Stephen took his hand. His grip was firm, and clearly trying for painful, but his omega grip could only do so much. Diwaflinched obligingly. Easier all round to let the omega know that his dad had landed on a soft alpha.
Beside him, Ryland was studying the bread basket. Diwa leaned across the table and offered his hand. Ryland glanced at it, took it for exactly long enough to constitute contact, and released it without looking up. His fingers went back to the basket, turning a piece of focaccia over and over in his hands.
Diwa sat down, unfolded his napkin, and smiled at the table, bright and ready. The table did not smile back. His brain began cycling through conversational openers.
So, Stephen, what kind of law do you practise?Too stiff. Job-interview energy. He’d sound like an uninvolved uncle at a wedding.
How’s your week been, mate?He’d never saidmatein his life. He’d sound like an American doing an impression of a British accent based on a few EastEnders episodes. Or worse, Australian. HR still had the complaints from the Sydney launch video he’d filmed on file.
Colin tells me you’re in law. That’s so cool.He was two years older than Stephen. If he saidthat’s so coolacross this paper tablecloth, every person at the table would hear the gap close to nothing.
Diwa reached for the bread basket. The first piece went down without incident. The second was harder to justify, but he committed to it anyway, tearing it into quarters and working through them slowly. Olive oil dripped onto the paper tablecloth. He mopped it with a third piece. Colin was watching him through narrowed eyes.
The glare convinced him to put his hand down even as he reached for a fourth.
The waiter appeared, pad in hand, and Stephen ordered without consulting the menu. “Carbonara for my dad, please. Penne arrabiata for me, and he’ll have the —” He glanced atRyland, who said, “Margherita, thank you,” without looking up from the laminated page he’d been studying.
“And for you, sir?”
Diwa scanned the menu. “Could I get the cacio e pepe, please?” He turned to Colin, already mid-pivot, because his mouth was a vehicle that had long since disconnected from whatever part of his brain handled self-preservation. “Colin, have you tried the cacio e pepe here? It’s basically the same idea as the carbonara but without the egg and guanciale, just pecorino and black pepper. The technique’s incredible, they emulsify the cheese into the pasta water to get that creamy texture, and I just think it’s worth trying once because the…” He clocked Stephen’s face, which had gone from neutral to something a lawyer might deploy across a courtroom while waiting for a witness to finish incriminating themselves. “…the pepper’s really good with it…” Diwa finished, at a lower volume.
“My dad alwayshasthe carbonara,” Stephen said.
“Right, no, totally, the carbonara sounds great. I just thought he might want to branch out? Try something new?”
“Why?” Stephen’s chin lifted. “He’s done things the same way for years and years. He knows what he likes. Doesn’t strike me as someone who needs a stranger turning up and improving his choices.”
Stephen took a sip of his Coke and held Diwa’s gaze over the rim.
The hit landed clean. Diwa registered the wordstrangeras the main attack vector. He could have pointed out that he wasn’t a stranger to Colin at this stage. He could have mentioned the shirt thing, for instance. How Colin had started pulling Diwa’s worn T-shirts off him in the morning on the days he was heading back to Barking. He took them home to wear for the nights they weren’t together, because the ones in Diwa’s wardrobe weren’tproperly scented. Or, alternatively, the frequency with which they were getting each other off.
He went for trying to sound reasonable instead.
“Sure, but that’s kind of the argument for trying something different, right? If you already know one thing is good, the only direction left to explore is the thing you haven’t tried yet. Growth happens at the edge of your comfort zone.”
The sentence left Diwa’s mouth and he heard it, too late, coming off like a daggy motivational poster quote. Stephen’s expression confirmed as much.
“Growth happens at the edge of your comfort zone,” Stephen repeated. “That’s lovely. How long have you been in this country, Diwa? Five minutes?”
“A few months.”
“A few months. And in those months you’ve formed a strong enough opinion about my dad’s dinner order to suggest he change the one he’s had since before you were born.”
Diwa’s teeth clicked together as he clenched his jaw tight against a snappy reply. He’d been outflanked by a twenty-six-year-old in a high street shirt, and the worst part was that he couldn’t even be annoyed about it, because the twenty-six-year-old was right. He’d walked into Colin’s restaurant, sat down at Colin’s family table, and immediately started trying to optimise Colin’s pasta consumption.
“I’ll try some of yours,” Colin said to Diwa. He laid a fleeting touch on Diwa’s arm.
Stephen’s nostrils flared. His foot moved under the table. Ryland’s knee jerked sideways, his water glass wobbling, and he straightened in his chair with sudden attentiveness.
“Diwa,” Ryland said. His voice was measured, unhurried, and directed at the salt cellar. “I’ve been reading about reinforcement learning from human feedback. TheFinancial Timespublished a piece in January around the workingconditions at outsourced data-labelling facilities. Your company was cited. Could you talk me through that?”
“No, Ryland,” Colin said. “He can’t.”
Ryland’s blink rate increased. His fingers paused on the focaccia. “Is that because he’s currently subject to litigation or a subpoena relating to his involvement with the company’s operations?”
“No.” Colin’s eyes had closed. When they opened again, they bypassed Ryland entirely and landed on Stephen. “It’s because we’re having a family dinner. Anicefamily dinner. And it isn’t the time to talk about Diwa’s work.”
Ryland set the focaccia down and aligned it with the edge of his side plate. “Asking someone about their work is widely considered the cornerstone of socialisation in Western culture. It’s the most commonly deployed conversational topic across first meetings, second meetings, and all subsequent meetings until both parties have exhausted the subject and moved on to property prices.” He picked the focaccia back up. “I was being polite.”
