I shook my head. I’d never seen Millie avoid a conversation—for that matter, I’d never seen Millie notinitiatea conversation. But I also knew that, in her own way, Millie could be surprisingly stubborn, and when she made her decision and dug in her heels, there wasn’t any changing her mind. (Unless your name was Keme Collson.) Still keeping my volume a bit louder than it needed to be, I said, “That’s all right. I’ll have the pumpkin pie latte and—” I simultaneously loved and hated saying it. “—the Dash special. Oh, does the pumpkin pie latte still come in a two-liter?”
“You don’t have to order something,” Tessa said in a low voice. “If you just want to wait, I mean.”
“Trust me, I need the caffeine. I wasn’t joking about the two-liter.”
One of the nice things about Tessa is you don’t get any judgy statements from her like “Dash, no human being should ‘snack’ on a pound of bacon” or “Dash, you’re not supposed to frost your waffles” or “Dash, I think your blood sugar is dangerously high.”Tessa is open-minded. Tessa has an eye to the future. Tessa letmeinvent this month’s latte: pumpkin pie. Not pumpkinspice.Pumpkinpie.(Although she did nix my idea about blending an entire slice of pumpkin pie with two shots of espresso. There was some concern about customers finding the bits of pie crust disturbing; I tried to explain that was the best part.)
So, a few minutes later, I was seated at the counter, enjoying a goblet-sized pumpkinpielatte, with a sampling plate of the daily breakfast sandwiches. (That was the Dash special—mostly because everyone had finally gotten sick of me holding up the line while I tried to decide.)
“Do you want me to…” Tessa asked quietly, letting the question trail off into a suggestive look at Millie, who was now wiping down each bottle of flavored syrup with excruciating attention to detail.
I shook my head. I took a sip of my latte. (It tasted like genius in liquid form. And like pumpkin pie.) And then, my voice still set to carry, I said, “I know this is going to sound crazy, but I was wondering if you’d be willing to cater the brunch for the day after the wedding.”
Let me tell you: across the room, Millie pricked. her. ears.
(Also, I’m not sure if we’re allowed to say that word.)
Tessa’s eyes widened, and her face glowed with a smile. “Dash, that’s—” Then she must have figured it out because she gave me a surprisingly annoyed look and finished sourly, “—wonderful. Yes, of course we could help you with that.”
“That would be great. I mean, it’s a little early to start planning. We don’t have a date yet.”
“Maybe that’s because you haven’t asked him yet,” Tessa said. “Have you?”
“Not yet,” I admitted.
By this point, Millie was listening so hard she was quivering.
“I don’t know how to ask him, actually,” I said. “I don’t even have any ideas—”
“OH MY GOD, DASH!” Caught up in the excitement of the moment, Millie practically floated toward us. “YOU HAVE TO ASK HIM IN A BALLOON!”
You know how inJurassic Park, the water in the cup ripples because of the vibrations from theT. rex’s steps. (Or something like that—I’m not a scientist.) Anyway, I know you’re not going to believe me, but my coffeesloshed.
“No,” Millie said, still levitating toward us. “You have to ask him on a picnic. NO! You have to ask him at the top of the Eiffel Tower! Or in an ice hotel. Or under a waterfall. OR WHILE YOU’RE SCUBA DIVING!”
Aric Akhtar put in his earbuds.
“But what if he says no?” I ask. “And we’re underwater? And he cuts the air, um, hose, or whatever it’s called? And then he ties me to some…I want to say coral and leaves me to drown.”
Tessa was looking at me.
The old woman in the beachcomber hat had paused, mid-excavation of yet another piece of jalapeno, to look at me.
“Okay,” I said, “I know that sounded weirdly specific—”
“He won’t,” Millie said, “BECAUSE HE LOVES YOU!”
“Thanks, Millie,” I said. “Since you’re here and not avoiding me anymore, now let’s talk about Keme.”
Outrage flashed across her face. Then hurt. Then a flush. And then an expression I wasn’t sure I’d seen on her before—a kind of tamped-down, sullen anger.
“Sit down,” Tessa said, patting Millie’s shoulder. “He’s your friend, and you need to talk about it with someone.”
With one last look at me to make sure we were okay, Tessa moved back to the sugar-and-creamer station. Millie shifted her weight and twisted a towel between her hands, but after a few seconds, she sank down onto the stool next to me.
“You’re probably not even going to marry Bobby,” she said with surprising venom.
“Well, I actually hadn’t thought about it very much until right now, but I’m definitely going to marry him. I mean, if he’s dumb enough to say yes, it’s his own fault. Also, that scuba diving thing definitely tapped into something, and I feel like I need to do some work on that.”
