Which, if you ask me, was pretty decent of him. He could have strung Sidney along all summer and then just dumped her when he got to California — or even just gone ahead and seen other girls behind her back, and not told her, and come back for Thanksgiving and Christmas vacations expecting to pick things up where they’d left them. It’s not like, being all the way across the country, Sidney ever would have known Rick had his tongue in some Kappa Kappa Gamma’s mouth.
Although it actually is possible — even easy — to see other people behind your significant other’s back while living in the same town without that person (or anyone else, for that matter) ever finding out. Easier, for instance, than hiding the fact that you can’t stand quahogs (the supposedly edible kind).
I’m just saying.
So it was nice of Rick not to string Sidney along. I told her that at the time, even though it didn’t seem to console her much. Sidney didn’t really calm down until she found out Dave had broken up with Beth Ridley, due to her cheating on him with this hottie from Australia she met while crewing on her uncle’s parasailing charter.
So Sidney invited Dave over to her house to commiserate about their no-good exes in her Jacuzzi over Boylan’s cream soda (Sidney’s was sugar-free, of course). Dave didn’t even try to take her bikini top off, which really impressed Sidney.
So of course she hooked up with him.
For such a small town, a lot of stuff happens in Eastport. Sometimes it’s hard to keep up.
Like right now, for instance. Because when I looked over at Morgan Castle’s table and saw who she was with, I knew EXACTLY what she was doing at the Gull ’n Gulp on a Tuesday night in high season.
And I also knew I didn’t have time for the drama that was about to erupt. I mean, I had Mrs. Hogarth’s birthday twelve-top to deal with.
Sidney didn’t know that, though, and even if she had, she wouldn’t have cared. I’ve been best friends with Sidney van der Hoff, the most popular girl in my class, since second grade when I let her cheat off me during a spelling quiz. Sidney had been a wreck that day, on account of her kitten having gone in to get spayed. Sidney had convinced herself Muffy wasn’t going to survive.
So I took pity on her and let her copy my answers.
Muffy got through her surgery just fine, and grew into a fat cat whom I got to know quite well from the frequent slumber parties I attended at Sidney’s house afterward, Sidney not being the kind of person to forget a kindness.
That’s what I love about Sidney.
It’s all the drama I could live without.
“Oh my God, is thatEric Fluteley?” Sidney was totally staring at Morgan’s table. “That’s even WEIRDER. What’s HE doing here? This is hardly his kind of place. I mean, considering that no Hollywood casting scouts are likely to walk in.”
“Hey, Katie,” Dave said, ignoring his girlfriend’s outburst. This was typical Dave behavior. He is a notorious smoother-over…one of those people who is always calm, no matter what the situation — even Morgan Castle and Eric Fluteley dining together at the Gull ’n Gulp. That’s why he and Sidney make such a good couple. She’s a disrupter, and he’s a smoother-over. Together, they’re almost like one normal person. “How you doing? Busy tonight, huh?”
“Way busy,” I said. He had no idea. This family from, like, Ohio or something had come in earlier, and the parents had let their kids run around all over the place, bothering Jill up at the hostess stand, throwing french fries out into the water (even though the signs on the pier supports say, very clearly,DO NOT FEED THE BIRDS OR FISH), getting in the way of the busboys when they were carrying enormous trays of used plates, shrieking for no reason, that sort of thing.
If my brothers and I had acted that way in a restaurant, my mom would have made us go sit out in the car.
But these parents just smiled like they thought their kids were so cute, even when one of them blew milk at me from a straw.
And then, after all that, they only left a three-dollar tip.
Hello. Do you know what you can buy in Eastport for three dollars? Nothing.
“I’ll make this quick, then,” Dave was saying. “I’ll have a Coke.”
“Make it two,” Jamal said.
“Make it three,” Seth said, with another one of his knee-melting smiles. I could tell by the way he couldn’t take his eyes off me that things were going to get steamy in the cab of his truck later on. I knew the cami I was wearing had been a good idea, even though Peggy has a thing about bra straps showing, and had almost made me go home to change until Jill had pointed out her bra straps show every single night, and if it’s okay for the hostess, why not the wait staff?
“Diet for me, please, Katie,” Martha said.
“Me, too,” Sidney said.
“Two diets, three regulars, and two quahog fritter platters coming up,” I said, gathering the menus. We always throw in free quahogs for the Quahogs. Because it’s good for business to have the most popular guys in town hanging out at your establishment. “Be back in a minute, guys.”
I winked at Seth, who winked back. Then I hurried to turn in their order and get the drinks.
I couldn’t help glancing in Eric’s direction on my way to the soda station — and saw him staring at me over the top of Morgan’s head. He had that look on his face — the same look he got when I was taking his headshots for his college apps, and the stills of him for theQuahog Gazette during that really intense scene fromThe Breakfast Club, which our school put on, where Bender talks about how his dad burned him for spilling paint on the garage floor. Eric played Bender, and you could TOTALLY see how Claire, the school’s prom queen, would go for him.
Eric really is talented. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him in the movies someday. Or some TV series about sensitive but fearless doctors, or whatever. He’s already got an agent and goes on auditions and everything. He almost got a part in a Daisy sour cream commercial, but was beat out at the last minute when the director decided to go in a different direction and use a five-year-old instead.
Which I could understand. I mean, it’s sour cream. How intense do you want the guy to look about it? Even now, Eric was looking at me so intensely that Morgan, who was trying to talk to him, totally paused and looked around to see what he was staring at.
Quick as a flash, I turned my back on them and leaned down to ask Mrs. Hogarth if there was anything she needed.
“Oh, no, Katie, dear,” she said, beaming at me. “Everything is just lovely. Larry, honey, you remember Katie Ellison, don’t you? Her mother and father own Ellison Properties, the real estate firm in town.”
Mrs. Hogarth’s son, who was in Eastport with his wife (and some of his kids and some of their kids and a few oftheir kids) to take his mom and her best friends from her assisted-living community out for her birthday, smiled. “Is that so?”
“And Katie takes pictures for her school paper,” Mrs. Hogarth went on. “And for our community newsletter. She took that nice picture of the quilting club. Remember, Anne Marie?”
“I thought I looked fat in it,” said Mrs. O’Callahan, who, by the way,is fat. Although I’d tried to Photoshop out some of the excess, knowing she’d complain later.
“Well,” I said, super chipperly. “Is everyone ready for dessert?”
“Oh, I think so,” Mrs. Hogarth’s son said with a wink. He’d stopped by earlier with a cake from Strong’s Bakery, which we’d stashed in the back and which I was supposed to bring out while singing “Happy Birthday.” The Hogarths had forgotten to get candles, though, so I’d run over to the card shop and picked up two shaped like the numbers nine and seven. They were kids’ candles, with clowns on them, but I knew Mrs. Hogarth wouldn’t mind.