I glance over at her, the back of my neck prickling. “Not… Well, my dissertation was technically bound into a hardcover book.”
She shakes her head. “No one wants to read that. Maybe something non-chemists could digest. Like, a cookbook would be cool.”
“A cookbook… would be cool,” I repeat lamely.
“Okay,” she says with finality, out of freakin’ nowhere. “I’m going to read now. Focus on driving, please. Eyes on the road.”
I don’t even bother responding, the whiplash feeling intensifying, now feeling like I’ve been punted off Mount Olympus but still pretty impressed we managed to share space without resorting to violence. But I guess quiet is better than arguing.
SIX
Nico
We don’t sayanother word until we start seeing the signs for Philly.
“Wanna eat?” I ask her.
She starts. She seems to drift for a moment, as if she’s trapped in the pages of her book-world, before slowly lifting her gaze. Disoriented, as if she just remembered she was in a car with her worst enemy. I can only see her out of the corner of my eye, but I’m sure she looks particularly gorgeous right now.“Yeah,” she says. “I can eat.”
“I know a good place.”
“I love chicken parm.”
“I don’t only eat chicken parm, Annie.” I did have it for dinner last night, but she definitely does not need to know that.
“Are you saying that if I cut you open, you wouldn’t bleed marinara sauce?”
I sigh (should I get a nebulizer?), and thankfully she’s silent until I pull the car into the small parking lot.
Annie looks around. “Okay, cheesesteaks I get, because we’re in Philly, but we’re not going to go to one of the famous places?”
I turn the car off. “This place is ten times better.”
She eyes the storefront suspiciously. “You sure?”
“Positive.”
I climb out and start making my way to the other side of the car to open Annie’s door, force of habit really, because Ma would slap me upside the head if I didn’t, but then I stop short when I realize that Annie Li would fuckin’ hate it and would never stop raggin’ me about it if I opened that door for her.
She stares at me with an eyebrow lifted in a dare and opens her own door.
I, at the very least, hold the door to the shop open for her on the way in.
It’s a small place, a little more renovated than the last time I was here, but it’s crowded as all hell, way more crowded than the last time I was here. I make my way to the counter, to the woman running the register. “Hey. Is—” but I don’t need to finish.
“Nicoooo!” Gino yells as he walks out of the kitchen. “Nico! Cheryl, check out this kid. Come here, you gorgeous, brilliant boy, you.” He steps out from behind the counter and wraps me in his arms. Now, I consider myself a pretty big guy, got some meat on me because of the nature of my job and all, but Gino makes me feel like a delicate ballerina.
“Gino, my man,” I say into his chest.
Gino wraps my head in an arm, a half approximation of a headlock, presenting me to the middle-aged woman behind the counter. “Cheryl, you know who this is?”
“Nah, Gino,” she answers.
“This guy here deserves the Nobel Prize or some shit. Smartest kid I ever met. Saved this business, made it what it is today,” he says, gesturing to the crowds of people in the shop.
“Nice to meet you, Cheryl,” I nod my head.
She sucks her teeth, as if acknowledging me has cost her something.
