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The man starts to sing.
I do my best to mask a cringe with my beer glass. “Okay…thatmight not be so sweet.”
Parker chuckles. “Told you. This is Frankie. We don’t do something about it, he’ll be on that mic for the rest of the night. You could save us all, Gemma.”
“Why don’tyousave us?”
“I’m hard at work. See? I’m on this side of the counter.”
“Ha. If this is you hard at work, I’m afraid to know what it would look like if you decided to slack off.”
“Hey, if you sing one song, I’ll take a half-hour off and come around this counter, sit right next to you.”
“Be still my heart… I could actually sit next to you for thirty minutes?”
“You know you’d love it.”
“Ha.” I stuff a fry in my mouth. Because I’m hungry. And because I want to smile, but I don’t want him to see me smile.
“You like the fries, don’t you,” he notes, before stealing another.
“I do, but unfortunately the bartender-slash-janitor is eating all of them.”
“No one cooked me breakfast. And I haven’t had dinner.”
“No dinner?” That actually worries me. “Parker, you have to eat.”
“I will. Later. We could grab a pizza from Moe’s or something, on the way home. And salads. They make a mean Caesar. Dank, even, if you’re hungry enough. That’s what I grabbed last night. Chicken Caesar.”
“Wait, last night? You were supposed to be out with Heidi last night, at the Flower Cafe.”
“Sure, but that was early. Then I came here and helped out ’til close. Got home around two or three…”
“Oh.” And I was so sure he’d been out so late with Heidi.
I sip my beer, hoping a little more of a buzz will soften the slight edge that’s crept into my bones, at the thought of Heidi. It works. I feel a little loopy as I lean an elbow on the bar and prop my chin in it. “So… how’d it go, anyway? Date number one, I mean. Big hit?”
“If by ‘big hit’ you mean total drag, then, yes.”
“That’s not at all what ‘big hit’ means.”
“Ah. Well, then, no, it wasn’t. It was a total drag.”
Good.
The thought zips through my hazy mind.
Why? I set up that date. I wanted it to go well. I wanted it to be spectacular. Didn’t I?
It’s this beer. It’s making my head cloudy, and I’m forgetting my priorities again, and—
Parker’s holding a fork. With a ball of white stuff on it. He holds it out toward me.He’s going to feed me…?
The sight makes all my worried thoughts evaporate.Poof.
“You haven’t tried the cheese,” he says. “It’s really good. Mozzarella. Try one.”
He holds the utensil over the plate. I have to lean in to wrap my lips around it.
