“I’m lactose intolerant, and I didn’t bring any pills with me,” I said.
“They have a cheese-less pizza here.”
“Which is basically just bread with sauce on it, but okay.”
“You can put pepperoni on it, too,” he offered cheerfully.
As if that would solve the issue. “I suppose I could.” I probably wouldn’t, though. All those pepperoni slices would just slide around. I knew that from experience and the first-degree burn I’d gotten on my arm.
“They have really massive salads here. We could split that, if you’d like. Do you want one?”
Hadn’t he just said the whole reason he’d come here was to have pizza? “The only way I’d order salad is if the world ended and it was the only thing left to eat in order to survive.”
“You’re not into salad?”
“I’m also not into splitting things.” Why did he keep asking me to do that? “Why do you say things like that with so much surprise in your voice?”
He shook his head. “I’ve just dated a lot of women where that’s the only thing they eat.”
Honestly, I wasn’t even a teensy bit shocked. That was probably where the offer to split everything came from, too. “I guess I’m not like someone you would typically hang out with. You should know that when you can find me not working out, I will also be making very unhealthy food decisions.”
“Noted,” he said, an actual twinkle in his eye. “I guess that means the 5k hike after lunch is out of the question.” He laughed at my expression. “I’m teasing. Vegan pizza for you, then?”
“Yes, I’m getting the vegan pizza, but only because there’s no cheese. Not for any other reason. You can’t trick me into making healthy choices.”
“Do you know the hardest part of making a vegan pizza?” He asked me the question seriously, and I wasn’t sure what he was trying to ask.
I blinked a couple of times. “Literally nothing?”
He shook his head. “Skinning the vegan.”
That was a joke that reminded me so much of my father I felt a physical twinge of longing. “Huh. I thought they had a thin skin.”
That made him grin at me, and then I added, “I could be a vegan.”
His eyes widened. “Are you?”
“I’m not. And I think vegan jokes are only okay so long as they’re not cheesy.”
At that, he laughed, his voice deep and rich, and I found myself wanting to join in. It had been a long time since I’d sat around and traded bad jokes with someone. I felt all warm and fuzzy inside and enjoyed the sound of his laughter more than just an acquaintance should.
Because deep, drunken confessions aside, we didn’t really know each other.
“Okay, so now that we have the food all sorted—what would you like to drink?” he asked.
Was Marco trying to take my order? Like, we had a waiter who was going to ask me all of this. Or was he just trying to make conversation? It made me think he was nervous and this was how he was coping with his anxiety.
“Something strong? Hair of the dog?” he asked.
“What?” I was so disoriented by all of this and the magical quality of his laughter that I didn’t understand what he was asking.
“You know that saying, about when you’re hungover you should drink more alcohol, so you should drink the hair of the dog that bit you?”
“Oh. My grandpa always says drink the feather of the bird that pecked you. Which makes more sense, because odds are higher that you’ll get pecked by a bird.”
“I’ve never been pecked by a bird.”
“Do you want to be?” I asked. “I can easily arrange that.”
“No thanks,” he said breezily, as if I’d offered him a dish he didn’t want to taste. “But . . . drinking feathers?”
“Drinking hair?” I countered.
“I feel like hair would go down much more easily than feathers.”
“Depends on the size of the feather,” I said, wondering how we’d ended up at this point. “But the shorter answer is no, thank you, I don’t think I’ll be drinking again for the next century.” One night of crying on a bathroom floor with the CEO of my former company was quite enough for me. “Plus, it’s the middle of the afternoon and I’m not really much of a day drinker.”
“You’re not much of a night drinker, either,” he said with a grin that was so adorable, I’d be willing to bet a lot of money that he had never been in trouble once in his entire life. All he would have to do is flash that smile and all would be forgiven.
It was like a weapon. Somebody should make him register that thing.
Our waiter came back, and we gave him our orders—a Diet Coke and medium vegan pizza for me, just water and a medium meat lovers for Marco.
When the waiter left, Marco folded his hands on the table and looked at me very seriously. “It’s come to my attention that the Yankees suck.”
Again, I felt a little bewildered at the direction of our conversation. “What?”
“The bird in your house? The one who keeps saying ‘Yankees suck!’”
“Feather Locklear. She’s a gray parrot. She used to be at an outdoor aviary, but she kept teaching all the other birds to curse. They asked my grandfather to rehabilitate her. When he brought her home, she immediately taught Parrot Hilton and Parrot France to swear, but Grandpa’s working with them. It’s ‘Yankees suck’ now, but it used to be much worse. He uses replacement words with her.”
“Interesting. If she were my bird, I’d probably teach her to say, ‘Help! I’ve been turned into a parrot!’”
That made me laugh, and he grinned in response. “She’s mostly over it now. But every now and again, she curses in a way that would make a sailor blush.”
“So why all the Yankees hate? I’m assuming your grandpa doesn’t like them. What if I was a fan?”
“We are a Dodgers family. If you are a Yankees fan, then I think my grandpa might slap you across the face with his glove and demand satisfaction. For all I know, he has those birds do his bidding, and you might find yourself in a scene from a Hitchcock movie.”
“You like Hitchcock?”
“Who doesn’t?” I asked.
“It seems like he would fall outside of the Star Wars Lord of the Rings romantic comedies you said you typically enjoy. Not to mention that most people our age have never heard of him.”
“Well, then they don’t know what they’re missing.”
“Agreed.”
Our waiter, who I realized wasn’t wearing a name tag and hadn’t introduced himself, came back with my drink. I thanked him, and he said our food should be up soon.
“Speaking of the birds, that wasn’t quite what I was expecting at your house,” Marco commented.
I felt my spine bristle in response. “And just what were you expecting?” Cats? Had he thought I was some sad, lonely woman with only feline companionship? I told myself to calm down—I was putting words in his mouth. Just because a man had once told me that I seemed like the type of girl who lived with eighteen cats didn’t mean Marco was the same.