Page 65 of The Summer List

She bumps me back and is about to say something when a grey-haired woman in black pants and a black t-shirt with an apron tied around her waist comes over and asks if we’d like a table for two. I was expecting all the servers to be in full-on dirndls, but the menus she places in front of us after getting us a seat make up for the lack of German attire. The laminated pages have illustrations of little cartoon mice in lederhosen adorning the corners.

“They really went all out, didn’t they?” I ask once our waitress has headed off to another table. I tap on one of the mice as I hold the menu up for Andrea to see.

“Okay, so maybe Google also described it as a ‘quirky, no frills hole in the wall,’ but did you see the appetizers?”

She taps on her own menu, and I place mine back on the table to scan through the options. I get halfway through the appetizers section before I burst out laughing at the same time my heart swells to twice its size in my chest.

“Oh my god, no way,” I choke out. “A pickle platter?”

“Featuring a dozen different flavors of the finest quality gherkins!” Andrea sing-songs as she reads off the menu before looking up to beam at me. “Pretty impressive, right?”

“Wow, yeah. I didn’t even know pickles came in a dozen different flavors.”

She taps her chin. “Yeah, we’ll see about that. That’s a pretty bold claim. You’re the expert, so you’ll have to let me know what your official assessment is once we’re done.”

I chuckle before dropping my gaze back down to the menu. It’s definitely not very cool of me, but the corners of my eyes prick with heat as the impact of her doing this for me sinks in.

Sure, it’s not some huge romantic gesture. It’s just a silly little joke about my weird affinity for pickles, but she saw that weird piece of me and ran with it. She saw me and decided I was worth getting to know.

“Hey, um…” I say as I reach up to tuck my hair back behind my ears. “Thanks. This was…this was really nice of you, thinking of me like this. I know it’s just, um, pickles, but you remembered that about me, and that’s…really nice.”

My face heats up, but I still force myself to look up from the menu. Andrea’s eyes have gone all soft as she stares at me. Her mouth curves into a slight smile as she slides her foot over to nudge mine under the table.

“I don’t think there’s much about you I could forget, Naomi.”

My breath catches, and before I realize what’s happening, we’re both leaning over the table. Her makeup looks even more smokey and seductive in the dim light of the restaurant, and all I want is to watch her burgundy painted lips say my name again before she kisses me.

“Are we ready to order, dears?”

We spring apart as our waitress walks back up to our table. My back slams into my chair so hard it’s a miracle I don’t tip over.

“Um, yes, I think so,” Andrea says, her voice a little higher-pitched than usual.

“Any appetizers?” the waitress asks.

Andrea clears her throat. “Yes, we will have the, um, the pickle platter, please.”

I can’t help it. The phrase ‘pickle platter’ is just too good. I try to hold back the laugh building inside me, but it bursts out as a snort.

Of course, that makes Andrea start laughing too, which makes the waitress look at us like we’re crazy, but for once, I don’t care about anyone in the room thinking I’m weird.

I’m soaring above all my worries now, waving down at them like I’m watching the tiny specks of a bustling city from the window of a plane way, way up in the air.

I don’t want to land in that city tonight, with its blaring sirens and choking fumes.

Tonight, I just want to fly through an orange-streaked sky with Andrea King.

We end up getting a full meal at the German restaurant, after I’ve decided there were about five distinct pickle flavors on the platter and the rest just seemed to be a variety of cuts and shapes.

We decide to wander through the ByWard Market to grab something for dessert. The sky has shifted to an inky purple now, and most of the stalls selling crafts and maple-flavored treats in the main market square have been packed up for the night. People swarm the sidewalks and pile into the pubs and bars lining the streets to fight for good patio spots where they can enjoy the summer night.

Andrea grabbed my hand as soon as we left the restaurant, and the warmth of her palm against mine feels like it’s shooting straight to my brain to turn all my thoughts hazy and slow. My feet glide over the pavement. Even if all we did was stroll around the city like this for the next couple hours, I’d still call this one of the best nights of my life.

“Do you want to get ice cream?”

Andrea lifts her free hand to point at a stall painted in bright pinks and blues, where a small line of people peruse the list of ice cream flavors written on a sign above the counter.

“That sounds perfect,” I say, which is probably what I would have said to anything she suggested, but I can’t deny there’s a particular perfection to eating an ice cream cone on a hot summer night.

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