The Spring Girls

“Iced mocha for here!” Sam yelled to Hayton. Or me? I wasn’t sure, but it about made my bones jump out of my skin.

“Oh, fuck. Fuck us. There’s a line over there!” Hayton whisper-yelled at me, jabbing her little finger into the air to point at the bookstore area. She was right. Fuck us.

Pretty much the only shitty thing about working at Pages was when both sides were swamped with customers. Since I was one of only two switch employees, I could ring out customers on the bookstore side of the store, then pop over to tell a customer why they should devour my favorite poetry books, to make drinks, or to pop a bagel in the toaster oven when needed. Today was one of those days. I had been going back and forth since noon. I knew that after this line died down, I would be going over to sell books and have to remember authors’ names and genres, the order their books go in a series, and maybe, just maybe, if I was lucky enough, my head would explode into book-page-themed confetti.

“Sorry,” I heard Sam say.

“It’s fine!” Hayton shot him her perkiest smile, looking a little like she was planning to skin him alive in front of the crowd. The image was vomit-worthy to say the least, and I momentarily cursed Meredith and her love of horror for its impact on my mind.

Pages kept getting busier and busier each week that I worked there. I hated the long drive to the Quarter, but I could totally see why people—both hipsters and non—flocked in to take pictures for their social-media posts. The funky blue floral wallpaper clashed with the rows and rows of books. In the back of the store there was a buy-here, resell-here section that was always busy, and where most of the actual bookworms bought their stock. But the aesthetic collectors wanted the shiny hardback that matched with their designer coffee cup and the pattern on their nails.

Pages was everything you wanted in a local hangout (tourist trap) of a bookstore. When word kept traveling about this place, and blogs kept posting pictures of it, and some chick with a million Instagram followers posted a fancy latte with a penguin drawn with foam here, it got busier and busier. Almost every person took a picture of their coffee, and I could always tell when they were going straight to Instagram. It’s just so chic to drink a $6 white-chocolate coconut mocha! And what says designer coffee like a little design drawn on top?

But seriously, it is. And I not-so-secretly loved those pictures. Laurie’s Instagram was full of pictures of us.

Laurie. My stomach flipped again.

The boom in business at Pages would have been cool before, but since my dad came home, I just didn’t have time to work my ass off at school, then work, then home. I had become so busy driving back and forth to doctors, and Amy’s Girl Scouts, and work, that by the time I tied the apron around my waist, I barely had enough energy to make an iced coffee, let alone keep a line going with pep in my voice and a smile on my face.

I was sweaty and had lost count of how many bagels I had toasted or how many vanilla lattes I had made. My tan T-shirt was clinging to the sweat beading on my back.

When I was thinking that nothing else could be added to my list, my phone vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it out to see my dad’s name flashing on the screen. I ignored the call and shouted to Hayton that I would be back in a second. I didn’t wait for her to answer before I dipped into the break room to call my dad back.

He answered on the first ring. “Jo, hey. Can you pick me up from Howard?”

He must have been at one of his appointments at the hospital on post. It felt like they were piling up. I didn’t even know about this one.

“I’m at work. I can’t. I get off at four, so like an hour. You had an appointment on a Sunday?”

I heard the blender turn on and prayed to God that it wasn’t Sam making a blended drink.

“No, I went to the woodshop on post to see if I knew anyone, but it was full of new privates. Your sister dropped me off on the way to something.” He paused. “I forget, but Meg dropped me off. Can you get me?”

“I get off in an hour.”

“That’s fine. I can sit and wait here.”

A metal cup fell to the floor, and I cringed. The blender, the metal cup, Sam . . . bad collection there. I had like ten seconds, tops, before I had to go back out there and pull my weight, or I’d be here all day. I wanted to go back to Laurie’s house . . . or just see Laurie . . . and I wanted to find out if Meg was still pissed at me over the Shia ordeal. My back was so tense, it felt like a hundred little needles were stabbing into the meat between my neck and my shoulder.

“No fucking—” I stopped and corrected myself. “No way. Let me see if Laurie can come get you. I’ll text you as soon as I know.”

“Thanks, Jo. Love you.”

“Love you, Dad.”

I hung up and rolled my shoulders back, trying to relieve the throbbing. I wanted to lean against the wall, but I didn’t want to get too comfortable. My body was exhausted all the way down to the tips of my toes. I glanced at the huge schedule board tacked to the wall in the break room. My name was on there four times for the week. That was about three too many. Was life supposed to be so heavy at this age? I should have been prepared for this. TV, film, and media in general prepared me for this. Gossip Girl, Boy Meets World, the imperfectly perfect dictation of what teenage life was like in my era.

Laurie answered the phone after the second ring.

“Hey, I have a favor to ask,” I greeted him.

There was a noise in the background like a soft buzzing or swishing. “Hi. Okay?”

“Can you pick my dad up from the woodshop across from Magnolia hospital?”

“Now?”

“Yeah. If you can? Don’t you have a driver sitting around waiting for you to call him?”

Laurie laughed into the phone. “Ha-ha. I do, but I’ll go get your dad. I can actually drive. Can you believe that?” Playful sarcasm dripped from his accented voice. His “ha-ha” was almost missing the h completely.

“Gasp,” I teased.

He was an awful driver. I limited his driving when we went out together. Since meeting Laurie, I found myself loving being chauffeured around. I would still ride a public bus or metro any day, but sitting on black leather seats that were always the perfect degree of cold for the Louisiana spring while being driven by a driver who stays in his own lane, unlike Laurie, was pretty freaking nice.

“I’ll leave now. I just need to finish my shower.”

So that’s what the swishing sound was . . .

“Thanks, Laurie,” I breathed into the phone.

“No problem, Jo.”

He hung up first, and I tried to think of anything besides him in the shower. Whatever he puts in his kisses should be bottled and sold to virginal girls around the freaking globe.

The bell on the wall rang right next to my ear, letting me know the lobby door had opened and scaring the crap out of me. I wiped my hands across my dirty apron and went back out to the storm in the store. Only there wasn’t a storm at all. It was like the little bit of sunshine after a bad storm. The line was completely clear on the café side, and Sam was clearing the dirty tables. Hayton was putting her busy body to work by sweeping the floor behind the bar. Even the bookstore side was mostly cleared out: only two people were at the register. A blond girl and tattooed guy were checking out with a pretty big stack of used books. The noise had also died down, so that I could actually hear the music. The door opened again and Vanessa, our newest coworker, walked in. It couldn’t get any better. I loved working with Vanessa. She carried her own weight, and she was funny, witty, and so good at her job that it made the shift sooo much better.

The chaos had cleared out. Laurie seemed to bring peace in the wake of him.

When I dragged my body through the front door of my house after work, Laurie was on the couch with his long legs across the worn-out rug from Mosul. He was wearing light jeans with rips in the knees, and the bottom of his white socks were dirty. Amy was perched next to him. The laptop was in her lap.

“And then she yelled at

Jo, and Jo stormed off to your house. Meredith and my dad were pissed because of this creep at my school named Jacob Weber, who kissed me.” Amy made a sour face.

I leaned against the wall to take my shoes off. I needed a shower. Immediately. “Amy, seriously?”

All I got was an eye roll from Amy before she turned back to Laurie. “Anyway, so yeah. It’s so messed up.”

I walked over to the couch and sat at Laurie’s knees. If Amy weren’t here, I would have sat between his legs like I could when we binged Netflix shows at his house.

“And none of my friends are in any of my classes this year.” Amy sighed like she wasn’t lucky to even have friends to begin with. Speaking of, Beth walked into the living room and handed Amy a plate of food. Little butter-cracker sandwiches with ham and cheese layered between them.

“Thank youuu.” Amy air-kissed Beth, kicking her sock-covered feet against the couch. She had makeup on—little pink lips and cheeks.

“Damn.” Laurie shook his head. His hair was tucked behind his ears, but he retucked both sides and kept talking to my twelve-year-old sister about her junior high crisis. “That’s pretty brutal. Guys can be di—” He cleared his throat. “Guys can behave really poorly sometimes. Especially to girls. I wish I could say we get better when we get older, but I don’t know if that’s true.”

“Some of you do,” I told him.