To him, six months was a no-brainer. In fact, six months wasn’t anywhere near enough—but it would be a beautiful start.
“I’m up for it,” Wade said. “I think the results will be worth it.”
*
Since Mira’s voice was already worn out, Wade wanted to avoid any crowded, noisy restaurants where they would have to shout to hear each other. He asked Mira if she was okay with an old-fashioned, hole-in-the-wall Italian place with a limited but excellent menu.
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “I’m a comfort food person anyway. I don’t mind a little squid ink cavatelli when I’m in the right mood, but I’ll take ordinary lasagna nine times out of ten.”
“How do you feel about enormous plates of garlic bread?”
Her eyes widened, and to save her voice, she gave him an enthusiastic double thumbs-up.
Wade felt the same way, which meant that Nonna’s was definitely the right choice for them. It was a small, cozy, homey place, and between the heat of the pizza ovens in back and the low, mellow light from the flickering candles, it almost felt sleepy—until the food arrived. Then the delicious, garlicky aroma woke you up even before you started moaning over how delicious it was.
Best of all, for tonight’s purposes, Nonna’s was a great place for private conversations. Tonight probably wouldn’t even be the first time someone had used it to confess to being a polar bear.
They ordered—fettucine alfredo for Mira, spaghetti carbonara for Wade—and settled in with a bottle of the house white.
“I was promised garlic bread,” Mira said, after they toasted the non-Marsh parts of the holidays. “I don’t want to be picky, but ....”
“It will come. You have my word.”
“I trust you.”
Hopefully that would still be true at the end of the night. He didn’t know what he would do if she decided he was out of his mind.
And of course, the disadvantage of telling her in Nonna’s was that he couldn’t shift in here to prove he was telling the truth. You could have a hushed conversation in a booth, but you couldn’t turn into a polar bear in one. Not only would everyone turn around and stare, you wouldn’t even fit.
He would just have to improvise.
“I hope Petey brings you back one hell of a souvenir from Hawaii,” Mira said.
“Oh, he will,” Wade said, with the amused certainty that came from a lifetime’s worth of experience with his little brother. “Then he’ll get sort of sheepish and admit that he wanted to buy one of those—whatever it is—for himself but forgot, and would I mind if he kept it?”
“Doesn’t that drive you crazy?”
Wade shook his head. “That’s just Petey. Besides, he’s my kid brother. It’s his job to drive me crazy, just like it’s my job to be a killjoy to him. We always have each other’s backs when it comes to what matters.”
“I’m still feeling like I got off easy by being an only child,” Mira said, but then a shadow fell across her face. Wade didn’t think it was just a trick of the candlelight, either.
“Is something—”
—wrong?That was what he was going to ask before the arrival of the garlic bread made it so that, for a split second, nothing was wrong in the world at all.
Mira leaned towards the platter and inhaled, her lips parting in something like ecstasy.
Wade tried very hard not to think about what it would be like to see that expression in another context. For the time being, he was going to sublimate his lust into the desire for garlic bread—and to be fair, Nonna’s garlic bread really was almost as good as sex.
“Oh my God,” Mira said, as she bit into a slice. “This is life-changing. I may have to give up everything else in my life to devote all my time to eating this bread. This is my new vocation.”
“You could start a new podcast reviewing a different loaf of garlic bread every episode.”
“Would you subscribe to my garlic podcast Patreon?”
He looked at the sheen of butter on Mira’s lips and swallowed. “In a heartbeat.”
It took them both about two slices before they could get back to an actual conversation that didn’t instantly devolve intocrunch—rapture—crunch.
