She's Got Game (7 page)

“You don't like it?” Carmen said, panicking. “I thought orange was your favorite, but it's easy for me to sketch it in another color if you want.”

“No, that's not it,” Binky said.

“It's too long,” Carmen said. “You don't do long, I've noticed. I'm so sorry.”

Binky shook her head. “No, I love it. I love it.”

She gave Carmen a huge hug, and then, still holding on to her tightly, she burst into tears.

“I'm flattered, really,” Carmen said, embracing the sobbing girl and shooting the others a worried glance. “But it's just a dress. Exquisitely designed. Project Runway–worthy. Someday I'll rule the fashion-world frock. But really, it's just a dress.”

“For real,” Jamie muttered.

Binky sniffed. For the first time since they'd met her, she looked less like a debutante and more like a regular teen. “It's not just the quality of the dress. I never told you guys why orange was my favorite color,” she said, reaching into her purse to withdraw a photo.

“This is my favorite picture of my mom,” Binky explained, holding it close to her heart. “She was Miss Venezuela; then she went to Montreal for the Miss Universe competition, and that's where she met my dad.” She held up the photo. “Look at what she wore for the evening gown competition.”

The dress was dated, but there was no way to deny that it was a distant relative of the dress that Carmen had envisioned. Binky's mother was the picture of
belleza
in a strapless tangerine gown with a big navy bow and a fish-tail hem.

“That's just spooky,” Alicia said after a moment of hushed silence.

“And pretty amazing,” Binky added. “My mom won't be there, really, but I don't know—somehow, this dress is a sign. Like I'm doing what she would have wanted and she's smiling down on me.”

“Sometimes, things are just meant to be,” Carmen said softly. “I'm happy you're happy. I just hope that I can make it as beautiful as the sketch, and as beautiful as your mother's picture. I'll buy the fabric today. Can you come to my house on Wednesday before the game for another fitting?”

“You live in one of those little bitty houses on the canal, right?” Binky said, snapping back to her usual chipper self. “I've always wanted to see what they were like inside. It must be like living in a gingerbread house. So tiny!”

Alicia and Jamie worried that Carmen would bristle at Binky's comment, but their friend held it together.

“Here's the address.” Carmen calmly handed Binky a slip of paper.

“Awesome,” Binky said, getting up and giving them all hugs. “I'd better go. My driver will be waiting, but I'm excited. I can't believe you designed a dress that's so much like my mother. I love you for that, Carmen.”

After she left, the
amigas
exchanged perplexed glances.

“She's so hard to figure out,” Alicia said.

“One minute, she's
completamente
stuck-up…” Jamie said.

“And the next, she's as sweet as can be,” Carmen said, completing her thought.

Their business done, Alicia asked Domingo for the check. He shook his head. “Today's lunch is on me.”

“But we can take it out of the budget,” Alicia said. “And believe me, the budget on this particular
quince
is really generous.”

Domingo smiled, and Carmen nearly melted. He was no Padre Alfonso—he was better.

“I may not have the Mortimer cash, but I can treat my girlfriend and her friends to lunch every once in a while,” Domingo said, leaning over to kiss Carmen on the forehead. “I'll see you later, right? You're coming to my house for dinner.”

“Wouldn't miss it,” Carmen said. “
Gracias
.”

Alicia and Carmen called out their thanks, and Domingo returned to waiting on his tables. Even at three in the afternoon, the Bongos lunch crowd was hopping.

“Hey, on the topic of cute, nice guys,” Alicia said, turning to look at Jamie, “you seemed to be having a really nice time with Dash.”

“It wasn't that nice a time, really. More of a bust,” Jamie mumbled, slurping her watered-down Coke.

“Why?” Carmen asked. “He's a great dancer, supercharming, and, most importantly, really into you.”

Jamie took a deep breath. She had to say something. And the truth seemed the best option. “Yeah,” she said. “He was so into me that when he drove me home, after he kissed me good night, he tried to take my bra off.”

She could feel the tears coming, the ones she'd been fighting back all day. “The best date of my entire life ruined by the fact that Mr. Moneybags thinks he can go extra far with the girl from the South Bronx.”

Carmen, always the voice of reason, rested a hand on Jamie's arm. “I don't want to discount what you're feeling, sweetie, but are you sure that's what Dash was thinking? Sometimes in the heat of the moment, guys push the limit.…”

Jamie's tears vanished instantly. Her eyes flashed, and her voice trembled with rage. “So, if a guy gets all hot and bothered, that's
my
problem? Something
I've
got to deal with?”

Carmen shook her head. “No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying that he seems like a nice guy. Maybe the two of you should talk about it before you completely write it off.”

Jamie stood up. “You know what? I don't want to talk about it. I never wanted to talk about it. In fact, I'm done talking about it. Let's pretend it never happened, okay?”

Then, grabbing her things, she ran out of the restaurant, leaving her very confused friends behind.

• • •

Hoping to get her mind off Dash, Jamie decided to work on her own
quinceañera
checklist. But after a run to the party supply store to get bottles and then a quick stop at the craft shop to pick up mini seashells for Binky's message-in-a-bottle
quince
invitations, Jamie went home still thinking of him. Her father was sitting at the kitchen table when she walked in.

“Hola, Papá,”
she said, kissing him on the cheek.

It was rare for Davide Sosa to be home. Jamie's father worked so many long hours at the car service she sometimes felt as though he lived in a different city and that he just came back to be with Jamie and her mother on the weekends.

“Anything you want to tell me?” her father asked, looking up from the paper he was reading. He raised an eyebrow, attempting to be subtle. It didn't work.

Jamie cocked her head to one side and observed her father. He still looked much younger than his 50-some years. When she had been at Fitzgibbons Academy, the girls there had said that he looked like Antonio Banderas, and while there was much about which she wouldn't have agreed with them, on this she did.

“Papa, what do you mean?” she asked, growing concerned. “Where's Mom? What would I have to tell you?”

“Your mother is fine. She went out for coffee with her friend Tasha.”

“So, if she's okay and you're okay, what's up?” Jamie asked.

“You should go to your room,” her father replied.

Now Jamie was really confused. “Am I grounded? What did I do? I was out last night, but I texted Mom and she said it was okay.”

“Go to your room, Jamie,” her father repeated.

Sighing, Jamie turned and left the kitchen. She walked down the hall with a nervous feeling in her stomach.

Opening the door to her room, she smelled them before she saw them. Dozens upon dozens of roses. All different colors: lavender, red, orange, hot pink. All in different vases. Each with the same note:
Discúlpame, discúlpame, discúlpame, discúlpame, discúlpame—Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me—Dash
.

After she got over the shock, she took a picture with her phone. Quickly, she typed a message:
Can you believe this guy?

Then she hit send. She couldn't imagine what Alicia would say when she saw that Jamie's bedroom had been transformed into a flower shop.

A few minutes later, there was a reply:
Hard to tell from the pix. Romantic, over the top, or stalkerish?

Jamie smiled and typed back:
Borderline OTT, but still pretty romantic.

Ten seconds later, there was a new message:
He seems sorry. I think he really likes you. So…do you like him?

Jamie sat back on her bed. She traced the pattern of her Giant Robot sheets, special edition from Japan. Did she like Dash? Yes. Was she still mad at him for acting like a hyperactive jock? Yes. She typed back:
Can you like someone and be mad at them at the same
time?

The answer came quickly:
Happens.

Jamie kicked off her sneakers and crossed her legs. She looked around and took in the dozens of bouquets. She'd never seen anything more beautiful, or been in a room that smelled sweeter. Did the rooms at the Mortimer house, scented by such expensive roses, smell this sweet all the time? And if she said, “Okay, I forgive you,” after Dash sent her so many flowers, would it mean she was being swayed by him—or by his money? She took out her phone and typed another message to her best friend:
Do you think he's trying to buy me off with such an expensive gift? Or is he really sorry?

Not even one minute later, the reply came:
I think he's really sorry.

Just then the land line rang, startling Jamie. For a moment, she allowed herself to think that it was Dash—although, in the great game of Whose Turn Is It? the ball was now most definitely in her court. She'd stomped off, furious. He'd sent her a truckload of roses. Now it was on her to call him and let him know whether or not she accepted his apology.

She could hear her father answer the phone in the cheesy way he always did when one of her girlfriends called. It was probably Carmen, with some
quince
business. She ran out of her room and opened the door to the living room just as her father said the punchline of his favorite joke.

“The doctor was a woman!” he bellowed into the phone.

“Hey, Papa,” Jamie said, interrupting him before he could start a new one. “Is it for me?”

“Is it a day that ends with a
Y
?” her father asked, handing her the phone. “It's Alicia.”

Jamie smiled. “Thanks. Can I have a minute?”

“So, Lici, do you think I should forgive him?” she said, when her dad had left the room.

“Dash?” Alicia asked.

“Who else?” Jamie said. “I'm glad you called. You have to come over. Photos do not do these flowers justice, and the smell,
niña
. These roses put even the fanciest perfume to shame.”

“Dash sent you flowers?” Alicia asked. “
Qué caballero.
Very sweet.”

Jamie suddenly had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. “Lici, we've been texting about this for the past twenty minutes.”

Alicia sounded confused. “But I was in the pool. I just came in.”

The sinking feeling got worse. This didn't make any sense.

Jamie didn't get it. Alicia was many things, but absent-minded was most definitely not one of them. Nor cruel. She would never have played a practical joke. Would she?

“I texted you a picture of the gajillion roses that Dash sent me as soon as I got home,” Jamie said.

“I never got any picture.”

Jamie gulped. “Let me call you back.”

She hung up and scrolled back through her text messages. Suddenly, she let out a squeak. How could she have made such a junior high school texting mistake?

Alicia and Dash's phone numbers had the same first six digits. At a quick glance, she'd mistaken Dash's number for her friend's. She'd sent
him
a picture of the flowers that he'd sent her. She'd told
him
how much she liked him and asked
him
whether he thought that the expensive gift was in poor taste.

What was she going to do? Jamie weighed her options: Lose her phone? Not such a good idea, because phones were expensive. Pretend to have lost her phone and when she saw Dash again, if he mentioned the text messages, say, “Oh, I lost my phone
weeks
ago”?

It occurred to her that while it was indeed a juvenile thing to text with abandon and without checking to make sure you had the right phone number, she wasn't the only guilty party. Dash must've known that she
hadn't
known she was texting him. He had played her. Again.

But this time, she was far from angry. He liked her. He'd not only sent her a flotilla of roses to say so, he'd gotten her text messages and asked, pretty blatantly, if she were in the forgiving mood. And wouldn't you know it? She was.

She picked up the land line and dialed his number.

“Hey,
querida
,” he said softly.

“Hay is for horses,” Jamie answered.

“Right,” he said, laughing.

“So, are you, like, the Batman of text messages?” she asked. “Sending messages without ever revealing your identity?”

“Am I in trouble again?” he asked.

Jamie waited a moment before answering to let him sweat just a little. “No, you're not. Thank you for the flowers.”

“Do you like roses?” Dash asked eagerly. “I know they are a little bit of a cliché, but I love the smell of real garden roses.”

Jamie smiled and took a deep breath. “Now I do, too.”

“Go out with me again,” Dash asked. “Give me the chance to show that I can be a perfect gentleman.”

“Well, your sister has convinced us all to go to the C. G.–Everglades football game tomorrow,” Jamie said.

“Me, too,” Dash answered. “Should we go together?”

Jamie had held on to one of the cards that had come with the roses. Now she began to doodle on the back of it. “Not so fast, cowboy.
Maybe
I'll see you there. And
maybe
there'll be a seat next to me, and
maybe
if you sit down, I won't get up and move to another bleacher seat. But I'm not making any promises.”