Read Online My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories by Stephanie Perkins - Free Book Online Page B

brown eyes. I was still getting used to being around people like this. The kind you see in movies and commercials and sitcoms. Back home everyone you passed on the street was just regular-old Mexican, like me.
    I undid the chain and pulled open the door and tried to play it cool. “Can I help you?”
    “Oh,” she said with a look of disappointment. “You’re not Mike.”
    “Yeah, we work together at—”
    “And you’re definitely not Janice.” She looked past me, into the apartment.
    “Mike’s my boss,” I said a little too quickly—definitely not cool. “I’m cat sitting while he and Janice are in Florida visiting friends. He totally knows I’m here.” My heart picked up its pace. I didn’t need this sitcom girl thinking she’d stumbled into an active crime scene. I pointed into the apartment, but Mike’s cat—my lone alibi—was nowhere to be found. “I’d be happy to pass along a message. They’ll be back the day after Christmas.”
    “Do you know anything about pipes?” she asked.
    “Pipes?”
    “Pipes.” She paused, waiting for a look of recognition from me that never came. “Like, sinks and showers and … you know, pipes.”
    “Oh, plumbing. ” I didn’t know the first thing about plumbing, but that didn’t stop me from nodding. When it comes to attractive females my policy has always been to nod first and ask questions later. “Sure. Why, what seems to be the problem?”
    The cat strolled out from its hiding place and rubbed itself against my leg. “Awww,” the girl cooed, kneeling down to scratch behind its ear. “She likes you.”
    Mental note: Give Mike’s cat extra food before bed. It’s impossible to look like a criminal when there’s a well-groomed calico rubbing against your calf.
    “Yeah, we’ve really hit it off these last twenty-four hours,” I said. “I’m already dreading our good-byes.”
    “You’re a little cutie, aren’t you?” she said in that strange voice girls reserve for animals and small children. I watched her scratch down by the cat’s tail. She was wearing an old, beat-up sweatshirt, ripped jeans, and Ugg boots, but I could still tell she came from money. This gave her a certain power over me that I was nowhere near schooled enough to understand.
    She stood back up, and when our eyes met this time, my stomach growled so loudly I had to cover it up by faking a small coughing fit.
    “You okay?” she asked.
    I straightened up, nodding. “Yeah. Wow. Excuse me.”
    “Anyway,” she said. “I have a little situation upstairs. When I try and turn on the water in the shower, nothing comes out. Like, not even a drizzle. Do you know about stuff like that?”
    “A little bit.” Lies! “Need me to take a look?”
    “Would you?”
    “Lemme grab the keys.” I darted back into Mike’s living room trying to call back all the times I’d seen my old man go at the plumbing underneath the kitchen sink with his trusted wrench. I could still picture him lying on his back, halfway in the cabinet, twisting and turning things in a chorus of clanging metal.
    Why hadn’t I paid more attention?
    Fake Espinoza
    Her place smelled like tomato sauce and garlic bread and Parmesan cheese. As she led me through the kitchen, into the long hall, my mouth started watering its ass off. Maybe I was better off staying in Mike’s pad, where I’d been able to convince myself that the entire borough of Brooklyn was participating in a Christmas fast.
    “I’m Haley, by the way.”
    “Shy,” I told her.
    She glanced at me, still walking. “Like, S-H-Y?”
    “Exactly.” I’d been through this exchange dozens of times since landing in New York. Which I found strange. Nobody back home even thought twice about my name.
    Haley shrugged and we shook hands awkwardly on the move, and then she stopped in front of the bathroom door and motioned me inside. “This is it. It’s the same thing with my roommate’s shower, too.”
    Her bathroom smelled of perfumed soaps, and