Page 33 of The Right Player
“Stop,” she said, pulling back with her hands still wrapped around my neck. “That was fun. Besides, I hated my hairdo anyway.”
She shook her head like a dog, hitting me with droplets as she laughed again, and I pulled her into me for a kiss like it was the only possible thing I could do in that moment. This time, I held her close, wrapping her in my arms like I could warm her up from the inside out. I kissed her slow and sure, and it wasn’t until someone cleared their throat as they walked into the restaurant and slid past us that I broke the kiss, putting marginal space between us.
“I’m starving,” Belle said, and the way her eyes heated with those words, I wondered if it was the food she wanted, or me.
“Well, let’s get you fed.”
I grabbed her hand, turning and expecting to find us face to face with an annoyed hostess. Instead, I found an almost-empty room, with simple gray tile floors and high industrial ceilings, the brick exposed on either wall, and a whopping five cafeteria-like tables with four fast-food type chairs at each.
I swallowed, looking up at the menu on the wall, and then at the counter where it seemed you ordered your food.
It wasn’t a restaurant at all.
I grimaced, looking down at Belle and expecting to find her nose wrinkled in the same way. But instead, her eyes were bright and diamond-like, fixed on the menu as she read off each item. “Oh, the spinach and cheddar ones sound amazing,” she said. Then, she turned to me. “Are you going to get yours with sour cream and chives?”
I shook my head, watching her in awe.
“What?” she asked. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
Because you’re the most fascinating, beautiful, wonderful woman to ever exist.
“Nothing,” I said instead, guiding her closer to the counter. “You order for us. Let’s get a smorgasbord and try whatever you want.”
“Whatever I want?” she repeated, leaning into me as she lowered her voice. “I hope that offer stands at the end of the night, too.”
Then, she was ordering almost every pierogi on the menu.
And I was thinking of football and stray dogs and my mom and anything else I could conjure up to ward off the erection threatening to grow in my very wet, very stuck-to-every-inch-of-me pants.Despite its rugged, somewhat rundown appearance, it was easy to see how the restaurant had such great reviews once we’d finished eating. The pierogies were out of this world, perfectly fried little pillows of potato heaven, with different fillings and garnishes that left us both maybe a little past comfortably full by the time we were done.
The rain had come and gone, but we were still damp as we walked down the street to where the theatre was. I tried offering a car a million times so Belle could go back and change, but she insisted she was fine, and we walked into the theatre with our heads held high — despite the fact that our clothes were wrinkled and damp, Belle’s hair looked like a bird’s nest, and my shoes squeaked every time I walked.
“These seats are insane,” Belle said when we were settled in, her eyes lighting up as she took in the stage design from our center orchestra view. She cocked a brow when she looked at me again. “Look at you, big baller. Real estate must pay well, huh?”
She said it with an easy chuckle, her eyes back on the stage design without a second thought, but just that little sentence had my mind racing, wondering if there was something more under the words. Was she hinting that she knew I did more than real estate? Was she already thinking of all the other nice places I could take her, the things I could buy for her?
As soon as that last thought hit me, I mentally slapped myself. I knew better than to think Belle needed my money. She could joke about me springing for the tickets all she wanted, but I knew that if she wanted, she could spend her own money and easily afford these, too.
Okay, maybe not as easily as I could, but I knew she held her own.
Again, my mind was racing, and the only relief I found was that the lights flickered three times, signaling that it was time for everyone to take their seats. Belle looked at me with an excited little wiggle dance in her seat, and then we both sat back, and the show began.
Moulin Rouge! was a new show on Broadway, based on Baz Luhrmann’s revolutionary film that released in 2001. I still remembered the first time I saw the movie — not in the theater, because that was a rare occurrence for a family as big as ours — but in a pile of siblings on my living room floor. I remembered my two older sisters, Pania and Tamar, braiding each other’s hair as we watched, their eyes lit up like they couldn’t wait to be in love that desperately. My younger sister, Leinani, was a little too young to care about any movie that wasn’t a cartoon, so she mostly played with her dolls next to me on the floor. Mom and Dad on the couch, Oliana growing inside Mom’s belly, and I was right there in the middle of it all, pretending like I was bored, when the truth was that I was right there with my two older sisters.
