Frankie put his foot on the bottom of the cart to keep me from rolling past him. With his hands on either side of the basket he leaned forward. “Let me ask you a question. If Tony or Max told me to invite you somewhere this weekend, would you expect me to ask you?”
“Well no, because you know I’m going to be out of town.”
“And you know my work schedule, yes?” He smirked as he waited for me to answer.
“Fine. I see your point.” Hearing Frankie explain why I’d done the right thing, I allowed myself to relax. The rest of the shopping trip was almost fun. We joked around with one another and made plans to go out of town once I got back from the tournament so Frankie had something to look forward to while we were apart.
* * *
Thursday afternoon,Marisa called to confirm our plans for that night. She’d never been an active participant in Ryan’s hockey but knew there was some gear he wanted, so she’d asked me to pick it up and we’d all sign the card. That was fine by me, because it saved me money since I’d already planned on getting him what he needed as a reward for making the elite team.
I almost ended the call so I could finish up some work on my project when I realized there was a vital piece of information I was missing. “Hey, you think you might want to tell me where we’re meeting? Won’t win me any dad-of-the-year points if I’m late to my kid’s birthday dinner.”
“Oh, yeah, I suppose that’d help.” Marisa giggled, apologizing for being so flighty. That turned into her rambling about wedding plans, which led to her wanting to make sure I was okay with Ryan staying at my place during the honeymoon. “Oh, my God! I’m doing it again. Seriously, you need to stop me when I do that.”
“It’s okay, I have years of practice,” I teased. “I know you’ll run out of breath eventually. Now, I do have some work to do, so maybe you can focus this time and tell me where we’re meeting.”
“Oh, yeah. He’s insisting on going to Marino’s. I was hoping for someplace closer to in between our houses since Jack has to be up early in the morning, but he swears they have the best lasagna he’s ever eaten.”
I was so screwed. Now, instead of sparing Frankie the discomfort of having dinner with my family, we were going to waltz into his family’s restaurant where he’d get to watch us eating while he worked. Even I hadn’t imagined this as a possible outcome.
“Calvin, are you okay?” I shook my head trying to clear my thoughts. I hadn’t realized I’d zoned out on Marisa. “If you don’t like his pick, I’m sure you can text him after school and persuade him to go somewhere else.”
“No, no, Marino’s is fine,” I assured her. I just had to get ahold of Frankie ahead of time and give him the heads up. There wasn’t a single dish Frankie had brought home that Ryan hadn’t devoured, even a few vegetarian entrees, which shocked the hell out of me. If he wanted to go to Marino’s for dinner, that was where we’d go. “Listen, I’ve got to get going if I want to finish the current phase of testing on the project I’m working on right now. I’ll see you tonight, okay?”
“Sounds good.” After we hung up, I stared at my phone wondering if I should text Frankie or admit I wasn’t going to get any work done today and go see him in person. As much as I wanted to choose the latter option, I had to be a responsible adult, so I fired off a quick text.
When you get a chance, give me a call. Minor snag for tonight.
Almost immediately, the phone rang. “Hey, I didn’t mean you needed to drop what you were doing.”
“It’s cool. I just finished up a meeting with a vendor and now I’m waiting on Freddie to get done berating the kitchen staff before they walk out on him.” Frankie groaned and I could practically see him wringing his hands through his hair.
“What’s going on with Freddie?” I kept my tone light, hoping it’d be enough to settle him down until I could see him. With any luck, I could wrap things up in my office in an hour or two of hard, focused work and we could spend some time in the office before the rest of the family got there.
“You tell me and we’ll both know.” He sighed heavily and something, probably his head, thumped against something solid. “He’s been growlier than usual for the past few weeks, but today he’s almost unbearable. I swear, if we had anyone else who could cover for him on a busy night, I’d send his ass home. As it is, we have four big parties coming in on top of our usual business.”
“Wow, that’s great!”
“Yeah, it is. Don’t get me wrong, I love that we’re all working together to make improvements that are paying off, but I’m worried people who are used to walking in are going to be upset when they have to wait for a table.”
Well, at least that gave me an opening to break my news to him. “If that’s the case, I’m glad I called. Don’t be upset with me, but Ryan requested Marino’s for his birthday dinner. Apparently, he’s been talking you up to Marisa and Jack, so she didn’t try and talk him into someplace closer to their house.”
“Man, you really have no faith in me, do you?”
“It’s not that, Frankie,” I assured him. I pinched the bridge of my nose to stave off the headache I felt coming on. If there was a way to botch this situation, it seemed I was going to find it. “I just don’t want to make things weird for you.”
“Then quit assuming I’m going to be pissed off because you’re spending time with Ryan and his mom. Is it just the four of you? Tell me what time you’re going to be here and I’ll take care of the rest.” A door slammed in the background and, with another exasperated sigh, Frankie apologized for cutting our call short before hanging up. That didn’t sound good at all. I tucked my phone into a desk drawer so I could finish up this last little bit of work. Once that was done, I was going to Marino’s so I could see for myself that Frankie wasn’t stressing out.
Everything that could go wrong did go wrong. One incorrect character in a single line of code killed the entire project, so instead of taking Frankie lunch to steal a few minutes with him before dinner tonight, I had to backtrack and find my mistake. By the time I got to the restaurant, there were no open parking stalls within a block.
I debated leaving Ryan’s gift in the car rather than lug his new gear through the streets, but that seemed pretty shitty. The host at the stand outside the entrance sneered at the gift bag. Sure, it resembled a garbage bag, but it wasn’t.
“It’s my son’s birthday,” I explained.
“Do you have reservations?” the host asked. If I couldn’t see his chest expanding and contracting with every breath, I’d have thought he was some high tech robot with his monotone voice and lack of facial expressions.
“Yes, Davidson.” I checked my watch, cringing when I realized I was nearly twenty minutes late. “The rest of my party is probably already inside.”
