One or Two Things I Learned About Love Read Online Free PDF Page A

EMPLOYEES MUST WASH HANDS. She says she’s sure people accidentally wash off numbers they wanted to keep all the time. More often than you’d think. Which means that I’ll have to go back to Café Olé! as soon as I can. But what if Nomi’s wrong and that isn’t what happened? What if he just changed his mind? Like Sara said. Then I can never go back to Café Olé! Not even if every other coffee bar in the county shuts down. This stuff could really make you crazy. My dad was actually working on the deck when I got home so I gave him a hand just to take my mind off my phone for a while. I hammered his finger.

    I decided to start acting like a sane person again. (And not hurt anyone else.) If he called, he called. And if he didn’t at least I know that some really cute guy was once interested in me, even if it was only for five minutes. I left my phone home today so I wouldn’t feel it in my pocket whispering,
No call … no call … still no call … are you sure you gave him the right number…?
like some evil genie. I told my mom it needed a charge and to call me on Ely’s cell if she wanted me for anything. We were really busy on the stand, and Ely was in super-hilarious mode, and Broccoli Man came and wanted
exactly
19 ounces of onions, so that took a while, and Green Pick-up Guy also showed up and wanted to know what happened to my fan and I told him about Zelda and the dinosaurs and the flood and he was very sympathetic (he has two brothers), so the day went a lot faster than yesterday did. But as soon as I got home, I checked to see if anybody had called. Of course, no messages. Doom loomed. I called myself from the landline. Phone working just dandy.
    I was in the shower. Where else? I mean, if you’ve been waiting more than 48 hours for someone to call you, when else would he call? I didn’t even bother turning off the water. I just jumped out, dripping. There was soap in my eyes and water everywhere and I knocked the bowl of shells my mother keeps on the toilet tank on the floor reaching blindly for my phone. (Why do we have fish on our shower curtain and a bowl of shells on top of the tank? It’s not an aquarium, it’s a bathroom.) Heedless of the risk of electrocution by wet electronic device, I pounced on my phone like a cat on a mouse. I said, “Hi”. He said, “Hildy?” I didn’t say
well who were you expecting to answer
? Like I would’ve if it was Louie or someone like that. I said, “Yes”. He asked me what I was doing. I didn’t say I was standing wet and naked in the bathroom with soap in my eyes. I said, “Nothing much.” He said he just got back from work. He said it was frantically busy all day. I said, I told you, it’s the heat. It’s driving everyone into anything that’s air-conditioned. Have you seen the buses? People are just riding back and forth for hours. And I bet the supermarkets are packed tighter than battery farms. While he laughed I rubbed my eyes with a towel. Blind but now I see! He’s a senior at Priestly-Hamilton (or will be when school starts), that’s why I’ve never seen him before. Besides the fact that he’s only just started working at the mall. (And because I don’t go to games. He plays a lot of games with balls.) He had some pretty funny stories of stuff that had happened at Café Olé! since he’s worked there. He said he used to think most people were mainly normal, but now he’s not so sure. I said that’s what working with the public does. You realize that most people are a little nuts. And some are a lot nuts. We were laughing so much that he didn’t hear his mom yelling till she started banging on his bedroom door. He said he better go. I said I had to go too. (Which was true. The heat had dried me off but I didn’t have any clothes on and the water was still running.) I had one leg in my shorts when my phone rang again. It was Connor. He said he’d been so involved in talking to me that he’d forgotten to ask me out. (How cute is