Page 7 of Lovebug
CRUNCH!
I bite down on the biscotti just as Doreen’s question hits my ears, and a half a second too late to process Bert’s warning fully.
A sharp, searing pain shoots through my mouth, and I suddenly remember the waiter’s words: “Beware of the biscotti…”
I look up at all the people around me, feeling dazed, as some sort of liquid dribbles down my chin.
“Um. I fink I bwoke a toof?” I sputter.
My mother screams.
My father shouts, “She’s bleeding! My daughter is bleeding!”
I cradle my jaw with my hand and wince as I say, “Wow. That ith thome hard bithcotti! Yowtha!”
“What?” Bert’s Aunt Sybill asks in a panic.
Cyndi translates from where she stands behind me. “She said ‘Wow. That is some hard biscotti. Yowza!’”
“Someone dab the blood!” my mother cries from the opposite side of the table. “Dab the blood! Dab the blood!”
Bert pushes his chair back and scurries around the table with a cloth napkin. He kneels beside me, dips the cloth in my ice water, then starts dabbing the blood from my chin.
After such a strange night, it feels comforting being this close to him, looking into the eyes that I know so well.
“I’m sorry, baby,” he says as he dips and dabs some more. “The biscotti was a bad idea.”
“Ith okay. I love bithcotti. Thith wath jutht thuper hawd.”
Bert looks up at Cyndi for help with the translation.
“‘It’s okay. I love biscotti. This was just super hard,’” she says.
“Ah,” Bert responds.
It’s nice having a friend who’s known you forever and always understands you. Gotta love Cyndi.
Alright, it’s time to get a handle on what the heck is happening here.
“Bert? Did your mother juthst pwopothe to me?”
“No,” he says with confidence. “I did.”
“Are you thure? Becauthe it really thounded like your mother jutht pwopothed to me.”
“Well, darling,” Doreen pipes in, “you know that when you marry someone, you don’t just marry that person. You marry that person’s family as well.”
“Is that true, though?” Cyndi murmurs. “I don’t think that’s actually—”
“It is,” Doreen says. “It’s true. And we couldn’t be happier that Mabel is now officially going to be a part of ours.” She lifts her glass. “Cheers everyone!”
A resounding chorus of “cheers” echoes around the table and several heads tip back with celebratory sips of champagne.
Cyndi speaks up one more time. “Like Mabel, I too am a little unsure of who proposed—Bert, or Doreen—but regardless… I don’t think she actually answered the question yet. Did she?”
Didn’t I? Huh. I guess I didn’t.
Bert jolts into action, sliding a huge diamond ring off the biscotti and slipping it onto my finger.
