“Another one? Who wasit this time?” Chloe asks. She’s sitting at the counter, doodling in her ever present sketch book before the dinner rush starts. “And where the hell are they all coming from? Do you have an old account somewhere? Maybe you’ve been hacked.”
I huff, pushing my glasses up my nose. “No. I don’t. I’ve never used a dating app. Ever. Because I. Do. Not. Date.” I enunciate each word deliberately, sending that information out into the world so these random men will stop showing up declaring we’re going out for dinner, or bowling, or to a movie, or anynumber of other date night activities that I have no interest in doing with a stranger.
Chloe looks up from her book, her eyebrows raised. “Are you sure? Maybe something from back when you lived in the city?”
“When would I have had time to date? I worked in restaurants. The only people who would have understood my schedule were other restaurant staff, and I have zero interest in any of the egos floating around that industry.” Between the chefs, bartenders, and wannabe actors working as waiters, the restaurant business is full of the worst types of toxic masculinity. Why women chase those men as much as they do, I’ll never know. “Most of the guys I worked with over the years thought they were God’s gift to women, never mind that we were working the same job. It was even worse when they reported to me. Nuh uh. No, thank you. Like I want to work that many hours in a day just to come home to a man who thinks I should take care of him because he has a penis.”
“Hmmm.” Chloe tapped the end of her pencil against her lower lip. “You have a point. You’re not really giving off ‘let’s find the love of my life’ vibes here. But if not an old account, then what?”
I shrug. “I have no idea. But that’s every night this week that some random dude has shown up to take me on a date.”
She snorts. “It’s pretty funny when they get a look at you in your apron, with your hair a messy ball on your head, and still think they’re here to take you out. I mean, wouldn’t that give them a hint that maybe they’ve got something wrong? If not the fact that they have a date with you at all, then maybe the day? Because you don’t look like you’re trying to impress anyone.”
I snort a laugh. “Thanks.”
She rolls her eyes. “You know what I mean. Usually, when a woman has a date, she at least takes off her apron and brushes her hair. Maybe wears contact lenses and little makeup?”
She has a point. If I were to ever go on a date, I would probably at least attempt to wear contacts. My glasses may have me rocking the sexy librarian look, but the thickness of the lenses tells a different story. If I were to rip them off trying to be sexy, I’d likely slam into the nearest wall the moment I take a step. Because that’s how blind I am without them. Never mind trying to wear my hair down. It’s so curly and frizzy, I require at least six different products and some quality time with a straightener before I’ll attempt anything like that. If I tried to do it spontaneously, it would look like I’d stuck my finger in an electrical socket.
“Fine. You’re forgiven.”
She grins. “I knew you loved me.”
“Yeah, yeah. You’re the wind beneath my wings,” I deadpan. “It’s time to call my parents. Can you hold down the fort for a few minutes?” She waves me off with a laugh.
It’s Sunday, almost dinnertime, and I haven’t talked to my mother yet. She’s probably on the verge of having a conniption fit, if she hasn’t already. I prop my phone on the counter as it rings and wait for her to answer.
While I wait, my mind wanders to Nick. He hasn’t come by since last week, despite his promise to order dinner soon, and it’s left me feeling...off? I don’t know why, but I think I was looking forward to seeing him this week. After the way he took on the chore of scrubbing the sidewalk with such good humor, I want to know more about him. I can’t figure out why he would come back after spilling all that sauce, let alone why he would scrub a sidewalk clean merely because I asked him to. It’s strange.
Before I can think about it too hard, my mother’s face fills the screen of my phone. “Honey, hi. It’s so good to hear from you. When you didn’t call this morning, I thought maybe you were too busy to talk today.” The sounds of giggles and whispers come through the phone, and my mother turns her head, tellingwhoever it is to be quiet. Instead of silence, though, I hear my aunts yelling hello from off camera.
“Hi, Aunties,” I say, smiling from ear to ear. For those unfamiliar with my family, my mother and the aunts look bizarrely similar, considering only two of them are my mother’s actual sisters. One of the others is a close family friend, and the other is my father’s sister. Despite not all being related, they are all short, voluptuous women with huge racks, tiny waists, andallthe junk in their trunks. Add to that the medium length dark brown curly hair that they all wear teased to the Gods and they’re virtually indistinguishable. That hair, though. I swear they keep their favorite brand of hairspray in business between the five of them. These ladies never met a bouffant hairdo they didn’t love and aspire to. “So tell me, how many bottles of wine have you been through already?”
“Only one,” my Aunt Vera says, squeezing onto the screen with my mother. Someone in the background yells “one each” and then cackles with laughter. Aunt Vera hushes them before facing me. “I missed you last weekend, honey. How are you doing? Ready to come home yet?”
I can barely stop my eyes from rolling all the way into the back of my skull. Aunt Vera has been after me to move home since my first week in Tuft Swallow. She agrees with my mother that I should have stayed home and let her look after me until I found a man to marry. Now that I think about that, it doesn’t even make sense. If I were to let my mom look after me until I got married, how would I know how to look after a husband on my own? Nah. It’s probably better for me to stick with my plan of being a successful restaurateur. Maybe one day, when I’m brave enough to withstand the scorn of my fellow Tuft Swallowers, I’ll adopt a cat or six from the local rescue. I’m positive I would make an excellent crazy cat lady.
“So, Valentina. Did you have a pleasant week?” My mother asks. I catch a flash of something on the screen. That’s weird. Is that a strange glint in her eye, or is that just a glare on the screen? I tilt my phone and it disappears. Must’ve been a glare, then. “Anything, or anyone, new and exciting in your life? Tell me everything.”
“Uh, yeah. It was pretty okay. One exciting thing happened after I talked to you last week. Remember how my gas range wasn’t working? Well, the handyman came by and fixed it almost right away. We brought the pots upstairs to my apartment, only to turn around and bring them back down shortly after.”
My mother purses her lips, her eyebrows drawn. “I really wish you didn’t live in that apartment. It must smell like a restaurant all the time. You can’t bring a man home when it smells like fast food.”
I nod, having heard this before. The thing she doesn’t realize is that my apartment smells a lot like her house, since so many of my recipes are modified versions of hers. There’s no fast food to be found at Wings and Pizza. “Yes, Ma. I know. But listen. I was bringing two pots down when I stepped off the last stair and BAM! Someone ran right into me, knocking the pots out of my hands and onto the sidewalk. It was such a mess, Mom. You should have seen it. Poor Mr. Landon. You remember I told you about him? He always seems to be on the receiving end of some misfortune or other? Well, wouldn’t you know, he was walking by, right in the path of the flying sauce. It’s a good thing they hadn’t been on the stove for long, or he could have been seriously burned.”
My mother gasps. “Oh, dear. Poor Mr. Landon. Is he alright? You should bring him something to apologize. What about some nice cannoli?”
“Sure, Ma. Maybe later.”
Aunt Vera edges her way back onto the screen. “So who ran into you, sweetheart? Did they apologize?”
My heart quickens at the memory of Nick coming back into the restaurant that evening. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought about his thighs in those jeans since that day. Somehow they looked even bigger than when they’d been completely exposed in his little shorts, almost as though by hiding them, he drew more attention to them. “He did. He came back later that day to help clean up. He spent an hour scrubbing the sidewalk clean.”
Aunt Vera made an oh sound, her interest piqued. “He did, did he? And who was this nice young man?”
I can feel my cheeks warm like I’m some schoolgirl with a crush, which is silly. I don’t have a crush on Nick. I can’t help thinking it was nice of him to come back and clean up the way he did. Or that I really enjoyed the way he filled out those jeans. “Nobody,” I say, despite everything inside me screaming otherwise. “Just some guy who opened a gym here. He was out for a jog and didn’t see me step off my stairs. It’s fine. No one was hurt.”
“Ooh, out for a jog? Who doesn’t love a man who looks after his physical fitness?” My mother pulls her lips in, stifling a grin. “And...was he cute?”
