Chantalle returned with the wine, pouring it as the two of us tried to behave ourselves without success.
Dalton turned to her and said, “I’m dying for the special. I had it once before and the taste was maddening and decadent.”
Chantalle scrunched her face. “We don’t have a special. Do you mean spaghetti? It’s our house specialty.”
He rubbed his chin. “Does the sauce dribble down your face like this?”
I kicked him under the table.
“Spaghetti for me,” I said.
Chantalle turned to me. “How many balls?”
My voice squeaked out, “How many balls would you recommend? Like, at one time?”
“Three is popular,” she said.
I turned to Dalton, making a serious face. “Two at a time sounds about my speed, unless you’d like a nibble?”
He grinned. “I’ll have the baked tortellini, and give her four meatballs with her spaghetti so I can have a taste.”
“Good choice,” Chantalle said with a knowing, patient smile. She could be an airhead at times, but she wasn’t stupid.
After she left, I pulled out my phone and said, “I should probably give you my actual number, right? Just so you can reach me if I’m not at the bookstore.”
“If you’re not at the bookstore, I hope it’s because you’re with me.” He gave me a million-dollar smile.
Another waitress came by with two long, skinny breadsticks and some butter.
I read out my cell phone number, and he punched it into his own phone. He didn’t immediately give me his number, though. I sat there, aware of this, and feeling annoyed, until I got a text message from an unknown number.
He messaged: You can gobble my breadstick. You can munch it any time, and I’ll watch.
I saved his number to my contacts, and then I nibbled the end of his breadstick in a suggestive manner.
The flirting continued through dinner, with both of us making inappropriate faces and jokes about everything going in our mouths.
As we ate dinner, he moaned and rolled his eyes up, enjoying the forbidden carbohydrates. He was a manly-looking guy, with his square chin and muscled arms, which only made it more funny that he was showing the kind of high-calorie reverence Shayla and I have for the Lemon Meringue Mile-High* at Chloe’s Pie Shack.
*The meringue isn’t a mile high, but it’s damn close. You have to tilt your head sideways to get it in your mouth. Think about that lemony goodness for a minute and tell me if your mouth doesn’t water.
“Did you ever work here?” Dalton asked as we were finishing up our last bites.
“No, but my best friend did for a bit. She manages a different restaurant now. Why do you ask?”
“You seemed rather attached to the old tablecloths. The red-checked ones.”
I squirmed in my seat, feeling silly. “My parents took me here for my birthday dinner every year since I turned five. We sat at different tables, but the pictures always turned out the same, because of the decorations.”
Dalton crossed his arms and rested his chin on one hand. “Now I’ve brought this movie here and turned your whole world upside-down.”
“In more ways than one, yes.”
“Are you afraid?”
I gave him a long look, not sure how to answer that.
He cleaned up a bit of sauce on his plate with his thumb and licked it clean.
He explained, “Most people won’t admit they’re scared, but with admitting something comes great peace. For example, I’m scared about the damage this movie is doing to me.”
“You’re doing your own stunts?”
He poured out the last bit of wine evenly between our glasses, looking very serious and sad.
“The damage is emotional, or psychological, I guess. Have you done any acting?”
“Sometimes at the bookstore, I act like I’m not bored senseless when I am.”
“Imagine acting like you’ve just walked away from a horrific car accident, and your small children didn’t survive.”
I imagined Kyle being hurt, and the pain was so strong, it manifested as physical pain in my guts.
“That’s horrible,” I said, shaking my head. “Don’t say crap like that or you’ll give me nightmares.”
“That’s what acting is like. You can’t avoid the darkness. You have to embrace it to deliver a believable appearance. If you aren’t suffering, the audience won’t connect.”
“Can’t you just say the words and pretend?”
“That’s pretty much all you can do. Sounds simple enough, except there’s a part of your brain that doesn’t know it’s pretend. Your ears hear the words in your voice, and you believe it. Your soul believes it.”
I frowned and played around with the silverware before me.
“You seem to be having fun, though. As Drake, the vampire. You’re always grinning and having a blast.”
“True. But this movie I’m doing is different. It wears on me.”
I glanced up, catching his gaze. “Sucky.”
He blinked, and then his mouth turned up at the corners. “Sucky!” He sat up straight, looking more vital than ever. “I love how you put things in perspective. You have a real gift for stating the obvious, exactly when I need to hear it. You’re right. Embracing a dark role is sucky. But it’s also a challenge, and it’s what I desperately wanted, so why the f**k am I complaining?”
I shrugged, returning his smile. “I don’t know why you’re so miserable. It’s like all those carbohydrates sent you over the edge into a shame spiral.”
“Blame it on the pasta,” he said.
“Evil, evil pasta. Can you imagine if we’d ordered the deep-fried ravioli starters? They come with a sour cream dip. The mayor threatened to outlaw them.”
“The horror!” He jumped up from his chair. “You wait here. I’ll be back in a sec.”
I sat alone at the table, carefully folding my cloth napkin into a swan shape. It’s just something I like to do, whether the napkin was originally a swan or not. I find a comfort in folding napkins that doesn’t translate to paper origami, though I don’t know why. Perhaps a fear of paper cuts?
Dalton returned, a white box in his hand. “I got dessert to go.” He stood behind my chair, leaned down, and murmured in my ear. “Actually, this is second dessert, for after the first dessert, which is—”
I twisted around and pressed my finger to his lips. “Don’t say peaches.”