16. Dalton
16
DALTON
N adia and I have crossover time again on the Wednesday night after her eventful weekend at the ER. She cooks a tray of stuffed manicotti and even bakes a pie. Apple, which happened to be the answer to a question she asked me earlier in the week. She wanted to know which flavor was my favorite.
“What’s the occasion?” I ask, sitting at the bar as she serves up the manicotti with a thick slice of garlic toast.
“You coming to get me out of a bar bathroom?” She fills two glasses with water. “You didn’t have to.”
“I was glad I could. It would have been much harder if I was still on shift. And I had no way of contacting your cousins.”
She sits next to me. “It’s not something that will happen again. I’ve sworn off drinking for the next decade.”
I sink my fork into the glorious pasta resting on a bed of marinara. “This looks incredible.”
“I got the recipe from Jeannie at work. She’s a real chef who went to culinary school.”
The bite fills my mouth with tomato, cheese, and basil. It’s glorious. When I swallow, I say, “So good.”
“Jeannie can do anything. Funny that she stays at Max’s deli even though she could go anywhere. Her father is a big deal in the LA culinary scene.”
“Maybe she’s like you. Figuring things out.” I take another bite. Damn. I could eat this all night.
“Max’s deli seems to be filled with workers with secondary ambitions. He’s a bodybuilder, of course. But Frank is in a barbershop quartet. He’s talented. And Vera did modeling when she was younger, until they expected her to get tall and she didn’t.”
“You’re making friends there.”
“Sure. It’s a fun group. It’s Max. He’s a great boss, and he attracts good people.”
We eat in companionable silence for a while. Nadia spots me eyeing the pie and slides it forward to cut a slice. She’s about to move a piece to a plate when her phone buzzes.
She glances over at it. “Oh, boy.”
“Something bad?”
“My Uncle Sherman.” She says it with a sigh.
“The one trying to get you to work for him?”
“The one and only.”
She hits a button to accept the call but leaves it on speaker so she can tend to the pie. “Hello, Uncle Sherman.”
“Nadia! My beautiful niece! How are things in sunny California?”
She lifts the pie slice onto a clean plate and pushes it toward me with a rueful look. “It’s great! I’ve been helping Max. I guess you heard they are having a girl?”
“I did. How delightful. A new pickle on the way. How is his deli?”
“Busy. I cover shifts when he goes to doctor visits.”
I press the edge of my fork through the crust of the pie. She’s pushing the helping-her-cousin angle.
“That’s great. He has a good crew. I’m sure your help is appreciated.”
“I think so.” She cuts an even bigger piece of pie for herself. Either she’s not paying attention or she’s a stress eater. I can feel her tension rising. It’s in how tightly she holds the knife. The way she keeps shifting on the stool.
“Well, I’ve been talking to your brother Rhett down at Dougherty. He says the Florida division is growing quickly, and they could sure use another leadership position in marketing. Or operations, if that’s your preference.”
I pause in my eating. There’s that pressure Nadia was hoping to dodge. I wonder if I should give her privacy for this conversation.
Her gaze meets mine. I point to the door.
She shakes her head. “I’m not sure I know what the difference would be.” She sets down the knife. The slice is still in the pie plate.
“Oh, I’m sure Rhett could give you the rundown. Why don’t I get you a flight to Miami, say, next week?”
That cranked up the heat. I take another bite and watch Nadia’s expression. She’s in deli mode, ponytail, no makeup, jeans, and a T-shirt. It might be my favorite Nadia look.
“Uncle Sherman,” she finally says. “I’m committed to helping Max and Camryn while she’s pregnant, and probably for a month or two after.”
“Grammy Alma will undoubtedly come to help once the baby is born.” The man’s voice is gruff. He’s used to getting his way.
She draws in a deep breath and I wonder what bomb she’s about to drop. She looks like she’s prepping one.
Then it comes. “I already signed a lease for an apartment here.”
The other line is silent.
Our gazes meet again. I make an exaggerated grimace.
She shrugs, then stares at the phone.
“I see,” he says. “So you will be there, what, six months?”
Nadia drops the next bomb. “A year.”
“A year in Max’s deli? With your education?”
“It was good enough for Grammy. And you, if you recall.”
Ooooh. She’s really hammering it home.
“Your Grammy and I worked hard so that you could have better lives!”
“I enjoy working in the family deli, Uncle Sherman. And…” She falters, as if she might not want to say what she’s about to.
I give her a big thumbs up for encouragement.
“And look what happened with Court. He was miserable.”
I wonder what happened to Court. And who is Court?
Silence again.
Our gazes meet. I like this. It feels like a battle we’re fighting together. I lean over the counter to move her giant slice of pie onto a plate. She’s going to need this in a minute.
“I see,” Sherman says. “Well, take your time in LA. We will revisit this conversation after the baby is born.”
“Okay. Talk to you then.” She pushes end call with a hard jab.
When the line is clearly disconnected, we both start talking at once.
“Whoa! That Uncle Sherman!”
“My uncle is something!”
We both laugh.
I push her pie toward her. “You earned this.”
“I did.” She picks up her fork and stabs a loose slice of apple. “Looks like I have a reprieve.”
“You negotiated like a boss. You didn’t back down for a minute.”
She grins at me. “I did. Whew! I’ve been dreading that conversation.”
“Who is Court?”
“My brother. He has not enjoyed the Pickle world.”
“I see. And you’re worried it will happen to you?”
“Not likely, but I’m taking my time making my decisions. Thanks for being a silent cheerleader.” She reaches out and squeezes my wrist.
Her cool hand on me is like a jolt of electricity. I give myself a second to absorb it before saying, “Any time.”
We resume our pie.
When I think this evening can’t get more surprising, she says, “Did you feel that weird jolt when I grabbed your arm?”
Oh. She felt it, too.
I set down my fork. “Yeah.”
“It wasn’t static electricity.”
I shake my head. Where is this going? “No, that is different.”
“What is that, like, physiologically? Do you know?”
Okay, that’s an unexpected direction. “It’s a powerful combination of two neurotransmitters, dopamine and oxytocin. Both are very fast acting. Lots of people describe it as a shock or jolt.”
“Is it normal for both people to feel it?”
“That’s more the realm of psychology than what I study,” I say. “But I know that one person’s amygdala can definitely affect another’s.”
“Amygdala?”
“It’s a tiny part of your brain that controls emotions. So if one person’s amygdala goes haywire, like if they get explosively mad, say, after someone breaks something, then it’s far more likely the other people around them will also get their amygdalas activated.”
“What if that person stays calm?”
“Then yes, their calm amygdala will influence the others. You see it a lot in children. If you get upset when they fall, they cry. But if you play it off, so do they. They can mimic the calmness in their parents because their fight or flight didn’t get activated.”
“And it works for this electricity thing?”
“That’s a bit more complicated. If I was not attracted, let’s say I’m married and happy, and a cute girl touches my arm, it’s less likely that I will feel the same spark she does.”
“Or if you’re just plain not attracted.”
“Sure.”
“Do you think both of us feeling it means we are both attracted?”
Nadia is very focused as she asks, like we’re talking about trigonometry. “Probably. We’re both single. We’re getting to know each other. You’re ungodly beautiful.”
“What?”
“You have to know that.”
“I don’t think I do. But you think so?”
I’m pretty sure she’s not fishing for compliments. She’s taking this entire line of logic very seriously. “Everybody thinks so.”
“I seriously doubt that. But okay, so you think I’m ungodly beautiful, or whatever, and I think you’re stupidly sexy, especially after that shower moment, and so when I touched you, those two neurotransmitters went nuts and created what feels like a spark?”
Wait a minute.
“You think I’m stupidly sexy?”
“Everyone does.”
“I’m not sure about that.”
“I am. That’s beside the point. Do you think it’s okay that we live together?”
Uh oh. This is a left turn. “I mean, sure. We’ve done fine so far.”
She taps her fork against her plate, staring off. “You’re right. It will be okay.”
“It’s chemistry. We have a prefrontal cortex for a reason. We don’t have to jump each other just because our amygdalas generated dopamine and oxytocin.”
She nods. “You’re right. We don’t have to act on a random spark.”
But when she turns back to me, her eyes go straight to my mouth. And mine go to hers.
We stay like that, only a couple of feet apart on the stools.
Should I lean in?
Is she leaning in?
I can barely breathe. Should we do this? Kiss? What will that lead to?
And will it end with one of us out on our ass since we live together?
She seems to be holding her breath.
Then an alarm goes off.
We both jump out of our skins.
My phone is buzzing so hard that it moves on the surface of the bar. I smash my hand on it, trying to push the button to shut it off, but it scoots out of my way.
Finally, I pick it up and turn it off.
Nadia turns back to her plate. “Time for your shift?”
“Yeah.”
She stabs a bite of pie. “Take some leftovers for your break.”
It’s as if none of this ever happened. The conversation, the touch, the spark, the almost-kiss.
I want to address it. Talk about the elephant in the room.
But Nadia drags one of her romance novels toward her. She doesn’t hide the title. Random Acts of Crazy by Julia Kent .
But we’re doing the opposite of that. Random acts of self-control.
I guess it’s for the best.
I stand up and head to the cabinets for a container.
Did we miss out on something spectacular?
Or did we get saved from a huge mistake?