Meg Cabot - Every Boy’s Got One

At least he didn’t say anything. Instead, he calmly produced a deck of cards from the back pocket of his jeans and asked if I cared to play a game of War.

Reduced to spending a beautiful, starlit night along the Adriatic coast playing War with a German teenager.

I can’t help wondering if the man at the consulate’s office wasn’t right this afternoon when he expressed his belief that it’s better to have a corpse in the house than a man from Le Marche. Not that there happen to be any of those in the vicinity. Just that… well, this place seems to do things to otherwise normal people.…

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To: Cal Langdon <cal.langdon@thenyjournal.com>

Fr: Mary Langdon <m.langdon@internetcafenetwork.com>

Re: Thank You

Oh my God, Cal, thanks for the money. I really needed it. Jeff (the guy who owned the van) turned out to be a total psycho. He kicked me out just because he happened to catch me talking to another guy. I don’t know who he thinks he is, anyway—the freaking Taliban? God, I hate it when guys think they own me.

But it’s cool because I hooked up with this awesome group of ski-boarders. They’ve even got a spare room I can crash in. One of them, Malcolm, showed me how to ride the half pipe. He let me use one of his boards and everything. He says he thinks I might have a lot of natural talent. Who knows? Maybe boarding’s been my calling all along, and I just never knew it, because Mom and Dad always made us go on those stupid beach vacations, instead of taking us skiing, like normal parents.

Anyway, thanks again for the cash.

More later,

Mare

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To: Cal Langdon <cal.langdon@thenyjournal.com >

Fr: Ruth Levine <r.levine@levinedentalgroup.com >

Re: Hello!

Hi, Cal! I don’t mean to be a pest, but I was just wondering if you got my earlier email, and if you’d had a chance to consider what I said in it. About Mark and Holly. I know you’re with Mark right now, and I was hoping you’d had a chance to speak to him about it. For reasons I’d rather not go into just now, he and I aren’t really speaking at the moment. Or rather, I’m speaking to him, but he appears to be put out with me. I know it will blow over soon—you know Mark and his moods. But I just hope that, in the meantime, you’ll keep an eye on him, and keep him from doing anything… well, rash.

I certainly don’t mean I think he’s going to KILL himself because he got into an argument with his mother, of course. By rash I just mean… well, I don’t know—PROPOSE to her, or something. Holly, I mean. Not that I don’t like her or wouldn’t want her as a daughter-in-law. She’s a perfectly affable girl. It’s just that she’s not one of us .

Anyway, I don’t mean to spoil your nice vacation with my constant emails. I hope you’re having a good time. I just also hope that if, you know, you find yourself in a position to maybe give Mark a little dose of reality about how difficult it can be to make a marriage work—especially when two people come from such different cultures as he and Holly do—I’d really appreciate it.

Affectionately,

Ruth Levine

Travel Diary of Holly Caputo and Mark Levine

Jane Harris

Holly looked happier tonight than I’ve ever seen her. Happier even than the day Brad Toller asked her to the senior prom after she’d spent the entire year just trying to get him to notice her. Seriously. She’s GLOWING. I mean, she’s still pale from having spent the entire day and most of last night throwing up— and her wedding dress is hanging off her, she’s lost so much weight—but tomorrow she’s going to make the most beautiful bride in the universe.

We so did the right thing, Cal and I, perjuring ourselves, etc., today at the consulate’s office.

Now Holly’s drifted off to bed in a dreamy haze, and I just heard Mark come in to join her, and Frau Schumacher seems to have left, and I realize I’m STARVING. I mean, we haven’t eaten since the Hotel Eden this afternoon, so I’m going to forage for food down in the kitchen, then go straight to bed myself, since we have to get up so early tomorrow for the ceremony.

I noticed Cal was pretty quiet tonight, while everybody else was celebrating. I can’t even begin to imagine what was going through his head. That ex-wife of his totally messed him up. I wouldn’t mind running into her in a dark alley someday. I bet I could show her a few things I’ve picked up since living in the East Village, stuff she probably doesn’t run into too much in her suburban kick-boxing class. Really, where do girls like that get off? They take perfectly adequate guys (well, OK, Cal needs work, but I imagine back then he probably wasn’t as much of a pompous ass) and ruin them for the rest of us. That’s just wrong.

Not, of course, that I would want Cal Langdon if he wasn’t damaged goods. Please! The last thing I need is a journalist for a boyfriend.

Although he does look awfully good in a bathing suit—

No! Stop it! I do NOT need to date a modelizer! That is just setting yourself up for heartbreak and many, many pints of macadamia brittle.

PDA of Cal Langdon

This is intolerable. I am in Italy, on a warm, moonlit night by a sparkling pool, with palm fronds blowing gently in the evening breeze, a platter of olives and crumbled chunks of Parmesan and a bottle of extremely excellent wine before me, and a woman radiating a very healthy sexuality across from me…

And I’m playing War with her.

What’s wrong with this picture?

What’s wrong with ME? I shouldn’t want this woman. She’s everything I can’t stand… artistic, obsessed with popular culture, set in her ways, American…

And yet…

I want to kiss her.

Maybe it’s the moonlight. Maybe it’s this damned place.

Or maybe it’s because she made me laugh so many times today.

Damn. What’s happening to me? So she made me laugh. Mark makes me laugh, and I don’t want to kiss him. I don’t even like funny women. And I especially don’t like funny artistic women.

So why is it that I’m going to kill this kid if he doesn’t get the hell out of here in the next five minutes?

One.

Two.

Three.

He’s still not leaving. He’s telling some story about a comic he loves. Jane is apparently familiar with it, though it’s not her own. It appears to have elves and gnomes in it. Peter is gushing over the fact that the final installment is coming out in only two weeks. Jane, who knows the author, says she’s heard what’s going to happen, but flirtatiously refuses to tell the kid. He is delighted by this, and is begging her. She refuses to divulge what she knows, and lays down an eight. Peter’s just lain down an eight.

War.

She won.

The candlelight brings out the highlights in her dark hair, and makes her eyes shine. Her skin looks like butter…

What is wrong with me? I do NOT want to get involved with this woman. Or any woman, for that matter. I have a book to write. I have to find a place to live. I don’t even have a dry cleaner. I can’t get into a relationship….

OK, I’m giving the kid another five minutes to leave. It’s nearly midnight. Doesn’t he have some computer system he has to go hack into somewhere back home?

Now she’s asking him about Annika. Who the hell is Annika? Oh, the girl at the mayor’s office. The mayor’s daughter, apparently. Peter speaks scathingly of Annika, whom he’s clearly in love with, and who, judging by his insistence that he loathes her, obviously doesn’t return his feelings for her.

I slap down a two. So does Peter.

War.

Oh, it’s war, my boy. In more ways than you know.

Wait. What’s that?

Meowing. The cats are back.

She leaps up and heads into the kitchen to find something to feed them. Peter and I are alone at last.

By the time she returns with a bowl of what looks to be the contents of several cans of tuna, Peter is gone.

“Where’d Peter go?” she wants to know.

And I can’t help but believe that she genuinely doesn’t know.

This is a mystery I’m only too happy to clear up for her.

Travel Diary of Holly Caputo and Mark Levine

Jane Harris

IS HE INSANE? I mean, I know he thinks I’m silly, what with my “little cartoon” and my too-high heels that I’m always tripping over and the whole “carabinieri” thing.

But it never occurred to me that he might think I’m the STUPIDEST HUMAN BEING ON THE FACE OF THE PLANET.

Because that’s exactly who I’d have to be to fall for his whole “It’s just a kiss, it doesn’t have to mean anything” routine.

But you know what? I’m not going to let him. Ruin the wedding, I mean. He can sulk all he wants tonight, but if he comes downstairs tomorrow morning with anything but a great big happy smile on his face, I will personally give his arm hairs a twist he won’t forget.

Who does he think he is, anyway, Enrique Iglesias? “I just want to kiss you. You’re an an artist. I thought you people were used to living in the moment?”

Whatever!