A Girl Like You by vinnie Kinsella (good books to read for 12 year olds .TXT) 📕

of questions if you see her!” Eddie warned.

“Of course I won’t. When have I ever done that?” I was mildly insulted.

Two hours later, I heard Ian talking and knew he wasn’t alone. I busied myself in the laundry room to give them space.

“Mom, this is Destini,” Ian said a minute later from the kitchen.

“With an I,” she said.

“An I?”

She was a tiny blonde, wild bedhead hair, blue eyes with remarkably unsmudged black eye liner and a pair of silver high-heeled strappy sandals dangling from her fingers.

“Nice meeting you,” I said.

“You have a very cute house,” she said. “I didn’t see much of it when we came in last night—”

“It was late,” Ian explained unnecessarily.

Penny nosed around Destini’s perfect hot-pink toenails.

“So, can I get you something?” I looked at the clock, wondering if I should offer lunch.

“We’re going out for waffles,” Destini said. “With strawberries.”

“At the diner,” Ian said.

I realized he was glowing. “Well, have fun, kids!” I said, too brightly.

Ian smiled at me over his shoulder as they left.

I gave him the thumbs up, knowing afterward that it probably looked silly. It was just so great to see him happy.

I texted Maddy with the news.

“So where did he meet her?” Madd texted back.

“Must’ve been out. I think he went to see a band last night.”

“And she stayed over? Does she look a little slutty?”

“Not at all,” I texted, although I did wonder about the “I” in Destini and the way she made strawberries and waffles sound sexy.

Ian was gone all day. It had been nearly a 24-hour date.

“What did you think of her?” he asked when he got home that night.

“She seemed very nice. What does she do?”

“She’s not in school right now, trying to figure out what she wants to do. For now, she’s working at CVS.”

“Nice. Does she live at home?”

“Just moved to a new apartment with two friends. She was with a really bad boyfriend and finally left him. That took a lot of guts to do.”

“It did,” I said.

“She’s so small, but she’s a really strong person inside.”

I was proud of Ian for being attracted to that.

“How were the waffles?”

“Great, Mom. Everything was great.”

“I’m glad.”

“I’m going to call Madd,” he said, taking the stairs two at a time.

Madison had always been the first person Ian went to for relationship advice. She could always be counted on for support, whether it was cheering him on or cheering him up. Ian had a serious girlfriend his senior year in high school. Maddy and I stood in Congress Park on prom night near a fountain and snapped at least fifty photos of them, Ian in a grey tux, Amber in a shimmering mermaid gown. But their first year in college, Amber met someone else and broke up with him by text.

Ian sent her roses and asked her to come back to him.

“You’re pathetic,” Amber had texted, her last message to him.

“I’m going to find her and break her legs,” Maddy had said when she heard the news.

“Could you get someone to do that?” I’d asked hopefully.

Madd had come over with a bottle of tequila to spend the night with Ian, and by morning, he was cursing Amber and saying how lucky he was to have her out of his life.

It wasn’t in the stars for Ian and Destini with an “I.” She ghosted Ian after their night/day together. Ian texted, called and went back to the bar two nights in a row where they’d met, but didn’t see or hear from her again.

“How is he?” Madd asked as she came through my kitchen door on the third day.

“He’s sleeping.”

“Told you she was a slut,” Madd said. “Probably went back to the shitty boyfriend.”

She went up to see if Ian was awake, then came down with a pink hairbrush full of blonde hair.

“This was on his dresser,” Maddy said. “Not something he needs if he’s going to get over her.”

“Yeah, toss that in the trash.”

“Or we could make some sort of voodoo doll,” she said thoughtfully.

“Really?”

“No, Mom. Not really. You’re so gullible.”

I sighed. “Do you think he’s OK?”

“Absolutely,” Madison said with complete confidence. “No one keeps this family down.”

“Not going to happen,” I said, just as confidently.

50

RescueU had chosen an unfortunate name, in my book, because I didn’t need to be rescued from anything. I didn’t need to be saved from anything but the possibility of spending another Saturday night with a bag of Chex Mix and Netflix. I wanted to be intriguing, likeable, someone a guy would want to hang around with to see if anything developed, organically.

But Rescue was actually a firefighter/EMT with the local community emergency corps in town. I was impressed to know if we were out someplace, he could save the life of anyone who started choking, and also, he rushed into fires while everyone else ran out screaming.

Rescue, aka Curt, had a photo on his profile wearing firefighting gear, and another with his arms around someone who’d been photoshopped out of the pic. He was wearing a tux with a pleated shirt and dark-blue bow tie, maybe at a wedding, maybe one of his kids, which was a good sign because it meant they were all grown up. In the third pic he was wearing a knitted ski cap, but when I examined the photo closely, it looked like he was standing by a snowbank at the end of a driveway, not skiing down a scary icy slope. Not a semi-pro skier. Good sign.

Curt popped up on a search that had previously brought only a man with a flowing white Santa beard, a truck driver who badly needed a shower, and a guy peering at a bug under a microscope.

I passed the emergency corps building every single day going to and from work! What could be a better sign than Curt being so close that we could already have bumped into each other on the sidewalk? Maybe it was meant to be. Maybe.

Best of all, Curt messaged me first.

“Hey, neighbor,” he messaged. “You