Of course there was a cure. The same cure that fixed us all of our ailments. Death. The great cure-all.
Instead of saying what I was thinking, I bit my cheek. A minute later, our surprise dinner showed up. As the waiter layered plate after plate on our table, I didn’t know whose mouth dropped farther—Grant’s or mine.
“Anything else I can get for you?” the waiter asked, looking down proudly on the assortment he’d selected for us.
Grant rubbed the back of his head. “Maybe an instruction manual?” He motioned at a bowl filled with what looked like shells. Snail-looking shells.
“Sir?” The waiter’s expression creased.
“Just a joke.” Grant smiled and tucked his napkin into his shirt collar.
The waiter backed away from our table again, like this time he was trying to tiptoe away from the crazy contagion before it noticed him.
“Are you planning on shoveling your dinner into your mouth?” I pointed my fork at Grant’s napkin dangling from his collar.
“I don’t know what the plan is honestly,” he said, making a face at a dish that looked downright dangerous with all of the pokey, needle-like things sticking out of it.
Going from plate to plate, I attempted to figure out where would be the safest place to start. When I found myself back at the beginning, I started the journey over again.
Across the table, Grant shoved out of his chair and pulled his napkin from his neck. “You want to get out of here?” He came around the side of the table and held out his hand for me.
I gave the food another inspection. I knew that to plenty of people, this was probably the height of fine dining and that just getting up and walking away was a giant waste of food.
“Come on. I’ll let our waiter box it all up and take it home, so it doesn’t go to waste. He obviously loves this stuff of questionable edible substance.” Grant cringed when he examined the table once more. “Let’s get you a cheeseburger.”
“SWEET BABY JESUS.” I was moaning an hour later, alongside Grant.
“Oh, God, that’s good,” he grunted, his body practically trembling.
“Yes, right there,” I breathed, pointing at where I had in mind.
“You like that?” His words were muffled from what his mouth was busy working over.
“Yes,” I groaned, arching my back, “it’s so good.”
“Once you have yours, I want mine.”
Once I’d swallowed, I ran my tongue across my lips, not wanting to miss a bit. “Open up,” I purred.
Then I brought a chunk of banana cream pie to his mouth and waited for him to finish his bite of hamburger.
The spread we’d had laid out for us at the other restaurant had nothing on the one laid out in front of us now. Grant had driven us to an old-school burger joint in a quieter part of Brooklyn. Cheeseburgers in every variety, an assortment of fried sides—from waffle fries to giant onion rings to pickles—a tower of milkshakes, and the most recent additions, dessert. Or the plural version of that word.
At first, Grant didn’t look like he knew what to think of the banana pie, but after getting past the texture of it, his eyes grew big. He hadn’t finished the bite before he stabbed his fork into another.
“No more fancy eight-star restaurants for us,” he announced for the dozenth time. “Who would want to eat that when there’s food like this?”
I thought of the diners in that restaurant. Then I scanned the last two diners left in this one: Grant and me. “Sophisticated people.”
Grant grunted then scooted the almost empty basket of onion rings in front of me. Those had been my favorite of this culinary masterpiece.
When I snagged one and dunked it in a container of tarter sauce, Grant smiled at the corsage still on my wrist. Then his gaze crept a little lower to my hand, lingering on my fingers. It was a random coincidence that I’d held out my left arm for Grant to slide my corsage onto. I guessed it wasn’t a coincidence that Grant was staring at a certain finger on my left hand.
“How many men after me?” His forehead creased as he asked his question, setting down his fork.
His question surprised me. “What?”
“How many men have you been with since you were with me?”
I swallowed the bite of onion ring and set down what was left of it. Wolfing down fried food didn’t pair well with this type of conversation. “Like how many guys have I dated? Had as boyfriends?” My weight shifted on the counter stool I was situated on. “Had sex with?”
Grant’s jaw tensed, but he relaxed it right after. He answered me by lifting a shoulder.
I’d thought Charlie’s little “mom doesn’t go on dates” spiel would have answered any questions in his mind about these topics, but maybe it had only made him more curious.