Starfire(72)

“I’ve never seen you like this,” Adrian said.

“A red-eyed nightmare?”

“Soft and vulnerable.”

I shook my head. “Oh, no. Do not call me soft. Do not make me double-punch you in the asshole.”

Chuckling, he got to his feet and made his way back around the table to his chair. I gave my nose one final swipe, then pulled my chair in to better survey the feast before us.

“Fuck, yeah,” I said as I used the large serving fork to transfer some deep-fried tortellini to my plate. Everything looked so good. I even took a bit of green salad, though it looked suspiciously like kale.

“Fuckin’ fried pasta, yeah,” Adrian said in agreement, doing the same.

For the rest of our dinner, we talked about the bookstore, and the big move that would be starting the next morning. Gordon had sprung for professional movers, agreeing that the expense would be worthwhile, because we’d have less downtime.

Adrian and I joked about the town-wide panic that would begin Tuesday, when all of Beaverdale went from having two bookstores to having zero. By the time we re-opened a week later, there’d be so much built-up demand.

Giggling, I said, “We might sell fourteen books by lunch time.”

“We’ll be run off our feet,” he said.

“What’s that called when two people want to pay for stuff at the same time?”

He grinned. “A lineup. We’ll probably have one of those happening all the time.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

He laughed. “So I should cancel the order on that deli-style, take-a-number system?”

“No, keep that. We can use it to keep track of who we’re dating.”

He blinked for a minute, then started laughing so hard he had to hit his hand on the table.

Our waitress came running over, worried he was choking, and the confusion that ensued made me laugh so hard, I must have looked like I was choking.

We finally finished eating, working together like a team to finish every item on the platter.

The owner, Mr. Russell DeNirro himself, came over to our table just as we were finishing, to ask us what we thought. I got nervous, because he’s basically a celebrity chef in the town, plus I’ve had a crush on him probably since I was twelve. I’d always wanted him to flirt with me the way he did with my mother, and not refer to me as “kidlet” when he brought out my birthday cake with sparklers and candles on top.

“How is your beautiful sister?” Mr. DeNirro asked me. He meant my mother, whom he’d been jokingly referring to as my sister for the last decade, since she couldn’t possibly be the mother of such a mature-acting kidlet.

“Still married to that guy,” I said, playing along.

Mr. DeNirro shook his head. “That guy! A man should be so lucky.” He turned to Adrian. “And you’re Stormy’s son, aren’t you.”

“Guilty,” Adrian said. His father’s cop name around town was Stormy, which is a pretty cool nickname, albeit not as cool as Peaches.

As he backed away from the table, Mr. DeNirro pointed a finger at me. “We’ll see you soon for your birthday, won’t we?”

“Of course!” Even as I said it, though, I got a bad feeling. My birthday was coming up in October, and given the way my summer had gone, I couldn’t imagine where I might be when I turned twenty-three.

Coming to DeNirro’s for my birthday, and getting my photo taken at one of the red-checkered tables—that was my tradition. My routine.

If Adrian was right about happiness being the perfect blend of novelty and routine, I was out of balance. With the store moving, and the fake wedding coming up, nothing at all felt routine or safe.

“You’re not even listening,” Adrian said.

I jerked my head up to look at him. “Beg pardon?”

He smiled, his blue eyes focused on me. “We’ve got a killer day ahead of us tomorrow, and a killer week. Would you like to walk down to the movie theater and watch a movie?”

“Do you know what’s playing?”

“Does it matter? I’ll put my arm around you and we can cuddle in the back row for two hours, just me and you.”

There’s only one screen in our town’s movie theater, so I didn’t have any idea what I was committing to, but I agreed. Sitting in the dark for two hours with Adrian’s arm around me sounded perfect.

~

The movie was one of those romantic comedies where the hard-working business executive woman hires a smokin’ hot man she thinks is gay to be her escort for a fancy dinner, then gets drunk and gives him a lap dance, only to discover that’s not a roll of candies in his pocket, and he’s not so gay after all.