Cupcake Read Online Free PDF Page B

looked large enough to beautifully serve my just-now-thought-up master plan. I asked Chucky, "You two want to meet up with me and George after the movie next week? Maybe go to some diner and save me from having to break it to George that making out in the theater is as much as he's getting on the first date?"
    "We're there for you," Chucky said. "Give me your cell and we'll text up later about when and where to meet up."
    LisBETH groaned. She leaned down, placing her head of frizzy-wild-beautiful black tresses prematurely streaked with gray onto her lap, as if to wonder, What just happened here? And how exactly did my Meaningful Future talk get so far out of my reach? From
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    underneath all that hair my sister grumbled, "George better pay for your movie ticket. If he's a gentleman."
    I don't want a gentleman. I want a cute guy to kiss. I can pay my own damn way.
    "By the way," Chucky interjected. She motioned her head backward, in the direction of the row of manicure tables at the opposite end of the shop. "That bald dude getting the manly manicure at the center table?" LisBETH leaned back up. Chucky looked directly at lisBETH. "Notice how he always comes here the same time as you, noon on Saturdays, after the gym? Let me be the first to break it to you, chica. There are plenty of straight men left in this city, and that one, he's got an eye on you."
    I almost jumped our of the chair to get a look at the guy, but all I could see was the back of a bald head, and some unfortunate neck hair poking through his shirt. I couldn't see his face, but his hunter green polo-shirt was totally uptight Ivy League, which was a promising sign, especially since Alexei the Horrible, my polo shirt-wearing Ivy League friend from back home, whom I had all cued up to matchmake into lisBETH's prospective boy toy, had decided to transfer to Stanford and thereby become a geographic undesirable.
    Make that Uh-oh an Uh-huh: possibility for lisBETH.
    As we tried to catch a better glimpse of him, baldy's head suddenly dropped down to his chest, relaxed into a catnap by the massage on his hands. His very loud snore could be heard at our end
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    of the shop, even over the sound of the Lite-FM radio station attacking our eardrums with some lame Nashville-country-queen-gone-pop-star power ballad crap.
    Reality check: When I am sad from missing Shrimp and cursing myself for letting him go so I could start up this new life in New York City, I kind of like that power ballad crap, but I will die a thousand deaths by octopus-handed Muppet tickle monsters before admitting that out loud and not-proud. When Danny finds me alone in my room staring out the rear window and he asks me what I'm listening to on my headphones, I will name some obscure alt-country-soul band, but what I am really listening to is a crap UK dance remix of a pop princess ballad or some American Idol's pukey winning song.
    A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do to work her way through the heartbreak. Forgive me.
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    ***
    SIX
    In my commune land of make-out make-believe, I am not walking through Washington Square Park with freshly painted blue-green toes and ginormous headphones over my ears to drown out the singing street performers, the chattering students on study and smoke breaks, the bike messenger snarling "Welcome to New York, bitch," as he almost mows down a photo-taking tourist.
    In my resurrected commune world I am with Shrimp at foggy Ocean Beach in San Francisco. We are sitting on the cold concrete ledge at dusk, watching a speck of orange pink sun muted by gray fog as it sets over the Pacific. Our legs intertwine and our feet rock against the ledge in time to the crash of the ocean. Here nature requires no headphones, and the chill ocean breeze rules out exposed feet. We are silent sympatico.
    The News are all Olds. I've given up New York, and Shrimp has
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    forsaken New Zealand, never having bothered to find out what the Old Zealand may have been about, although the name alone