She hadn’t been kidding—her futon really did suck. Hard as a rock. When we got back to Kristen’s, I changed into pajama bottoms and a T-shirt. I was standing over the brick of a bed, debating whether the couch was a better option, when she knocked on the door.
She stood in the hall in her curlers, wringing her hands, with Stuntman Mike at her feet looking up at me. I thought for a second she’d seen someone in the yard and had come to tell me.
“Josh? Can you come to my room?”
My wolfish grin broke some of the tension on her face.
“Oh, stop. There’s a spider. I need you to kill it. Please. Before it disappears and I have to burn my whole house down.”
I laughed. “Should I get my gun or…?”
She bounced nervously. “Josh, I’m serious. I hate them. Please help me.”
I pulled a few tissues from the box on my nightstand. “You know, you seem too fearless to be afraid of spiders.”
“A black widow killed my schnauzer when I was a kid. Embracing a lifelong debilitating fear of spiders is cheaper than therapy.” She stopped in the doorway of her room like there was an invisible force field, and I almost bumped into her back.
“Well? Where is it?”
She pointed to the wall on the other side of her bed. It was a decent-size spider. I could see why she was distressed.
Her room was surprisingly girly. I don’t know what I was expecting. She had tons of throw pillows and a soft-looking blanket draped off the footboard. It smelled like the perfume she’d had on the day she wore my shirt—green apples.
Stuntman Mike climbed a mahogany staircase that matched her bed frame and plopped down on the pink floral bedspread with his tongue out.
The brown spider scurried a few inches and Kristen spun and did a little jumpy thing, burying her face in my chest.
I’d never liked spiders more in my life.
I put my hands on her shoulders and delicately moved her out of my way. “What would you have done if I wasn’t here?” I asked, as I pressed the tissues to the wall firmly, ending the siege.
“I would have gone to Sloan and Brandon’s.” She squeezed herself against the door frame as far as she could go while I walked the dead spider to the toilet in her guest bathroom.
I flushed the tissues and turned to her. “Let me get this straight. You’ll pack up and leave for a spider, but you have a prowler in the backyard and that you just ride out?”
“My priorities feel straight.” She looked around me at the toilet like she wanted to make sure it actually went down.
“That spider looked pregnant, by the way. Thank God you called me when you did.”
She flapped her hands and squeaked a little and I laughed at her. I crossed my arms and leaned in the bathroom doorway. “We got a call for a spider last week. Believe it or not, it was one of the least stupid calls we went on.”
“I actually get that. I was close to calling 911 myself.” I chuckled at her.
“Well, thank you,” she said. “If I can ever return the favor, let me know.
Like, if you ever need a porch plant killed, I’m your girl.”
I smiled and we both just stood there. Neither one of us made a move to go, even though it was late.
A mischievous grin crept across her face. “Are you tired?”
I liked the glint in her eye and I had no intention of ending this night if she didn’t want to, no matter how tired I was. “No.”
“Do you want to go TP Sloan and Brandon’s house?”
My laugh made her eyes dance.
“I know it’s a little tenth-grade retro,” she said. “But I’ve always wanted to do it. And you can’t TP a house alone—it’s a rule.”
“We’ll have to show up there tomorrow and help them clean it up.
Pretend it’s just a lucky coincidence,” I said.
“Can you borrow a tool from Brandon? I can text Sloan in the morning to tell her we’re going to pick it up. She’ll cook if she knows we’re coming. Then we’ll get breakfast and atone for our sins.” She grinned.
A half an hour later I was crouched behind my truck two houses down from Brandon’s, game-planning with Kristen. She still hadn’t taken out her curlers.
“If they wake up,” she whispered, “we scatter and reconvene at the donut place on Vanowen.”
“Got it. If you’re captured, no matter what they do to you, don’t break under interrogation.”
She scoffed quietly. “As if. I can’t be broken.” She snatched her roll and darted from behind the truck.
We made short work of it. Operation TP Sloan and Brandon’s was completed in less than five minutes. No casualties. We got back into the truck laughing so hard it took me three tries to get the key in the ignition. Then I noticed she’d lost a curler.
I got unbuckled. “No curlers left behind. It’s Marine Corps policy.” We got out for a recon mission on Brandon’s lawn.
I located the fallen curler under a pile of TP by the mailbox. “Hey,” I whispered, holding it up. “Found it.”
She beamed and jogged across the toilet-papered grass, but when she reached for the curler, I palmed it. “You’re injured,” I whispered. “You’ve lost a curler. The medics can reattach it, but I’ll need to carry you out. Get on my back.”
I was only about 50 percent sure she would go for this. I banked on her not wanting to break character.
She didn’t skip a beat. “You’re right,” she whispered. “Man down. Good call.”
She jumped up and I piggybacked her to the truck, laughing the whole way.
Those thirty seconds of her arms around my neck made my entire night.
Once we officially made our getaway and were driving from the neighborhood, she turned to me. “Hey, you wanna see something cool?”
I wanted to do anything that meant I got to spend more time with her. “Yeah, sure.”
“Okay, turn left here,” she said. “It’s a surprise.”
We drove a few miles and then she directed me into a vacant parking lot in a strip mall on Roscoe Boulevard near her house. “Park there. This is it.”
I pulled into the empty lot and put the truck in park. “Well? What’s the surprise?”
None of the businesses were open. It was almost 1:00 in the morning.
She unbuckled herself and sat facing me, her legs tucked under her on the seat. Her eyes sparkled. “Look.” She pointed out the windshield to a run-down pawnshop in front of the truck.
“What?”
“You don’t know what that is?” She grinned.
I looked back at the storefront. Just a tired shop. “Nope. What?”
She leaned over and whispered in my ear, “I ain’t through with you by a damn sight. I’ma get medieval on your ass.”
My eyes flew wide. “No fucking way.” I jumped out of the truck and stood in front of the pawnshop, examining the windows and sign. She climbed out after me.
“Is this…?” I asked in awe.
“Yup. The pawnshop from the gimp scene in Pulp Fiction.” I grinned up at the yellow sign. “Wow.”
“I know.”
I knew the movie had been filmed in California, but it never occurred to me to look for the landmarks.
“Are there more?” I asked.
“Yeah. There’s the street where Butch runs over Marsellus. And the outside of Jack Rabbit Slim’s is actually a vacant bowling alley in Glendale. We could drive by that sometime if you want. Most of the landmarks are gone though. The restaurant from the Honey Bunny scene, the apartment where Vincent gets killed—all torn down.”
I furrowed my brow, but not because of the demolished landmarks. This was the best date I’d ever been on. And it wasn’t even a date.
I looked at her, balancing on the balls of her feet off a concrete parking
lot divider. She had no makeup on. Sweats. Hair in fucking curlers. Hell, she didn’t even change out of the shirt with the enormous lasagna stain on the front before we left the house. And she was a thousand times better than the drop-dead gorgeous yoga instructor from a few hours earlier.
Fun. Witty. Smart. Beautiful. The cool girl.
And nothing that I could have.
