Page 24 of The Getaway List
Oh good I can call off your kidnappers. Count me in, says the text from Mariella.
Jesse’s texts just under it are an eloquent DFJGDLFGJDLFJDLFkdAF:LkaSFL:!!!!! And a SUCK IT, FALLS CREEK!!!!!!!!!! Followed by a (to be clear i am also extremely in).
Luca’s response is just a GIF of Patrick from SpongeBob yelling “WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE?!” Tom and I must see it at the same time because we both throw our heads back with sharp laughs, our eyes snagging on each other’s.
And just like that, all the complications seem to slide away. We’re eighteen and we’ve got this entire city at our feet and an entire summer to tear through it. All of our what ifs just turned into what nows—like finally the list isn’t just to get away, but to get somewhere worth going. I’ve got no idea where it is or what it looks like yet, but as long as we’ve got each other, I know damn well we’ll enjoy the ride.
Chapter Seven
An admirer would like to send you a gift from the “Dear, Love” Dispatch! Log in to the app to accept and meet up with your dispatcher.
I blink at my phone screen, wondering if Tom set the app up wrong. After the dust from the “Riley has incited her mother’s wrath, forsaken the whole state of Virginia, and upended her entire summer” storm settled this morning, he helped me set up a dispatcher profile of my own so I could make money doing deliveries, too. This feels like the opposite of the kind of notification I should be getting.
I tap into the app and see the options to choose an intersection to meet the dispatcher with this alleged “gift” and go ahead and tap the intersection closest to Tom’s apartment, mostly because I’m assuming it’s Tom himself. We spent the afternoon on separate missions: him taking a string of deliveries with the dispatch, and me scrambling to buy a ten-pack of underwear from the Old Navy downtown. Maybe he’s finished his rounds and decided to be cheeky about it.
Only it’s not Tom in the “Dear, Love” Dispatch hat holding a giant bouquet of mismatched, colorful flowers, but some other dispatcher.
“Wait, but who are these from?” I ask, accepting the bundle.
The dispatcher shrugs. “It’s anonymous,” he says, the “duh” implied.
People are openly staring at me as I walk back to the apartment like I’m some great woman of mystery. Even I have to admit that despite rocking unwashed jeans and one of Tom’s giant white T-shirts after sweating through mine, the very loud and public flower delivery exudes some main-character energy.
I set them in one of Vanessa’s nice vases when I get back, at which point Tom comes in with his arms full of so many groceries that he looks like he could tip over and cause a small earthquake. I book it across the hardwood to grab some of the bags out from under him.
“Are we opening a restaurant?” I ask under the weight of what appears to be an entire grocery-store aisle’s worth of food.
Tom eases the rest of the bags to the counter. “I figured with two of us we’d need more supplies.”
I don’t bother mentioning to Tom that we are two humans, not prizewinning racehorses, because come to think of it the fridge was pretty bare when I got here. Besides, the larger issue I already see is that left to his own devices, Tom will quietly take care of everything there possibly is to take care of.
“All right, we need ground rules,” I tell him abruptly.
Tom’s eyebrows raise almost in alarm, but he nods vigorously. “Yeah. Anything.”
Jesus, how this boy has survived for so long without getting pulled into a well-intentioned friend’s pyramid scheme is beyond me. “For the sake of equal division of labor, I mean.”
Tom nods again, slower this time, and then says, “All right. But if you’ve got other rules we should set them out now. Or add them as we go.”
I wrinkle my nose because Tom is reaching for a literal legal pad on the kitchen counter, one of the few signs of Vanessa’s presence in the apartment. She’s always had one in every room in case an idea strikes her. Tom moves aside a page that just says “make them hornier??” and looks at me expectantly.
I think on it a moment and say, “Well, for one thing, we should probably text to let the other one know when we’re leaving the apartment, just in case one of us gets kidnapped and/or murdered.”
“Right,” says Tom, diligently copying it down. “Also adding ‘don’t get kidnapped and/or murdered’ to the list for good measure.”
“Genius. But mostly we’ll divvy up the chores. Including grocery shopping. I don’t want you suffocating under a pile of extremely unreasonably priced cereal boxes.”
“Not on Tony the Tiger’s watch.”
“What about guests?” I ask.
Tom’s pen pauses in his hand. “What about them?”
I tap the pad for him to keep going. “Like if you want to have someone over.”
“I assume they’d just be the same people you want over?” says Tom.
“Sure, but what about, like—a guest,” I elaborate, and for some reason emphasize it by doing an absurd wiggle with my hips.
