“You’ll have to disguise your car next time you come over,” she says. “This is way too risky.”
I like her comment a little too much.
“Confident there’ll be a next time already?” I ask, smirking at her. “The date just started.”
“Good point,” she says with a shrug. “I might hate you by the end of the date.”
“Or I might hate you,” I say.
“Impossible.” She props her foot up on the dash. “I’m unhateable.”
“Unhateable isn’t even a real word.”
She peers over her shoulder into the backseat, then faces forward again with a scowl. “Why does it smell like you had a harem of whores in here?” She pulls her shirt up over her nose to cover up the smell.
“Does it still smell like perfume?” I don’t even smell it anymore. It’s probably seeped into my pores and I’m now immune to it.
She nods. “It’s awful,” she says, her voice muffled by her shirt. “Roll down a window.” She makes a fake spitting sound like she’s trying to get the taste of it out of her mouth and it makes me laugh.
I crank the car, then put it in reverse and begin to back out.
“The wind will mess up your hair if I roll down the windows. You didn’t bring a purse, which means you didn’t bring a brush, which means you won’t be able to fix your hair when we get to the restaurant.”
She reaches to her door and presses the button to roll down her window. “I’m already dirty and I’d rather have messy hair than smell like a harem,” she says. She rolls the window down completely, then motions for me to roll mine down as well, so I do.
I put the car in drive and press on the gas. The car immediately fills with wind and fresh air and her hair begins flying around in all directions, but she just relaxes into the seat.
“Much better,” she says, grinning at me. She closes her eyes while inhaling a deep breath of the fresh air.
I try to pay attention to the road, but she makes it pretty damn hard.
• • •
“What are your brothers’ names?” I ask her. “Are they numbers, too?”
“Zachary, Michael, Aaron, and Evan. I’m ten years younger than the youngest.”
“Were you an accident?”
She nods. “The best kind. My mother was forty-two when she had me but they were excited when I came out a girl.”
“I’m glad you came out a girl.”
She laughs. “Me, too.”
“Why’d they name you Six if you were actually the fifth child?”
“Six isn’t my name,” she says. “Full name is Seven Marie Jacobs, but I got mad at them for moving me to Texas when I was fourteen so I started calling myself Six to piss them off. They didn’t really care, but I was stubborn and refused to give up. Now everyone calls me Six but them.”
I love that she gave herself a nickname. My kind of girl.
“Question still applies,” I say. “Why did they name you Seven if you were actually the fifth child?”
“No reason, really. My dad just liked the number.”
I nod, then take a bite of food, eyeing her carefully. I’m waiting for that moment. The one that always comes with girls, where the pedestal you place them on in the beginning gets kicked out from under them. It’s usually the moment they start talking about ex-boyfriends or mention how many kids they want or they do something really annoying, like apply lipstick in the middle of dinner.
I’ve been waiting patiently for Six’s flaws to stand out, but so far I can’t find any. Granted, we’ve only interacted with each other for a collective three or four hours now, so hers may just be buried deeper than other people’s.
“So you’re a middle child?” she asks. “Do you suffer from middle-child syndrome?”
I shake my head. “Probably about as much as you suffer from fifth-child syndrome. Besides, Hannah is four years older than me and Chunk is five years younger, so we have a nice spread.”
She chokes on her drink with her laugh. “Chunk? You call your little sister Chunk?”
“We all call her Chunk. She was a fat baby.”
She laughs. “You have nicknames for everyone,” she says. “You call Sky Cheese Tits. You call Holder Hopeless. What do you call me when I’m not around?”
“If I give people nicknames, I do it to their faces,” I point out. “And I haven’t figured yours out yet.” I lean back in my seat and wonder myself why I haven’t given her one yet. The nicknames I give people are usually pretty instant.
“Is it a bad thing you haven’t nicknamed me yet?”