Page 91 of Spiced!

“What?” Brendan said.

“That’s not what he said.”

“Do you speak Greek now? How do you know?”

I rolled my eyes. “I just know. What did he actually say?”

Brendan looked at the table, then looked at me. “He said you have kind eyes.”

I sat with that for a moment as he picked up a menu.

“That’s really what he said,” he confirmed without looking up. “Promise.”

Brendan buried himself in a menu he had memorized when he was eleven. I sat back and watched this man across a paper tablecloth in his hometown restaurant, in that blue shirt doing something genuinely unfair to his eyes, and thought about the church mosaic and Stavros.

Kind eyes, Stavros had said.

Right back at you, I thought.

Stavros brought bread without being asked. It was good bread—not the panadería’s bread, mind you—but it was warm and real and made by someone who understood the process. I tore off a piece and dipped it in olive oil. That first bite made me close my eyes.

“Good, isn’t it?” Brendan said, still not looking up. “My mother’s been coming here for forty years.”

“What does she usually order?”

“Moussaka, every time. She’s been coming here since she was six and has never once ordered anything else.”

“Not once?”

“I ordered the lamb when I was fourteen,” he said. “She looked at me the way your abuela looks at people who microwave bread.”

I laughed. “I know that look. I’ve been on the receiving end of it.”

“So have I,” he said. “You’ve aimed it at me.”

“I have never—”

“The leftover pan dulce.”

“That pan dulce was already compromised and needed twelve seconds in the oven, which I explained very patiently and at no point made a face about—”

“You made the face,” he said, looking up with a triumphant stare.

“I made a concerned face, a professional, bread-advocacy face. There’s a significant difference.”

He laughed, warm and genuine. “You were scandalized by my microwave.”

“Your microwave is perfectly good for many things. Reheating pan dulce is not among them. These are facts, Brendan, not opinions.”

“I’ll put it on a plaque,” he said.

“Please do. I’ll sign it.”

He was smiling his wide smile now, the one that made a mess of my insides. In that exact moment, I decided the only way to survive the evening was to stop looking directly at him the way you couldn’t look directly at the sun.

Stavros brought wine. Brendan insisted on pouring it. As he did, his smile smoothed into something I couldn’t quite read.

“Adrian.”