“You good?” E.G. asked me quietly.
I gave him a chin nod, then smiled at his family. “So you never said, how was your flight in?”
It was the wrong thing to say, because rather than answer my innocuous question, (they all flew first class because that’s what I’d arranged, so it had to be seamless) they decided I was ready to engage.
The rapid-fire questions started fast.
How long had I worked for E.G.?
Simple. Since the beginning of the year.
Where was I from originally?
Pretty easy. Didn’t have to go into too much detail. South Jersey, not far from Philadelphia.
How old was I?
Okay. A little nosy, but it wasn’t like I was hiding my age. Twenty-three.
There seemed to be a collective wince at that revelation, because the questions stopped for a moment as the waitress returned to take our food order.
“I’ll have the Caeser salad,” I said, and handed my menu back to the woman.
“You don’t want a salad,” E.G. said next to me. “I’ll have the French Dip with the pomme frites and she’ll have the same.”
“What the heck are pomme frites?” I asked him, under my breath.
“It’s a fancy word for french fries.”
“I don’t want the dip, it’ll be messy and everyone is already looking at me,” I said, as quietly as a person could. Then, like I was attempting the art of ventriloquism for the first time, “Whyaretheylookingatme?”
“It’s delicious and not lettuce,” he said, handing over his menu to the waitress. “And I’ll cause a distraction so they look at me instead.”
He had a point there, but this was the first time E.G. had done anything as outrageous as ordering for me.
I was about to put up more of a battle, when he looked at me, his expression almost bored.
“We can do this now. Have a fight in front of my parents and sister. You’ll hang onto your pride, of course, but then you’ll be stuck with a sucky salad.”
“Oh, sir, our salads don’t suck,” the waitress, Laura, said. “They’re actually quite delicious.”
“See?” I said.
“Flowers,” he growled, which made me roll my eyes.
“Fine. What he said.”
Our waitress nodded and moved on to take everyone else’s orders, and if his mother or sister ordered salad, I was going to lose my shit on him.
Back in the office.
In front of his family, I wanted to at least appear to be the best decision E.G. had made all year.
Fortunately, no one ordered salads. It was steaks, Dips, a chicken club sandwich and a few appetizers for the table. Once all the activity of ordering was out of the way, the attention turned back to me.
“Did you graduate college early?” Rebecca asked me, although she was actually looking at E.G. when she did.
“I didn’t go to college,” I admitted.
