’s telling me to clean my room, do my homework, or stay away from boys—not necessarily in that order.”  She squirted a big red blob onto her plate.

It was then the answer I was looking for came to me, triggered by something Erin had said. “Hey, remember when your mom didn’t want you riding in cars with boys? She told you horror stories about what could happen.”

“Yeah. That was so lame.”

“Why don’t I do the same thing?  I’ll tell her a graphic horror story about some parent at our school who went on a date and was never heard from again. That’ll scare her off dating forever.”

“I don’t like it,” said Erin.

“Me, either,” said Matt. “I think Suze getting a boyfriend is a good idea.”

I ignored both their responses. “Then it’s settled. I’m doing it.”

“Megan,” Erin’s tone turned serious. “If you’re uncomfortable with your mother dating, maybe you should just tell her?”

I shook my head. “You guys have a lot to learn about open relationships.”

Pythagoras, the famous Greek philosopher, is known for being the first person to demonstrate the theorem that with any right triangle, the sum of the squares of both sides is equal to the square of the hypotenuse: A²+B²=C². What most people don’t know is Pythagoras also stated: “It is evil to eat beans.”

The sad fact that this useless bit of information resides in my brain is one of the many contributing factors as to why I do not have a boyfriend. I’m a trivia junkie. I can’t help myself. Put a useless piece of information in front of me and I will gobble it up like a double cheeseburger with a side of curly fries.

Cute boys like girls who are into fashion magazines and lip gloss, not mathematical equations and trivia. So imagine my surprise when our first day back at school after winter break, a really cute boy walked into the Math Lab.

Don’t get me wrong, cute boys walk into the Math Lab all the time. However, as soon as they discover they’re in a room crawling with geeks, they realize their mistake and make a hasty exit.

I was at the chalkboard with Erin, working through a problem using a logarithm [and trust me, I am well aware that my use of logarithms has solidified my place in the annals of geekdom forever, but humor me here].

“Hottie at three o’clock,” whispered Erin, digging her elbow into my side.

 I turned, and there he was, a cute boy standing just inside the doorway. This cute boy was different from all the others who’d come before him. This cute boy was acting like he intended to stay.

“I’m looking for the Math Lab,” he said as he surveyed the room. There were seven of us in all, not including Mrs. Brewster in the back. Five boys who followed the geek dress code to the letter, all the way down to the black socks they wore with their uncool sneaks, Erin, and me.

“Who wants to know?” asked Erin. I swear that girl could go from zero to flirt in six-point-five seconds.

He smiled. It was a confident smile. He had a lot to be confident about.  He was basketball-player tall, with jet black hair, and the kind of dark, dreamy eyes you could look into forever. It was obvious from the way he carried himself that he’d been flirted with before. Erin’s question, “Who wants to know?”, would have sent most male mathletes scurrying for cover, but not this boy.

“The future captain of The Glendale Mathletes,” he said in response. His smile widened.

Geoffrey, Tran, and the other math geeks stared up at him from behind their glasses, their faces twisted into tight little knots. G.U’s male mathletes were very protective of Erin and me—not that they’d ever try flirting with us themselves. They had enough trouble just standing next to us without sweating out their undershirts.

“Tran is captain of the mathletes,” I said, adding my two cents, and then I smiled. It was supposed to be a mysterious, seductive smile, but my mouth froze into a toothy grin. I have practiced that seductive smile in the mirror like a zillion times to perfection, and the first time I try using it on a real boy, I wind up looking like the Joker.

The new boy looked at me. “Interesting smile.”

Is that laughter in his eyes? Is he laughing at me?

“You must be Guy,” Mrs. Brewster called from the back of the room. “Welcome to the Glendale Union Mathletes. Come on, I’ll introduce you around.”

“Righteeo.”

At the time, I was happy that a cute boy was joining the mathletes, especially since I was in the market for a cool, cute boyfriend.  I didn’t find it strange that a boy so handsome and sure of himself would be hanging around geeks. My mistake.

With my mother working every day, and me off with the mathletes and the debate team after school, weekday dinners at our house were usually catch-as-catch-can. Take out was the norm. Or sometimes I’d make burgers, or enchilada pie, which was my specialty. But on some evenings, Suze would bring in the fixings for something a bit more elaborate, a meal we could prepare together.

That’s what she did Monday evening. We converged on the kitchen around six-thirty to prepare chicken paprikash, which really isn’t
that
elaborate. It’s just sautéed chicken in a paprika sauce over noodles.

I knew the reason for this together time was so she could ease into the dating thing again. While I pretended to happily work away, all I could think is that mother-daughter activities like these would come to an end if she found a boyfriend.

 “Are you sure you’re okay with me dating, hon?”  She said it casually as she sliced the chicken breasts. But there was nothing casual about it.

“Sure?
Sure?
Sure I’m sure. Why wouldn’t I be sure?” The only thing I was sure of was that I wanted to put an end to the dating conversation.

Our kitchen was small, cozy she called it. But it was bright, with a big bay window over the sink that looked out onto our eco-friendly backyard, and lots of counter space so we never got in each other’s way.

She started placing the chicken slices into the pan of sizzling canola oil on the stove. “Just checking. I have to tell you, I’m excited. It’s been so long, I don’t even know my type.” She stared off, a wistful look in her eyes. “I suppose tall, distinguished, and everyone likes a man with a nice butt.”

La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la. Mentally I hummed as loud as I could, trying to blot out the conversation. I was in the midst of chopping veggies for the sauce. When I looked down at the chopping board, I was surprised to discover that if I chopped them any finer I’d have a nice puree.
Breathe,
I told myself as I eased up on the blade.

While it was always fun when Erin and I talked about boys and their butts, butt talk was not something I wanted to hear from my mother. 

Then she giggled.

She giggled like a little girl. Thirty-nine-year-old Suze Barnett, who had tiny wisps of gray she was always adding highlights to, was giggling over the prospect of dating a man with a nice butt.

I had to put an end to this—now!

I cleared my throat. “I just want you to be careful out there, Mom.”

“Thank you. I will,” she replied, as she happily turned the chicken slices to brown on the other side.

The kitchen was filling up with a yummy fragrance that reminded me of my childhood, when she cooked every night when she got home from work.

“I mean, I definitely don’t want what happened to Mrs. Tobolewski to happen to you.”

“Mrs. Tobo…”

“Tobolewski. One of the girls at school’s mom.” I pretended to concentrate on the chopped veggies, scooping them into a bowl to be sautéed once the chicken was done. Yet through the corner of my eye, I was watching, as like a hungry fish she slowly rose to the bait.

“So…” She sniffed at it: “What happened to Mrs. Tobolewski?” And then
Bam!
She swallowed it whole.

“Oh, didn’t I tell you about her? She went on a date.” I let the word
date
hang in the air between us, heavy with harmful meaning.

“Really?”

This was too easy. Should I reel her in now, or play her for a while? I should probably practice in case this dating thing gets serious. I’ll play her. “Huh?” I said, shooting her my best blank stare.

“Mrs. Tobolewski’s date. What happened?” The sautéing was forgotten for the moment, as she urged me on with her eyes.

“It’s not important. I don’t want to worry you.”

“Megan Barnett!” she implored.

“Oh, all right.” I made a big deal out of stopping my chopping. I sighed. “Well, let’s see, the girl’s mother was about your age, attractive like you, and from what I can remember, it was her first date since the divorce.”

“Ooh. Bad date, huh?”

“Well, not for the guy who lopped her head off. I’m sure he had loads of fun.”

“Oh, my!” She nearly dropped a chicken slice on the floor.  

“And it was their
first
date,” I repeated.  

I could tell from her sickly pallor she was totally rethinking the dating thing. A pang of remorse shot through me. I really did feel bad fooling her this way. We were friends.  But that’s exactly why I was doing it. She had convinced herself that dating was a good idea. It was up to me as a
friend
to point out the pitfalls.

“How did they meet?” She began placing the sautéed chicken slices on a paper towel to drain.

“Huh? Oh… they umm… met at church.” The answer was totally unplanned, and yet totally genius. I mean if you can’t trust a guy you meet in church…

“Where did they go?”

“Go?” What was with all of these questions? Was I not making myself clear? The woman was dead because she went on a date.

“On the date,” she repeated. “Where did they go?”

“Mom, does it really matter where they went? The man killed her!”

I was beginning to lose it. Not good. I needed to play it cool. I took a deep breath.

“Skiing,” I said. “They went skiing at a very posh ski resort. And did I mention it was their first date ever? The first date she’d been on since
all
those years ago when she went out with her husband.” Even an idiot could make the connection.

“Did they catch him?”

But not my mother. I lost it. “What difference does that make, Mom? She’s dead! Do I have to draw you a map? The woman is dead because she went on a date.”

“No. She’s dead because she didn’t screen properly.”

“Wha—?”

 “Megan, this is sounding an awful lot like one of those urban myths. I mean, who goes on a ski trip on their first date? Really! First dates should be coffee in a public place.”

Okay, so she
has
read some of the literature on single-parent dating. Who knew?

I handed her the bowl of veggies and she began ladling them into the pan.

“You and I aren’t going to make that mistake, are we, hon?” She said this, and then she smiled at me. She smiled as if everything I’d said, rather than discouraging her, proved her point.

“Umm. No.” I was at a loss for words.

What just happened here? As I mentally retraced my footsteps trying to see where I zigged when I should have zagged, Suze wiped her hands on a towel and moved to the counter where she picked up a pamphlet.

“I appreciate your concern, Megan. But don’t worry. My first date will be an e-date,” she announced proudly. “Those bad guys can’t harm me in cyberspace, now can they?”

Should I tell her she could catch a deadly computer virus? Nah, she’d never go for that.

“This is the dating questionnaire they sent me. After dinner you can help me fill it out. No one knows me better than you.”

“That’s for sure.”

Suze moved to the cabinet where she kept the cooking sherry. “Don’t say it like that. It’ll be fun.”

Fun?
That questionnaire was going to ask my mother questions about herself I did not want to know the answers to. What happened to the good old days when mothers wore knee length skirts and spent all their time in the kitchen baking bread? Those mothers didn’t care about dating, or questionnaires, or butts. All they cared about was how good their kitchens smelled. I suddenly had a taste for fresh baked bread.

She looked at me and smiled. She had the biggest, bluest eyes. A lot like mine. “What do you say?”

“Sure,” I replied weakly. “It’ll be… fun. But let’s order some cheesy bread.”

It was as close as I was going to get to the good old days.

#

Dinner was a disaster.

The meal was good, perfect, although I must admit cheesy bread is an odd complement to Chicken Paprikash.  The disaster was that my thoughts kept drifting to the result of us filling out that questionnaire—and what I saw was not pretty.

A short time after we had eaten, cleaned the kitchen, and put the leftovers away, we seated ourselves on the high wooden stools at the kitchen counter with the questionnaire lying between us. That’s exactly how I felt. That stupid questionnaire was coming between us.

Our special bond began way back when I was five years old. That’s when, after six years of marriage, my father decided to move to Australia to find himself. I guess he figured if he took us with him, he’d be harder to find—so he split, leaving us high and dry.  I haven’t seen or heard from him since. No biggy. Don’t get me wrong, I would love to meet him. I even tried looking him up on Friend Finder a couple of times.

The good news is, I was so young when he left I don’t remember him leaving. Since his departure, though, my mother and I have become, well… friends.

I mean for ten whole years it had been just the two of us, me and mom—the Two Musketeers. We had a great time doing everything together: movies, concerts, amusement parks, museums, and let’s not forget the tons and tons of garage and estate sales.  She took me to my dance recitals, and I accompanied her to art shows where she shared her love of sculpture. She sat up with me when I had the chicken pox, and after Erin’s eleventh birthday party where I ate two dozen chocolate chip cookies on a dare, and spent the entire night throwing my guts up into a bucket…  [By the way, if you’re an eleven-year-old, you need to know that a dozen chocolate chip cookies should probably be your limit.]