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At a slight throat-clearing from Summer, I manage to jerk my head in a tight nod and form my facial muscles into a grimace. It’s the best I can manage under this ambush.
“Hi.” I say to the table of five guys who all look the bloody same to me. Dark, dark, dark, and expressionless. It’s weird.
Are they twins, times five?
What’s that called again?
“Ah, she does speak!” The third guy laughs again. It’s not a nice sound. When Cove laughs it’s like twinkling water slipping over smooth rocks, but this guy’s bark feels more like nails on a blackboard. I try to hide my cringe.
“May I sit?” I ask the remaining two guys who haven’t spoken yet but who are crowding the booth. I just need everyone to scoot along a bit so that I can slip onto the end but the guy on the end climbs out and gestures for me to take his seat, sandwiched between him and number four.
No, no, no, no, no.I do not want to be penned in. Trapped.
What were their names again? Did Summer ever say? When I try to remember, I feel the stabbing pain of a migraine coming on, so I let it go and take my unwanted seat. I don’t know how to protest being sandwiched between two strangers in a space small enough to mean they’ll be touching me, without seeming rude. Summer doesn’t give me an out or come to my rescue, even though she knows I hate this sort of thing.
“Lovely.” She beams around the table. The guys all smile back at her, but their grins seem indulgent to me. Like a parent caving to their child’s demands.
But what do I know? Those smiles might mean Summer hung the moon and they worship the ground she walks on.
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
Love a random bit of Shakespeare to distract me when I’m stressing about shit.
“Can I get you a drink?” A waiter asks, stopping by our table and handing out leather-bound menus.
“We’ll have champagne!” Summer declares.
“Why?” I gape at her once the waiter leaves. Her men don’t seem inclined to question the extravagant order.
“Because we’re celebrating,” she tells me with a casual shrug of her shoulders.
Guy four bumps against me, and I cringe away from him as subtly as I possibly can, without banging into guy five.Fuck. I really should pay attention to their names.
“We are? What?”
“You guys finally meeting, of course. All my favourite people are together at last.”
Not knowing what to say, I flip open my menu. Summer’s robot-guys do the same and no one speaks. It’s awkward as hell, and that’s saying something coming from me for two reasons: one, I don’t pick up on social cues and atmospheres very well, and two, I’m the queen of being awkward as fuck.
Everything on the menu is written in Frenchandthere’s no prices listed anywhere.
I hate it. I haven’t got a clue what to order. I want a burger. I’d kill for a Five Guys right now, but I guess I’ve just got that on the brain.
The waiter returns with the champagne in a bucket of ice – sure it has a fancy name but I don’t care to remember it – and a colleague trails with seven glasses. I just want a water so I quickly ask for one before they leave.
Guy one – the boss man – takes the bottle, pops the cork smoothly, and pours the first glass without spilling a drop. Summer claps like a demented seal and I don’t get it. Am I meant to be impressed that a grown-ass adult can pour a drink without making a mess?
I frown and open my mouth to say something, but Summer swiftly kicks me under the table, and I clamp my mouth closed once again. She didn’t kick me hard enough for it to hurt, and even if it had, I probably wouldn’t have made a sound anyway.Pain is to be tolerated in silence, my parents always taught me.Especially the sort inflicted by others.Okay, so they never said that second part, per se, but it was definitely implied.
Summer gives a weird, awkward kind of toast and I’m forced to take a sip of my drink. It’s horrible. I sag in relief when the waiter reappears with my water. I hope it’s from the tap and not some fancy bottled shit.
“Are you ready to order?” he asks.
“Oui,” Summer replies, instantly switching to French to order her meal. She always does this when she’s trying to impress a guy – or should I sayguys– and she claims to speak fluent French, when in reality it’s more GCSE level. Still, she got a D so she claims it totally counts.
It doesn’t.
