“It tastes like blueberries and almonds.”
He winced at me. “You get all that from this?” He tilted his head back as if he needed to confirm my cup held the same tea his did.
“What does it taste like to you?”
“Blueberry alfalfa water. Needs sugar.”
I snorted and set the cup down while I tried to hold in my laughter and failed miserably. Harmony was back with another girl, and they spread the plates they carried out around the table before they plopped a couple in front of me. “This is the purple sweet potato and cranberry tea cake. Don’t bite into it thinking cake, cake. It’s not like the spice cake.” She pointed at it as she spoke; it looked familiar, with chunks of crystallized ginger sprinkled over the icing. “It’s going to have a strange mouth feel for you. Think hard pudding.”
Cam winced, and I laughed.
“Okay.”
“The tea? Yes, no, maybe?” She gave me a solid stare that made me feel like I shouldn’t lie.
“I liked it, he hated it,” I said.
“Blueberry oolong. He needs to train his taste buds better.” She gave Cam a sassy smile, and then a man came to a stop near her with two more plates, and she took them and arranged the dishes on the table. “Nothing exciting here, I’m afraid. Just jiaozi. Pork dumplings. But it’s legit my grandma’s recipe and no one makes them better.” She nodded and plopped down two little bowls of sauce. “Dip ’em.”
“You mentioned your father. Does your family run the restaurant?” I couldn’t stop myself from going into query mode. Even when I wasn’t at work, I wanted to know everything about this city.
She beamed. “My uncle was responsible for the water gardens.” With almost no prompting from me, she launched into the story of the impossible fight to get the permits for the garden, which had me feeling guilty when she came to the final triumphant end where they won and about ten minutes had gone by before the man was back and tapping on her arm. “Sorry, gotta go!” She flew off with him, and they cleared a table nearby at record speed.
“You like to talk to people?” Cam asked.
Startled, I turned to face him and saw that half of every plate was already destroyed. My mouth hung open for a few seconds, but he only shrugged.
I smiled. “Did you like the food? Did you even chew?”
“It was good.” He waved a fork at me. “She must like you because look what I got.”
Smiling, I picked up a set of chopsticks, and I’d worked them loose from their case and was about to dig in, when a strange look crossed Cam’s face, and he tugged his phone out of his pocket.
He answered with a quiet, “Hello.” I stilled as his back went ramrod straight. He nodded along. “Yes, I can come in and take care of the report.” He spoke for about another minute, then dropped his phone beside his cup. He gripped the edge of the table until his knuckles turned white, and I covered one of his hands with mine.
“What’s wrong?”
“Uh… shit. During the summer the work site runs on the weekends. The supervisors just take turns swapping out who gets off, so we don’t all end up going crazy until fall hits. I took last weekend and this weekend off. But there was an accident onsite, equipment not people, and someone needs to go in to help put the paperwork through. I’m that someone.” He winced.
“Yesterday it was me, today it’s you?” I shrugged. “Seems about right.”
He sighed, ran a hand over his face, and then groaned as his phone buzzed again. He picked it up and slapped it to his ear so hard it had to have hurt. “Yeah, Liv, what’s up?”
He closed his eyes and groaned. “I have to go in to work. Are you sure?”
“What’s wrong?” I asked, leaning toward him.
He glanced at me, then put the phone on speaker. “Tell Mark,” he said, lips twitching.
There was an unhappy groan on the other end. “Okay, so my kids won’t eat chicken wings because they think they come from baby chickens.” It took me a second to recognize Olivia’s voice, but she sounded awful.
“Okay,” I said with a laugh.
“Well, last night I had like… twenty of them because I wanted them. And I think I got food poisoning.” She made an unpleasant sound, and it didn’t take much to imagine she might be huddled in the bathroom. “Now the kids are driving me nuts asking to do things while I’m… indisposed.” She let out a horrible little laugh, and Cam and I shared a look.
“My mom is busy today, and Liv’s parents are evil,” Cam said.
“Hey,” she grumbled but didn’t disagree.
