He only realized he’d been quiet a little too long when Stacy cautiously said, “Please don’t tell me you’re coming up with names for the grandchildren.” She waited just long enough for him to start feeling alarmed at the idea that maybe he was pushing her too fast, and then, straight-faced, she said, “The kids will want to name them themselves, obviously.”
Keith gave a quick startled laugh. “Fair, fair. I hadn’t thought of that. You’re perfect, aren’t you? I’m so glad I met you.”
Pink colored her cheeks and she shook her head, but she was smiling. “I’m pretty great, but I don’t know about perfect. I have to say, though, I’ve known you one whole day and I think I’ve already lost all of my grinchiness. You’re going to make Christmas my favorite season.”
An odd surge of pride rose in his chest. “I’d like that. Not that I mind you being a grinch, if that’s your thing, although it really doesn’t seem like it…”
“That’s because I lost my grinchiness when you walked in my salon! You’re like the anti-grinch! I’ve spent years being grinchy and you just come along and de-grinch me!”
“Oh, come on,” Keith said without thinking about it, “you must have been de-grinched a long time ago. You’re too gorgeous to have never grinched.”
Stacy’s eyebrows flew upward at almost the same velocity his antlers had flown off. “Somehow I think we’re not talking about the same thing anymore.”
“I don’t know how that happened.” Keith put his face in his hands again. “Things just went off the rails there.”
She leveled a finger at him as he peered through his fingers at her. “First, whether you’re pretty or not isn’t the single deciding factor in whether or not you’ve grinched. Some people just don’t want to grinch, you know. That said, yes, I have grinched and I also really hope they’ll bring our food soon so I can stop having this conversation.”
Keith, dismayed, whispered, “We never actually ordered our main course. I attacked somebody with my antlers instead.”
He felt his stag having a hard time with that, because ‘attacked with antlers’ had a pretty specific meaning behind it to a deer, and he certainly hadn’t engaged in a dominance battle with another stag when he’d ‘attacked with antlers’ this time. On the other hand, the stag couldn’t actually argue about that having been what he’d done.
While the stag was trying to work that out, Stacy’s face fell comically. “Oh, damn. I forgot. Oh. No, wait, look—” She bit back a laugh, but not very successfully, as her eyes brightened and she visibly bit the inside of her cheek. Keith, wary, turned to look, and let out a groaning laugh of his own.
Someone in the kitchen had gotten wildly creative with the garlic bread, and fast. Two waiters—not the poor guy who’d gotten food all over him—carried aplatterof garlic bread out. A platter of garlic bread that had been hastily shaped into a reindeer, on which Keith’s antlers were perched. Someone behind them was carrying a tray with actual food on it, but the garlic bread reindeer was obviously meant to be the center of attention. They laid it out on the table with a flourish, and one of the waiters removed the antlers to replace them on Keith’s head.
The entire restaurant burst into applause.
His stag whispered,Do they like us?
Keith, laughing helplessly, said,Yeah, I guess so. See, it’s not so bad.He stood and took a careful bow, accepting the laughter and cheers as he clapped one hand to his head, making sure the antlers didn’t fall off again. Stacy laughed and applauded more than anyone, her eyes shining with teasing amusement. His stag puffed up a little, and Keith, somewhere between feeling sorry for it and enjoying its shred of regained confidence, struck a pose that had people taking their phones out for pictures.
“You don’t have to eat the reindeer,” their server said as she put plates down on the table, “but you do have to sit with it for the rest of your meal. And possibly wear those things every time you come in here again for the rest of your life.”
“I think that’s fair,” Keith admitted as he returned to his seat. “Humiliating, but fair. But we didn’t order?”
“No, but you’ve both been in here before, although it’s been years since the chef has seen you,” she said with a nod toward Keith. “But you liked lasagna, and this lady always dithers for a while and then orders seafood linguine.”
“I am both horrified and delighted,” Stacy said wryly. “It's what happens when you live in a small town, though. Or even a not small one. I have a friend who used to order from a Chinese place in Cincinnati all the time during college, and when she came back ten years later and called to put in an order, the owner recognized her voiceandremembered her order.”
Keith and the waitress both put their hands over their hearts and said, “Oh my God,” nearly identically. The waitress’s eyes were shining. “I love that for her.”
“Me too. It was one of the greatest things I’ve ever heard. And this looks great. You’re right, it’s what I would have ended up ordering.”
“Never underestimate the power of the chef.” The waitress winked.
“I won’t,” Keith promised, then lowered his voice as he tilted his head toward the family whose dinner he’d accidentally ruined. “Look, can you make sure their bill goes on mine? Anything they have tonight, including desserts, if they order them? I feel like a complete idiot, but at least I can make it up to them that way.”
“Yeah, of course.” The waitress left them to their food as Stacy smiled across the table at him.
“You’re a pretty decent guy, aren’t you?”
“I’d like to think paying for the dinner I wrecked is the bare minimum of decency, but if it’s not, then yeah, I guess I am. I gotta give that poor kid enough money to buy new shoes, too, or he’s going to smell garlic for the rest of his life.”
“I’m almost certain he won’t wear the same shoes for the rest of his life.” Stacy’s smile broadened, though. “Yeah, you really are a good guy. I’m glad Noah found you yesterday.”
“Me too.” The moment suddenly felt right. Keith leaned forward, forgetting about his dinner. “Stacy, there’s something I’d like to tell you about myself.”
NOOOOOOOOO!
