Smart Mouth Waitress (18 page)

I ordered an iced tea and asked a few more questions about the menu.

“Why don't we have the Greek platter for two,” Cooper said to the waitress. To me, he said, “This way you can nibble a bit of everything. My treat.”

The waitress turned to leave, whipping her long, black ponytail. Under the table, Cooper nudged my knees with his, which may have been accidental. I sat up straighter in my chair.

Everything was happening so fast.
I should have still been back in the theater, watching the end of
John Carter
. Looking at the cute guy across from me, I got that giggly, giddy feeling, like when you skip out of school and go to McDonalds with your friends, then throw french fries at each other until the manager kicks you out. I wasn't supposed to be there. I was being bad.

“Tell me about your family,” I said.

He counted them off on his fingers. “Workaholic, shopaholic, hypochondriac, and just plain crazy. In other words, normal. Tell me about yours.”

“Neurotic rock star mom, nerdy city engineer dad, and surprisingly well-adjusted younger brother.”

“Does he look like you?”

“No, he looks like a boy.”

“That's not what I was implying. You're a very attractive girl.”

I turned my head to the side and patted my bun, like a girl in a stage play trying to show she's flattered.

“I mean it,” he said. “Marc's crazy.”

My back tensed. “He told you how he friend-zoned me?”

The waitress set our drinks in front of us. I was so eager for a drink, yet so nervous, that I choked on the first sip and spent a minute coughing hard and trying not to make gross choking sounds, but failing.

“The friend zone is underrated,” Cooper said. “A lot of nice things can happen there.”

A Greek-looking boy about my brother's age, not the one who seated us, set up a folding stand next to our table. A sizzling, popping sound came from nearby.

“That's ominous,” I said.

Cooper waved out his napkin and spread it across his lap.

“Should I be scared?” I asked Cooper as the waitress approached our table, presenting a platter crowned by blue flames.

“Relax and go with it,” he said, grinning.

She put the flaming, sizzling, popping platter on the stand and doused the fire by squeezing juice from a lemon over the blocks of breadcrumb-coated cheese.

My mouth watered.

Cooper cut me off a chunk, but I insisted on only taking a little slice on my plate, not sure if I would like it. The first mouthful was a revelation: salty, gooey, rich, crunchy, and sweet and tangy from the lemon juice. Salty and sweet together!

“So good,” Cooper said. “Life is worth living with food like this.”

I moaned around the cheese in my mouth.

“How do you like me now?” Cooper asked.

“I like you a LOT for bringing me here. Oh, man, I don't care about what else is coming. I just want to eat this saggy-necky.”

He laughed over my pronunciation. “Saganaki. But hey, you call it whatever you like.”

The second bite was just as good as the first, and we were both competitively eyeballing the remaining portion on the serving dish. Cooper insisted I take the remainder, saying, “Watching you enjoy the saganaki is almost as good as eating it myself.”

Chapter 13

When the rest of the food came, I almost panicked. There was so much, and I didn't want to look like a pig in front of Cooper, but I also didn't want to waste his money.

“Do you think they'll wrap the leftovers?” I asked.

“Of course! Just try a nibble of everything and I'll be happy.”

So, nibble I did. And it was all wonderful, even the potatoes, which looked like nothing fancy, but melted in my mouth like butter.

Cooper seemed happier with every bite I took.

What is it about a guy who wants you to experience the same things they enjoy that's just so …
enjoyable
? 

My friend Haylee's boyfriend, Andrew, actually wrote out a list of things it was important for his girlfriend to experience—and this was before he'd even started dating anyone. Before the girl, he had the list, which I suppose was better than a list of measurements and hair color.

Haylee had to watch a bunch of Quentin Tarantino movies, and then they moved on to the movies that had inspired Quentin Tarantino, including some really bizarre, violent stuff. Nowadays, Haylee says she
likes
seeing people's severed heads roll around in the snow like bowling balls, but I suspect she may be brainwashed. In my opinion, most girls don't like that decapitation stuff nearly as much as a good makeover or shopping montage. 

Cooper and I didn't talk about horror movies or much of anything after the big food platter came. When I asked him questions about his life or what he did when he wasn't painting, he insisted it was “too tedious to discuss” and changed the topic back to me.

You'd think I'd enjoy talking about myself non-stop, but it gets old. I mean, I've totally heard all my stories before.

After
dinner, Cooper drove me back to my house. I was looking forward to being able to relax by myself and decompress from our sorta-date, but I offered to show him my house, just to be polite. To my surprise, he accepted.

The reason I was surprised was because—and I feel I need to repeat this, in case you've forgotten—Cooper is really, really attractive. You may recall me describing Cooper as so attractive, he could sell diet cereal. He is a ten. I don't have body dysmorphia or anything, but I do know I am not a ten, not even on a good day.

As it was a Friday, my father was getting home from work just as we were walking up to the front door. My father shut his car door and gave me a look that indicated he was surprised to see me touring
another
young man around the house, for the second time in one week, but that he wasn't going to blow my cover. I'll admit, I was delighted by the scandal of it all, innocent though it was.

He was so distracted by Cooper, he didn't even notice my eyebrow piercing. Another symptom of his ADD is he fails to notice things that are changed. My mother could replace all the furniture in the house while he was at work, and he'd come home and sit on a sparkling disco-ball chair, his only confusion being wondering where the remote control was.

We all got inside the house, and after a moment to show him our family photos in the front hall, I led Cooper to the kitchen, where my father was finishing a glass of grapefruit juice.

“Is your friend staying for dinner?” Dad asked.

“No, but I have all this amazing Greek food for you guys to eat.” I put the bag of fragrant take-out on the counter.

Cooper opened the kitchen cabinet, located a glass, and poured himself some filtered water from the fridge. “Unless you want to stay?” I asked Cooper. “You seem comfortable.”

“You keep your glassware in the most logical place,” Cooper said, tapping the cupboard. “I like this family. The energy's in good harmony here.”

“Dad, Cooper is also friends with Marc,” I said, my voice sounding like a Kindergarten teacher. “You met my friend Marc for dinner the other day.”

“Right,” Dad said, apparently unsure of how much more to mention. I couldn't blame him for being confused. The situation wasn't exactly clear to me either. Cooper had paid for my dinner, which seemed to imply date, yet he'd also talked a few times about the benefits of friendship. There was the gap of our attractiveness differential, but he had said those flirty things about piercings.

Dad rinsed out his glass and poured some water, then asked Cooper, “How old would you say you are?”

“I'd say I'm twenty-one.”

Not bad, three years' difference
, I thought.

Dad seemed satisfied with that and began digging into the fragrant, tinfoil-wrapped takeout containers. Within seconds, Garnet was also in the kitchen, not so interested in Cooper, but very keen on the Greek food. After we'd eaten our fill at the restaurant, there hadn't been much left over, so Cooper had ordered some more meat-on-a-stick things, souvlaki, when I'd mentioned cooking dinner for my family was my current duty.

As I stood leaning on the counter, watching Cooper easily chat with my father and brother, showing them how “everything's better dipped in tzatziki,” I thought about how lucky a girl would be to date him.

My next thought was this:
If I go on a date with Cooper, Marc will get jealous.

That was when I knew I probably wasn't that into Cooper, despite his clean-cut, fair-haired good looks. Maybe he was too nice, too easy-going, and I preferred my guys a little rougher—a bit surly, like a porcupine. I tried to picture Cooper in a skinny black t-shirt instead of his pastel button-down shirt.
Yes, a black t-shirt would help a lot
, I thought.

Now that I think back to that evening in my kitchen, when I was mentally giving Cooper a makeover, I understand how it's wrong to change someone to suit you. At the time, however, I was not as enlightened as I am these days. Don't judge me, okay? We all make mistakes. I was about to make several.

Conversation in the kitchen waned as my father and brother sat on the stools at the kitchen island, gorging on the Greek food.

“I dabble in a bit of art,” I said to Cooper.

“Show me.”

With Dad and Garnet happily gobbling away at the food, I gave Cooper an express tour of the downstairs floor of the house, then ran up the stairs to my bedroom with him right at my heels.

Unlike Marc, Cooper had no qualms about coming into my bedroom, or closing the door behind him.

With the two of us in there together, my room seemed smaller than ever. It had never felt so cozy when I was in there with friends, or with our housekeeper, but as I showed Cooper my Forgotten Creatures on the wall and the branches over my headboard, he brushed up against me several times to get past, and I could feel body heat radiating from him.

He seemed way more interested in my Creatures than Marc had been. Marc had actually called them demons. And nightmare teddy-bears.

“How many of these beasties have you made?” Cooper asked.

“Like, four. There's one in my brother's room.”

He got on my bed and crawled across to examine one of the stuffed creatures up close. “I know someone who does little dolls like this,” he said. “Collectors pay big money for them.” He tapped on the eyes, which were made from one rusty metal nut and one penny with a hole in the middle. “Don't sell these at a craft show. These are aren't craft, they're one-of-a-kind. They have little souls.”

My face flushed red with embarrassment. My friend Courtney was the artist, not me.
I just se
wed some silly things together, and I wasn't exactly prolific, with all four of my creations.

With him right there, on my bed, I almost didn't know what to do with myself. I feared he'd look down at my unmade bed and see curly pubes on my sheets and I would die of embarrassment.

I quickly kicked a pair of dirty underwear under the bed. Oh, the horror!

My brain popped in and out of something, and I got that feeling that people call
surreal
. People always say they “feel surreal” on reality TV shows when they win, or in interviews when they've become famous. I guess all your senses are completely alive, all your nerve endings lit up with something similar to panic, but not panic.

A boy—no, a grown man of twenty-one—was in my room, sitting on my bed.
This is how it happens
, I thought.

Casually, I sat on the bed next to him, taking care to smooth the blankets down, covering any potential pubes or sweat stains from my favorite sleeping zone. He turned around from where he was kneeling and sat, leaning his back against the wall.

“Have you thought about art school?” he asked.

I picked at my pale blue nail polish where it was chipped. “We already have one crazy artist in the family. I thought I might take some business classes. Something practical. I think art leads to a lot of unhappiness.”

“Because of your mother,” he said, nodding. “Women are not as laid-back as guys. Imagine if our female ancestors had been more like dudes, trying to ride pterodactyls to show off.”

I giggled, imagining a Flintstones-style scenario.