"I'm working the floor, Javi. I walk past all the tables."
"You walk past all the tables in order. Except his. His, you walk past when you're going in the wrong direction."
My finger taps the bar. "Can you just make drinks and stop surveilling me?"
"Surveilling. That's a big word. Did The Rhino teach you that?"
"I genuinely hate you."
"You genuinely don't. I’m your only friend." He shakes the cocktail and pours it and slides it across the bar to a woman sitting on the end stool. "He's doing the finger thing, by the way."
"What?"
"The tapping thing. You both do it. I'm just saying. It's very cute and very weird. I think it’s time to just pull the bandaid and ask the guy to marry you, you obviously have a deep and long-standing connection."
I walk away before he can say anything else. My face is warm and I'm irritated at Javi and at myself. The tapping against my apron pocket is fast enough that I can hear the fabric rustle.
The man at table four finishes his pork shoulder and leaves cash under the saucer as always before he walks out without looking back at me. Aware of Javi watching me, I clear his table and don't stand there this time. I pick up the plate, the cup and the money and I force myself not to linger in that musky cologne scent he left behind.
But my thumb runs along the edge of the saucer where he held it, and the ceramic is still warm.
The Saturday night rush is the worst we've had in months. Every table full by six fifteen, a forty-minute wait at the door, Marco screaming at Devon about the risotto, Javi slammed at the bar, and me running the floor alone because the other server called in sick and Danny can't find a replacement on a Saturday.
I'm fine. I'm good at this. I can carry the whole dining room if I have to, and tonight I have to, and there's a part of me that's alive in the chaos because the busier I am the less I think. My body takes over. Plates up, plates down, water, bread, check, clear, reset. The rhythm is physical and demanding and it fills every corner of my brain and there's no room for anything else.
He's not here tonight. I checked when the door opened at five thirty and five forty-five and six and six ten, and each time it wasn't him.
I'm annoyed that I checked and more annoyed that I cared.
The eight-top by the window is a birthday party. I've got their entrees up and I'm carrying four plates on my left arm and one in my right hand, weaving through the dining room.
The man at table three is on his phone.
He's speaking Italian.
Fast, loud, animated. His hands are moving and his voice carries across the dining room, and the words hit me mid-stride. My left foot stops. Just stops, mid-step, and the plates on my arm shift and I try to catch them with my right hand as my body goes cold from the back of my neck down through my spine.
The words don't mean anything to me. I don't speak Italian. I've never spoken Italian. But the sound of it… the cadence, the vowels, the specific music of a man's voice speaking fast Italian, does something to my chest. My skin tightens across my shoulders, the back of my jaw aches and there's a taste in my mouth that wasn't there three seconds ago, metallic and wrong. The smell of the branzino on the plate in my right hand is suddenly so strong that my stomach turns.
I need to move.
The birthday table is waiting. The plates are getting heavy. The man at table three is still talking, still loud, still Italian, every syllable is pushing against something inside me. My heart is pounding so hard I can barely breathe.
Shaking my head, I force myself to move, to deliver the plates. I smile, nod, stay pleasant. I say happy birthday before turning and walking back through the dining room. The man at table three laughs and says something loud and without realizing it, my feet take me to the bar by the longest possible route, the one that stays as far from him as the room allows.
My hands are on the bar top. I press them flat and lean my weight into them.
"Hey." Javi is in front of me. "You okay?"
"I'm good."
"You're not good. Your hands are shaking."
"It's a busy night. I'm tired."
He looks at me, and I can see him deciding, and tonight he decides to push. "Is it the Italian thing?"
He knows. Of course he knows. Three years of working together and he's seen it happen a dozen times, the flinch when Marco puts the TV on Italian chef shows, the time a customer ordered in Italian and I had to go to the bathroom for five minutes, the way I avoid the Italian market on Ninth Street even though it's on my walk home and has the best produce in the neighborhood.
