Free 30 Guys in 30 Days by Micol Ostow Page B

downtown on weekends.”
    “Cool,” he said, saying the word slowly so it came out almost like an exhalation:
cooool….
“We don’t really have anything like that back in Highland Park.”
    “Where’s that?” I asked.
    “Illinois. No great shakes. Just your run-of-the-mill suburban town. Like something out of a John Hughes film.”
    “You are
not
knocking John Hughes films,” I admonished him.
    He held up his right hand in the peace sign. “Save Ferris,” he deadpanned. But before I could swoon, he turned his attention back to my iPod, a thick chunk of hair falling over one eye. I longed to reach out and brush it back for him, but decided that would be overkill. After all, this was really our very first maybe-banter. I didn’t want to push it. “You’ve got some cool stuff on here,” he proclaimed.
    “Yeah?”
    “Yeah, The Get Up Kids are, like, my favorite. Although, Claud—”
    “Yes?” I cringed.
    “The Backstreet Boys have got to go.”
    “Um, I think my younger cousin stuck that on there. What do you recommend in exchange?”
    He paused for a moment, looking thoughtful. “Well, I’ve got a lot of stuff you should sample. But I bet you’d really dig Death Cab for Cutie and the Postal Service. The Shins. Interpol. I could burn it all for you.”
    I couldn’t have been more psyched if hehad offered to marry me. Or, okay, maybe that’s not strictly true, but still. “That’d be awesome.”
    “Yeah, when you come down to the paper, I’ll give you a disk.”
    I frowned. “We haven’t exactly discussed when that would be. I keep scanning the personals to see if maybe there’s some cute little hidden message waiting for me, but so far,
Rotator,
no dice.”
    What? Where had that come from? Mild-mannered Claudia Clarkson had unwittingly been overtaken by a snark machine.
    Gabe, however, seemed either oblivious or impervious to my sarcasm. “Yeah, the personals. It’s just this lame-ass thing we all do. I can’t even remember who started it. It probably began way before my time. But, you know, we’re all down there for so many hours, it gets late, and we’ve had too much sugar. The next thing you know—”
    “Cheesy inside jokes printed for all the world to see,” I finished for him.
    “Yup.”
    “I can relate. You’d be shocked at the things I do when I’m on an M&M’s rush.”
    “Really now?” Gabe said.
    I was suddenly aware that Gabe was in the kiss zone. I mean, not kissing me, not even planning on kissing me, clearly, but still. There he was. In my face—in a good way. I
could
kiss him … theoretically. This was an extraordinary head trip. After all, I was having banter with a taken man. Someone else’s boyfriend. I could tell myself he was flirting, but deep down I knew ours was the banter of platonic friends.
    “Oh, yeah.” I wound the cord from my headphones around the machine and tucked it away into my bag. I checked my watch. While I didn’t particularly want this exchange to end, if I didn’t hurry, I was going to be late meeting Charlie. I’d promised to run through her Spanish vocabulary with her.
    “Can you meet me at Brew and Gold on Wednesday afternoon?” Gabe asked. “I can stop by the
Chronicle
office and pick up a new assignment for you.”
    “Hmmm …” I spent a few seconds staring off into the distance and pretending to be much busier than I actually was. I mean, who was I kidding? The boy could have offered to meet me in the seventh circle ofhell and I would have been there with my sunglasses on. “Yeah, that should work. I have pop culture until six, though.”
    “No problem. Come by around seven. That gives me time to get down to the office and sort out what we’ve got for you.”
    9/11, 9:58 p.m.
    from: [email protected]
    to: [email protected]
    re: Monday was …
    … a blur. My comp sci professor Professor Hartridge, caught me asking my seatmate/ target, Brett, to borrow some scrap paper and went into severe conniption