Page 6 of Simmer Down
“Make me.”
The unblinking stare he maintains would have been all kinds of intimidating yesterday when I barely knew him. Not today though. Today it emboldens me, because I know exactly what I’m dealing with.
“Imperialist cuisine?” His grunt is dialed back in volume, but not in intensity. His tone is a dare, a call to my bluff. Combined with his stance and body language, it’s obvious what he wants me to do. Back off. Apologize.
Hell if I’m doing any of that. If a pissing match is what he wants, that’s exactly what I’ll give him.
“Pretty appropriate, don’t you think?” My tone is a sarcastic kind of cheery. “Here you are, this big, bad, intimidating English jerk encroaching on territory where you’re not welcome. That’s the very definition of imperialist, wouldn’t you agree?”
Once more his chest heaves. He tosses the sign aside. “That’s some nerve you’ve got posting a sign like that.”
“And that’s some nerveyou’vegot setting up shop when it’s clearly against established etiquette.”
It’s a struggle to keep my voice below a yell when all I’m aching to do is scream at this jerk for his blatant disregard for rules.
“Like I said yesterday, there are no laws governing where we park.”
Hot air pushes against my lungs. “And there are no rules governing the kind of signs you can post either.”
“That’s bollocks and you know it. You encroached on our space the minute you set that sign on our truck.”
“Oh, don’t give me some holier-than-thou lecture on encroachment. What you’re doing—parking your food truck right next to ours—is the perfect example of encroachment.”
He shakes his head, opens his mouth, then bites down immediately. Muscles press against the sharpest jawline I’ve ever seen. It matches his thorny personality perfectly.
“Oi, Callum!” Finn yells.
When I look up, I almost gasp. Two dozen customers crowd around us, most of them holding their phones up, recording our spat.
I mutter, “Fuck,” under my breath at the same moment that Callum mutters, “Bloody hell.”
Finn is perched with his head hanging out the food truck window, panic in his eyes. He motions for Callum to come back to the truck. Callum gives me one last glare before spinning around and stomping over to Finn.
I scurry back to my food truck as the crowd disperses, still aiming their phones at me. The anger from my argument has morphed into full-fledged embarrassment. I’m about to go viral and become the laughingstock of Maui’s food truck scene. Freaking fantastic.
Mom greets me with her hands on her hips, her brow crinkled into a frown. “What in the world was all that about?”
I sigh and toss another batch oflumpiain the fryer. “I’ll tell you later.”
•••
My public spat-gone-viral with Callum is a distant memory two weeks later. That’s because almost every day since then, we’ve been bickering and pranking each other nonstop. The day after I posted my sign on the Hungry Chaps truck, Callum posted his own that said, “Tiva’s staff has been stricken with leprosy! Eat at your own risk!” A taste of my own medicine, I suppose. That scared off customers for a good two hours until I found the sign, tore it apart, then gave onlookers a panicked explanation that it wasn’t true. And then I promptly stomped to the Hungry Chaps truck and bitched out Callum. A few days later I got him back by letting the air out of one of the back tires. We of course had it out in front of every customer and onlooker in the vicinity. And of course it ended up trending on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
You’d think customers would be driven away by our immature antics. Not so. In fact, business is booming. Every day both Hungry Chaps and Tiva’s have lines snaking all the way out to the road. I can tell by the look in people’s eyes, how they stare between our trucks as they order and eat, that they live to watch Callum and me lose it on each other. Drama has become our top-selling menu item, it seems.
I even worked up the nerve to watch one of our public spats posted online. I made it exactly ten seconds before pausing it. Hearing my shrill tone of voice, spotting that bulging vein in my neck when I wagged my finger at Callum, the unhinged look in my eyes... it was all a whole new level of cringeworthy.
As mortified as I am, I’m grateful for the uptick in business. Thisweek we earned more than we have any other week prior. And recently, we’ve had a small crowd of customers milling around our trucks, waiting for us to open. So I guess there is an upside to all this ugliness.
My cell phone rings, and Mrs. Tokushige’s name flashes across the screen. I put her on speaker.
“Good morning, Mrs. Tokushige.”
“Good morning, hon!” she says in her patented cheery tone. “Sorry to ask on such short notice, but could you whip up some food for mahjong tonight? It’s my turn to host, and I don’t feel like cooking.”
I chuckle softly to myself. Whenever Mrs. Tokushige hosts her friend group’s mahjong game night, she places a carryout order from my food truck the morning of, even though she always promises to cook for them.
“I’ll pay extra to make sure we getlumpia. I know how quickly it sells out,” Mrs. Tokushige says.
