What the hell?There weren’t mushrooms in my vegetarian lasagna. I hurried after them before they could mess anything up.
***
“Oh, I almost forgot.” Felix pulled out a bottle of wine from his backpack. “Where are your wine glasses?”
“What are you doing with that?” I asked.
“I grabbed it from my parents’ wine rack. I wanted to make a good first impression.”
“By bringing a bottle of wine? My uncle is going to kill me. Put it away.” I pushed his hand holding the bottle back toward his backpack.
My uncle walked in a few seconds too early. He spotted the wine bottle and my hand on it. I removed my hand like the bottle was on fire.
He cleared his throat. “You must be Felix Green. The young man who’s been serving my very underaged niece alcohol.”
Kill me now.
“Hi, Mr. Sanders,” Felix said and lifted up the bottle. “I brought this for you.”
“How old are you?”
“Sixteen,” he said.
“Sixteen.” My uncle took off his coat and hung it on the hook by the door. “That’s five years too young for that.”
“It’s just for you,” Felix said. “I wasn’t planning on having a drop, sir.”
A bomb slowly ticking down to zero. I waited for an explosion. But instead, my uncle smiled.
“Right answer.” He took the bottle from Felix. “It smells great in here, kiddo,” he said to me. “What are we having?”
“Vegetarian lasagna.”
“Sounds good.” He uncorked the bottle and poured himself a glass. “Will you be joining us for dinner, Kennedy?”
She was currently adjusting her shirt to cover herself a little more. “Mhm.”
He grabbed four plates and set the table just in time for the timer on the oven to go off.
“So, Mr. Sanders,” Felix said as they took the seats across from each other.
“Please, call me Jim.”
Felix smiled. “Jim. How long have you been working at Empire High?”
“Ever since I graduated from high school. What do your parents do?”
“My mom is an art dealer. And my father manages the business.”
“I’d like to meet them.”
“They’re in France right now for some art gala. I can arrange something when they’re back in town.”
“Are you living alone?”
“We have a staff. I’m not a good cook like Brooklyn,” he said and put his hand on my knee underneath the table. “I’m pretty sure I’d starve if I was left to my own devices.”
My uncle’s rapid-fire interrogation continued as I silently chewed my lasagna. My very delicious, mushroom-free lasagna. I was pretty sure I learned more about Felix in that thirty minutes than he’d ever offered to me. He didn’t have any siblings. He used to go to public school when he was little. He’d lived in a small apartment on the wrong side of town like this at one point. He was pretty much a C student. He didn’t participate in any extracurriculars. At least, not ones he was willing to share with my uncle.
