Page 12 of Mixed Signals
“Shit,” I sigh. I turn left instead of going straight, heading back towards town and my idiot, indulgent brother. The massive weeping willows that hug either side of the road mock me in my rearview mirror, their branches swaying softly in the breeze that drifts in from the fields.You’re late,they whisper.She’s going to change her mind.
Great. In addition to impulsively proposing dating experiments to pretty bakery owners, I am now talking to trees.
I had hoped to see Layla this morning. I wanted to salvage … something … from our conversation Saturday night. I blame the sad look on her face and the way she kept trying to smile her way through it. I also blame that dress she was wearing and the way the mint green material hugged her thighs in the passenger seat of my car. I couldn’t think when she was sitting there, looking like that. I couldn’t think when I saw her at the bar either.
I am ninety-nine percent sure I made a total ass of myself, sharing the dismal state of my romantic life. With a set-up like that, the chances of her agreeing to my proposition are slim to none.
Date me, Layla,I basically said.I’m really fucking terrible at it.
I pinch the bridge of my nose.
I was joking.
Kind of.
Not really.
Alright, I wasn’t joking at all, but I’m prepared to sell that lie if I need to.
I do struggle with dating. That’s the truth. I can never seem to figure out the right thing to say at exactly the right time. I overthink and then overcompensate for overthinking and then overthink myself overcompensating. It’s a vicious cycle.
But there’s another reason, too. I’m convinced I’m picking the wrong type of person. Because the right type of person is about five-foot-three, has cropped brown hair and hazel eyes—a collection of ridiculous aprons and absolutely no clue about my crush. I’m not sure she’s ever thought of me as anything more than the guy with a croissant problem, ambling into her bakery three times a week for the exact same order.
I’m not so sure explicitly telling her I’m bad at dating is going to help her see me in a different light, but here we are.
I’ve always had a thing for sweeping love stories. I used to sit at the little wooden table in my grandparents’ kitchen when I was a kid and listen to my abuelo talk about the exact moment he met my grandmother, the love of his life. I’d scuff my shoes across the floor and watch my abuelo’s face change. I’d watch every bit of him light up.
The first time my grandfather saw my grandmother, he was buying fish at their local market. She had her hair pulled back in one long braid and was selling huaraches from a tiny wooden stand. He said he took one look at her and bought everything she had. What he intended to do with over thirty pairs of women’s sandals, I have no idea. But she walked him home with bags hanging off both their elbows and they were married one month later.Love at first sight, he said.
My dad met my mom when he was standing on the balcony of his apartment. He was watering his plants and saw her standing on hers.Una santa,he’d always tell us when we were kids, climbing all over him, asking to hear the story again.He thought she was a saint. He would whistle from his open window to hers and she would appear there with a bottle of wine and a cork between her teeth. They’d talk until the sun was low in the sky, both of them in their windows, the wine bottle passed back and forth.
I grew up with these stories. Tender and romantic and absolutely useless at helping maintain my expectations for relationships. I know what I want and what I don’t and I’m not willing to settle.
Layla should feel that way, too. She shouldn’t settle. She shouldn’t be out on dates with guys that steal the silverware. Guys that leave her standing at the bar by herself with a pen between her teeth, paying for a mediocre dinner and bad company. I saw her once at the farmer’s market with that Jacob guy she was with for a while. She was holding up a bouquet of flowers, trying to show him the different blooms. He ignored her completely, busy on his phone. I can still remember the way her face fell. The way she carefully put the flowers back and curled in on herself.
Anger burns sharp in my gut and I slap at my turn signal harder than I mean to.
She deserves better.
I’d like to try my best to show her that.
If she’ll let me.
Alex’s car is in the driveway when I park, the curtains drawn over the windows. I don’t bother knocking. I just grab the key from where it’s wedged under a small statue of the Virgin Mary in his garden and elbow my way through the door. Our grandmother bought him that statue four years ago and we’re both afraid to move it. Every time we so much as stare at it for too long, our abuela appears at the front door as if we summoned her.
“Rise and shine,” I shout down the short hallway. I make sure to slam the door behind me. A groan echoes from the depths of the house.
I hear his voice in the kitchen, faint but there. “Solo déjame morir.”
Alex always reverts to Spanish when he’s feeling dramatic. I grin as I follow the sound of his wheezing and find him sprawled across the floor in front of the fridge, his glasses on his chest and a bottle of Gatorade clutched in his hand. His bag is still over his shoulder and his shirt is half tucked in, shoes unlaced on his feet. It looks like he made a valiant attempt to get out the door this morning, but had a change of heart halfway across his kitchen.
“I’m not going to leave you here to die,” I reply. He makes a pitiful whimpering sound and rolls onto his side, his knees to his chest.
“I sat down for a minute,” he whines. “I don’t think I can get up again.”
“You can.”
He groans. Long and loud and obnoxious. “Fine. I don’t want to.”
