Because I don’t know if I want to have dinner with someone who is just mildly curious, she added.
Now I was smiling.
Let me rephrase?
Please do...
I want you to have dinner with me tonight.
Better.
You’re going to have dinner with me tonight.
That’s a little bold isn’t it, Mr. Harper?
What can I say? I guess you just bring out the best in me.
Well in that case I don’t think I have much of a choice then, do I?
I mean, I’d hate to have to drag you against your will...
I don’t think you’ll have to.
Oh, no?
Nope.
Okay then.
Do you have a particular place in mind for this dinner, sir?
Shit. I hadn’t thought that far ahead—I didn’t think she would actually say yes. I wasn’t going to take her to Pelican Pete’s. Creepy Carl the waiter might start thinking I am the creepy one taking different women to dinner every night.
Yeah, I know where we are going, I lied.
Do you care to share?
Nope, it’s a surprise. You’ll see.
I purposely ran into her after school got out so that I could talk to her. Okay, I walked into her classroom, so I guess it can’t exactly be considered “running into.” She didn’t seem to mind.
She told me she was going to head home to check on the kids and tell Paula the nanny she would be out for dinner. I was to text her and let her know where she was going to meet me. This wasn’t like a high school date where I was driving to her house to pick her up; this was simply a dinner with a coworker.
Right, Luke.
Thankfully, she didn’t suggest I pick her up. It was possible that by this point she was aware that I skated around town in my old Suzuki, but I had no desire to make it our mode of transportation for the night. For god’s sake, her husband was a professional athlete and they had a nanny and a spare room/house in the back she could live in if she wanted! I was going to need to look for a new car pronto.
Dinner needed to be somewhat casual, but not sports bar casual. And it needed to be nice, but not anniversary dinner nice. So, I settled on an Italian place by the beach called Angelo’s, which I didn’t go to very frequently, but always seemed to ask myself “Why don’t I come here more often?” when I was there. Italian food always screamed romantic, but whatever, I was in the mood for it.
I lost the tie and changed into a white button-down with light blue pinstripes and put on jeans. My contacts were giving me trouble, and I was tempted to switch to my glasses.
She probably already thinks you’re a nerd, Luke. You don’t need to make it worse.
A few eye drops made everything better.
Admiring my reflection in the mirror wasn’t something I did often, but I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t checked myself out a few seconds longer than normal before I left my house. And when I walked into the restaurant, the sufficiently buxom hostess in an undersized black dress gave me a quick once over and seemed to like what she saw too.
“Just one?” she asked, when her eyes returned to mine.
It was taking every ounce of willpower I possessed not to look at her breasts. Although I am to an extent a boob guy, I wasn’t struggling with being a pervert and secretly wishing she would turn around so I could ogle her. Her breasts were just right there on full display for everyone and hard to avoid even if you wanted to. She had a thin waist and I had no idea how she was able to stand up straight. It’ll suck to be her back in twenty years.
“Two, actually,” I replied.
She actually grabbed my arm and squeezed as she led me to a table along the side.
“My name is Gianna,” she said, as I sat down. “If you need anything, don’t hesitate.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
She smiled. “Terry will be your server. She’ll be right with you.”
One of my biggest pet peeves in life is when you go to an “ethnic” restaurant of any kind—Mexican, Italian, Chinese, etc.—and the server does not match the food. I don’t want to go to a Mexican restaurant where Amanda is my waitress, or a Chinese place where Marcus is serving me. So, hearing the name Terry kind of upset me. Maybe I was picturing Terry Bradshaw. And his ass, which he unfortunately shared with the world in some awful piece of garbage movie I had fortunately forgotten the name of.
I had told April to meet me at 6:30 and had arrived a few minutes early. I wasn’t sure if she was the early type, but I didn’t want to be getting there after her, or at the same time. The parking lot was mostly full of vehicles that were quite a bit more expensive than mine.
Gianna had seated me on the side of the table that faced her, and her glances and smiles were not infrequent. It seemed as if each minute passed that my dinner partner hadn’t yet arrived, she became friendlier. When she would turn away from me, I could see her pull her dress down along the sides, which of course increased how tight it was across her breasts.