How to Take the Ex Out of Ex-Boyfriend Read online

  But then the stylist blew my hair dry, and I realized I had been wrong to ever doubt Daphne, because my hair looked good. Really good. I’m not trying to brag here, I’m just saying that I’d had this hair for seventeen years and never knew it was capable of swishing around my shoulders in cascading waves that way.

  We went to a couple of stores at the mall, and Daphne found me a gorgeous Armani silk blouse. Granted, it cost roughly the same price as a college education, but it fit great. Daphne kept murmuring inspirational advice to me as I paid for it. “Remember, you’re beautiful, and beauty has a persuasive power all its own.”

  We left the mall, Daphne dropped me off at my house, and I tried to remember all of her mantras as I walked across my lawn. I was confident. I was beautiful. Men would bow to my name. Or if not bow, at least talk to me in English class again.

  I opened the front door, and there in the living room, talking to Dante, was Jesse. He sat on the couch. Dante sat on a chair. Both fell silent as I came in the room.

  “Oh, um, hi,” I stuttered, which broke about fifteen of Daphne’s instructions right off the bat. In an attempt to make up for it I swished the hair from my shoulders in what I hoped was an alluring manner.

  “Hi,” Jesse said.

  “Is there something wrong with your neck?” Dante asked.

  I glared at him. It’s hard to be alluring in front of your brother. Then I turned to Jesse with my best smile. “What brings you here?”

  Jesse and Dante glanced at each other, then at me. “We were just talking about motorcycle stuff,” Dante said.

  Jesse stood up. “Well, I’d better get going. I’ve got this dinner with—” He stopped speaking as his gaze rested on me. “You changed your hair.”

  I fingered the ends happily. He’d noticed. “Yeah, Daphne thought it would look cute this way. Do you like it?”

  His eyes narrowed. “Are you just doing whatever Daphne tells you to do now?”

  I lowered my hand. “You don’t like it?”

  “No, I like it.”

  “Then you think Daphne was right about it?”

  “Yes. No.” His words grew flustered. “I mean, you should only change your hair if you want to, not because Daphne told you to.” He folded his arms, and his gaze ran over me again in a skeptical manner. “Is she still setting you up?”

  I shrugged, trying to be playful. “Well, she was right about my hair.” And hopefully she was right about how to get an ex-boyfriend back too. For example, I liked the way Jesse looked at me so intently, his eyes glowing, as if he wanted to say a lot more to me. That was good. Plus, he’d come over to talk to Dante—which must mean they were trying to mend their friendship.

  Life was looking up.

  Jesse glanced at Dante again, then back at me. I could see frustration pass across his expression, but I didn’t know why it was there. He nodded at me slowly. “We should sit down and talk about things after the election.”

  I smiled at him again, this time less certain. “Right.”

  Maybe he wanted to work things out, but just couldn’t do it now because Dante was here. Then again, maybe “We should talk about things” was one of those phrases like “I just want to be friends,” which people said when they broke up but they didn’t really mean.

  Jesse looked at his watch. “Well, I should go. See you around.” And that was it. Jesse left. So apparently my beauty didn’t have as much persuasive power as Daphne thought.

  Dante turned away from me and walked out of the room. I followed him into the family room in time to see him pick Skipper off of the coffee table and set her down on the couch. “No standing on the table, squirt.”

  “I was making some toast,” she said.

  Thank you very much, Rich, for teaching that trick to my little sister.

  “Not on the table,” Dante said. “If you want toast, you’ll have to eat it in the kitchen.”

  “Okay.” She got up and trotted after him to the kitchen.

  I wandered in and leaned up against the countertop. “So, it was nice of Jesse to come over and talk to you.”

  “Yeah.” Dante dropped a piece of bread into the toaster and didn’t look at me.

  “Is everything cool between you two now?”

  He shrugged. “Yeah.”

  “Do you think you’ll go back to being friends after the election?”

  “Sure.”

  “Even if you lose?”

  Dante let out a slow breath. He walked to the fridge and got out the butter. “Look, I’ve been thinking about it, and I don’t know, maybe I don’t want to be student body president after all. It’s a lot of work—and for what? It’s not like it matters.”

  I stared at him. I tried to use my psychic twin powers to figure out what in the world he was talking about. I mean, this, now? After all the work I’d put into his campaign—after making posters, flirting with freshman guys, being pulled over by the police, and posting Wilson’s memoirs in the girls’ locker room—after finally getting Dante to the point where he might win, he didn’t want to be president anymore?

  The toast popped. Dante put it on a plate and buttered it, unconcerned.

  I folded my arms and tried to think about the situation logically. “Are you crazy?” I asked. “Have you absolutely lost your mind? Do you realize I broke up with my boyfriend over this election? Do you realize I nearly got arrested with three drunk guys because of it? Don’t tell me now that you don’t want to be president!”

  He put the plate down in front of Skipper. “I ran for president to make Wilson sweat a little. I never thought I’d win. Now it looks like I might, and you know what? I really don’t care what our class gift to the school is. Let Wilson worry about it. He actually wants the job.”

  My teeth clamped together so hard that it took effort to speak. “You told me you wouldn’t flake out about this.”

  He shrugged and turned away from me with an unconcerned air. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I guess I’m not the presidential type. I think I’m going to resign tomorrow.”

  I was not going to eat my shoes. No, I was going to force-feed them to Dante, and I might not wait until the election results to do it. Then something clicked in my mind. Maybe it was logic, or maybe that twin bond had finally kicked in.

  I took a step toward Dante. “Jesse said something to you about the election, didn’t he?”

  “We talked about our bikes.”

  Now I was more certain. “He said something to you that made you decide to quit the race.”

  “Yeah, he said he thought I might win.” Dante pulled a glass out of the cupboard, flipped on the faucet, and held the glass in the stream of water. His dark eyes flickered to mine. “The thing about you, Giovanna, is you’re all about principles—even when it’s not for your own good—but you have to understand that not everybody is like that. I’m not.” He switched off the water and walked the glass over to Skipper. “So I’ll resign from the race during my speech. No big deal. Life goes on.”

  I wanted to hate him. I probably did for about thirty seconds, because thirty seconds was the length of time I believed his story. My brother wasn’t unprincipled. Jesse had said something to make Dante quit. And I wanted to know what.

  I got ready to go to Grandma Petrizzo’s house, silently fuming about it. Was Wilson using some sort of coercion on Dante? Would Jesse be a part of that? Could he be? I was torn between wanting to cancel my date with Buddy so I could forget Jesse altogether, and going to the restaurant just so I could chuck food at Jesse and Wilson when I got there. If I walked up to Jesse during dinner and demanded to talk to him, would he tell me the truth?

  I drove to Grandma’s house and rang her doorbell. She greeted me in her customary housedress. It had almost become a uniform. She took my face in her hands and kissed me on both cheeks. “Who is this beautiful visitor, eh? Come in, come in.”

  I said my hello, gave a brief and artificially upbeat report on how I was doing, then dumped all of my stuff in the guest bedr
oom. With a sigh, I took my makeup and trudged into the bathroom. I had consigned myself to going through the motions of this date, but only because it was too late to call it off.

  As I got ready, Grandma appeared in the doorway of the room. “You want something to eat before you go on your date?”

  “No, we’re going out to dinner.”

  “You never eat enough. Look at you, you’re a skinny girl.”

  “I’m supposed to be skinny, Grandma. In America ‘skinny’ is a compliment.”

  Grandma rattled off some Italian and shook her head in a disapproving manner, then said, “I’m having tortellini if you change your mind. The homemade kind. Not like the stuff you buy in the store. That’s nothing but immondizia.” Then she shuffled off toward the kitchen.

  I finished applying makeup, touched up my hair, changed into the Armani blouse, and then surveyed myself in the mirror. Perhaps it was too formal for a casual restaurant and I should just change back into my school clothes.

  As I stood there deciding, the doorbell rang. How had it gotten to be five forty-five already?

  “I’ll get it,” I yelled, then scanned the room. Where had I kicked off my shoes? I found them back in the bedroom. I didn’t hear Grandma going to the door, but I ran down the hallway, shoes in hand anyway. The less time she had talking with Buddy, the better.

  I ran by the kitchen and saw why Grandma hadn’t answered the door. She has a TV on her kitchen table that she watches while she eats. She also has a recliner across from the table, because it’s more comfortable to relax after dinner that way. Only she wasn’t relaxing, or eating, she was asleep in front of the TV, with a plate full of tortellini on her lap.

  The kitchen clock read five thirty-five. No wonder it had seemed like the time had flown by. Buddy wasn’t supposed to be here for another ten minutes.

  I stood in front of the door, called out, “Just a second,” then slipped my shoes on and opened the door.

  It occurred to me when I saw Buddy that Daphne had assured me he was gorgeous. I began to wonder exactly what Daphne’s criteria for gorgeous was.

  Not to sound shallow or anything, but the whole point of this date was to make Jesse jealous. The guy standing in front of me was on the chunky side and could have used a trip to the dermatologist for his skin condition. I smiled at him anyway, because let’s face it, Daphne had probably had a hard time finding someone to date me, and this was as gorgeous as she could get. “Hi, Buddy, come in. I’m Giovanna.” The words tumbled out of my mouth awkwardly, but he didn’t seem to notice. He just came inside.

  “Giovanna, I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  Well, I hoped not. I gave a nervous laugh. “Let me assure you, most of it isn’t true.” I looked around for my purse and realized I’d left it in the guest bedroom. “I’ve got to grab my purse, but hey, if my grandma wakes up and comes to talk to you, you’re Catholic.”

  His eyebrows drew together. “Right.”

  I went down the hallway before he could ask what I was talking about, because to tell you the truth, I didn’t want to explain. When I came back, Buddy was peering through the kitchen doorway at Grandma. “Sometimes she dozes off,” I said and took my jacket out of the hall closet.

  “Oh, well, I wouldn’t want to wake her.”

  You can say that again. “She knows we’re going out, so I don’t think we need to say good-bye.”

  He looked at me, a bit startled, and I wondered if in his family it was considered rude to leave one’s grandma lying under a plateful of tortellini while one went out on a date. “She’ll be fine. She lives alone and everything,” I said, then because he still hadn’t spoken, I added, “Are you ready to go to the restaurant?”

  He shrugged and looked thoughtful for a moment. “Sure. We can do that.”

  We can do that? Daphne had told him the whole point of this date, hadn’t she? I didn’t ask, because I couldn’t find a graceful way to say, “You realize this is all just pretend, right?” Instead I said, “Do you know where La Comida Ranchera is?”

  “Yep. I’ve been there before.”

  “Good.” I walked out the door, and he followed.

  The conversation in the car was the generic type of thing. We covered the weather quite completely. He apologized for the dog hair on the car seats, which there was quite a lot of, because sometimes he took his dog with him to run errands. He even laughed and said, “I’m glad I didn’t take him with me tonight.”

  Uh yeah, I guess so, seeing as guys don’t usually bring their dogs along on blind dates. I mean, I hoped that hadn’t been a hard decision for him. Gee, I’m about to go out to dinner with a girl I’ve never met before. Should I take the dog along or leave him home?

  I really needed to talk to Daphne about her matchmaking criteria.

  He asked me if I had a pet, and so I told him about our cat, which I’m pretty sure led a boring life compared to his dog since I never took the cat with me on dates.

  Then we made it to the restaurant.

  I slung my purse over my shoulder, took a deep breath, and tried to walk up to the restaurant confidently. About two steps from the door I wanted to call the whole thing off, because first of all, I was mad at Jesse. Second, Buddy would not make Jesse jealous, so I didn’t even want him to see us together. And third, this was just a stupid idea, and if the last series of bad dates had taught me anything, it was that I shouldn’t put my love life in Daphne’s hands.

  But I’d dragged Buddy down to La Comida Ranchera, and I didn’t know how to tell him I’d changed my mind without insulting him. Also, as I stood at the restaurant door, it occurred to me that I didn’t know what Daphne had told him about his part in making Jesse jealous. I hoped he didn’t plan on acting affectionate or trying to hold my hand or anything. I tucked my hands into my jacket pockets just in case. “We don’t have to make a big deal about being here in front of the kids from my high school.”

  His eyebrows knit together. I could tell he had no clue what I meant.

  I tried to elaborate. “We don’t have to act . . . you know . . . it’s just a normal dinner, so we shouldn’t be too . . . um . . . friendly.”

  He opened the door to the restaurant, and I followed him in. His eyebrows were still scrunched together in that questioning way. “So you’re saying you have friends here, but you don’t want to be friendly to them?”

  He missed my point, but instead of trying to explain I answered his question. “I wouldn’t mind saying ‘hi’ to them if they notice us—which they totally don’t have to. I mean, we don’t have to draw attention to ourselves.”

  Hopefully they wouldn’t see me, or if they did, they would ignore me. Later, if any of the popular kids ever asked who that chunky guy with the rash was, I could make up something. I’d tell them I’d gone out to dinner with the head of the PETA scholarship fund for amphibian rescue.

  We walked into the restaurant lobby. “A table for two?” the hostess asked. We both nodded, and she led us into the dining room.

  Wilson’s group sat in the middle of the room around three tables that had been pushed together. Bridget immediately saw me, and she must have said something, because the next moment every head turned to stare at us.

  “Are those your friends?” Buddy asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. I tried to look away, but Buddy walked over toward them.

  Hello, where in my convoluted explanation of what was supposed to happen tonight did I ever tell him I wanted to walk over to their table? But I couldn’t not follow him. I made my legs move in that direction, although my stomach stayed back at the hostess station.

  “Hey, how are you all doing?” Buddy asked the group. Then and only then did he turn to look and see where I was.

  “Hi, guys,” I said.

  “Hi, Giovanna.” Jesse’s gaze went back and forth between Buddy and me, questioningly, but without any hint of jealousy.

  Buddy pointed to Jesse’s Aggies T-shirt. The logo is a big T flanked by a smaller A and M on either
side. “Don’t tell me you’re an Aggies fan. C’mon, no self-respecting college would have the same initials as a bank machine.” Buddy laughed at his joke, but no one else did. He didn’t seem to notice. “Makes you wonder if the students go in and demand money every day. Like they have to give their pin number to get into class.” More laughter—all his own by the way, since everyone at the table looked at him blankly.

  Okay, great. Besides the extra weight and the skin condition, my date had a bad sense of humor. I had suspected from the car ride over that he might have the personality of lint, but now I was absolutely certain. And I’d just brought him inside to meet people I knew. Great.

  The hostess stepped over to the table. “Are you part of this group?”

  “No,” I said.

  Wilson held out a hand to some empty chairs at one side of the table and smiled at me generously. His voice came out in smooth, benevolent ripples. “You can join us if you want. There aren’t any hard feelings between us, are there?” It had only been a few hours since Jesse had talked to Dante, but I could tell Wilson already knew he’d won the election.

  I glanced at Jesse, blushed, and said, “We don’t want to intrude.”

  But Jesse wasn’t about to let me get away that easily. “There’s plenty of room,” he insisted. “Sit down and introduce us to your friend.”

  I blushed, trapped. “Oh, this is Buddy.” But right at the same time I spoke, Buddy went, “Hi, I’m Gary.”

  Then he sat down while everyone looked at me, because I’d just introduced my date by a different name than the one he’d given. Judging by their expressions, they were puzzled, but not nearly as puzzled as I was.

  Gary?

  I thought his name was Horton. Where did “Gary” come from?

  I sat down in the seat next to Buddy/Gary/whoever while the hostess put menus in front of us and said she’d be back in a few minutes. Then I smiled at the group and tried to explain myself. “Buddy is a nickname.”

  Buddy/Gary/whoever laughed and shook his head. “One date and you’re already giving me a nickname? I’d better think of one for you too then.” He gazed at the ceiling. “What would fit you?”