Chapter 14 #3
Breaking of a piece of the half-eaten brownie still in his hand, he wiped a streak of the fudgy center across his cheek. “Now is the moment where you say, ‘You have something right here,’ then you reach out and wipe it away.”
Taking the paper towel in his hand, unable to suppress a grin, I stepped closer. Without ceremony, I wiped the chocolate from his cheek. “There,” I said.
Luke glanced down at the napkin. “I’m gonna rate that a six out of ten for effort and the chivalry. Room for growth but not a bad starting point.”
“Tragic. I was aiming for at least an eight.”
“You want an eight? Eight requires eye contact, lingering touch, not just wipe and go. Bonus points if you tuck a curl behind my ear afterward.”
“You don’t have curls.”
“It’s a figure of speech. Allow me to demonstrate.”
Before I could object, he coated his thumb in melted chocolate from the brownie and reached forward, smearing it all across my chin.
I sucked in a breath, glancing toward the kitchen. Thankfully, Micah and Ezra were still preoccupied. “Luke . . .”
“Shh. Let the scene unfold. Stepping closer, he said, his voice low and warm, “Ollie, you’ve got something . . .” His hand reached up, fingers cupping the underside of my jaw.
His clean thumb brushed against my skin, wiping away the chocolate before bringing it to his mouth, his tongue sweeping across the pad.
My body lit up like a pinball machine, flashing with riotous sensation, every nerve bouncing off the walls.
Luke meanwhile had the gall to look perfectly calm, stepping back with the casual nonchalance only someone maddeningly unaware could possess, as if what had transpired hadn’t forced one more crack in my denial over my unfortunate, ever-developing feelings toward him.
“Now that’s a top-tier performance,” Luke said. “Gotta be a nine minimum. Instant competitor to rival Ezra and Micah’s dynamic. We’ve got dessert-based intimacy on lock. Episode ‘Smudge me Tender’ is a success.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“Without a doubt, and also committed to the aesthetic, thank you very much. Now, we should go investigate what Micah and Ez are up to, to see if there’s anything else we need to replicate for our platonic tomfoolery. They make for excellent source material.”
Walking back into the kitchen, we found Ezra and Micah locked in what appeared to be an impassioned discussion about pasta.
“I’m just saying, penne is the most vacant of the noodles,” Micah said.
“Penne is versatile. It’s dependable. You can make any pasta dish with penne and it won’t be terrible. You can count on it to hold the sauce and not fall apart, unlike, say, fusilli, which is basically a slinky with delusions of grandeur,” Ezra replied.
Micah gasped. “Fusilli is spiraled elegance. It’s pasta with panache.”
Ezra shook his head. “And yet, when cooked, it becomes a soggy sad slop. If you want spiraled elegance, select cavatappi, the reigning champ in the category.”
“Alright. Alright,” Luke said. “I’m ready to broker peace. I say we call a truce. Every pasta shape has its time, its purpose, and its place. But let’s be real, macaroni is the capital GOAT. Not just as food, but in history, so named to represent a stylish, dandy English fellow.”
At his horribly exaggerated English accent, I coughed around a half-stifled, half-snorted laugh. Luke grinned at me, patting my back.
“You’re making that up,” Ezra said, turning toward us.
“It’s all facts. I can’t believe you don’t know this. What kinda gay are you?”
“What does being gay have to do with it?” Micah asked.
“Alright, history lesson, bros. Back in eighteenth-century Britain, there was this group of blokes that were super extra, like peak bougie vibes. They’d go on these Euro trips, hit up Italy, and come back obsessed with everything fashionable they saw there.”
“I see,” Micah said, nodding. “This already sounds gay.”
“Yep, so these fellas even formed a club. Very exclusive. Can you guess the name, Oliver?” Luke said.
I didn’t want to be wrong and embarrass Luke by revealing how little I knew. “Uh . . . the macaroni club?” I said, voice far too high.
“Bingo!” Luke said.
“Why? It can’t have actually been in relation to the pasta,” Ezra said.
“Actually, that’s exactly why. Macaroni pasta was fancy foreign stuff in England back then.
So ‘macaroni’ became slang for anything ridiculously fashionable, and man, these dudes were that.
They decked themselves out in the flashiest clothes—big hair, feathers, the works.
People thought they were hella over the top.
There were rumors that some of them might have even been gay. ”
“This is wild,” Micah said. “They didn’t cover this in any history class I took.”
Wild was right. This had to be the strangest conversation I’d ever been privy to.
When Vincent hosted a guys’ night, the discussion inevitably veered into either super pretentious territory or sports, neither of which I found particular engaging.
This, though, fascinated me, the way Luke shared his knowledge even more so.
Vincent had this insistent need to flaunt his intelligence, using it to establish himself as superior to everyone else in the room.
After our bathroom encounter at the club, Vincent had sneered at Luke’s position, quick to label him as dumb, saying something about “a thick-necked door guard who probably needed pictures to follow instructions.” He’d assumed Luke was all muscle, no mind, useful only for standing still and looking intimidating.
I wished I could shove back in his arrogant, classist face how wrong his assumption was.
Luke was clearly intelligent, but unlike Vincent he didn’t use it to position himself as better than anyone.
He didn’t brag about it but imparted it to others.
“Hang on. There’s more,” Luke continued. “That’s why Yankee Doodle slaps a feather in his cap and calls it macaroni. It began as an insult to us country bumpkin American hicks, but in classic fashion, we reclaimed it and it became the unofficial anthem of the American army during the Revolution.”
“Yeah, they definitely didn’t cover this in my history lessons on the Revolutionary War,” Ezra said. “Oliver, did you know this?”
My cheeks warmed at being included by someone other than Luke, definitely not something any of Vincent’s friends would have done.
They made it a point to exclude me from their conversations, not worthy enough to be involved.
“No. I mean, I know the song of course, but I always thought it was just a catchy tune for kids. I didn’t realize it had any cultural significance. ”
“Are you certain this isn’t fabricated?” Ezra asked, glancing to Luke.
“I’m tellin’ you. It’s one hundred percent true.”
“He’s right,” I said, scrolling on my phone and reading aloud from a history site that confirmed it.
“See? Ollie backing my knowledge receipts! That’s my guy. Co-pilot status confirmed,” Luke said, holding out his fist for a bump.
My guy. I liked the sound of that a little too much. Like it all you want, it’s never going to happen.
“Well, you learn something new every day,” Ezra said. “But I want to know how you know that.”
“I told you, man. My gay cultural and historical knowledge is elite.”
“I’m not sure if that can be claimed as gay historical knowledge. I think what it is, is a little factoid from your personal museum of absurd trivia,” Ezra said.
“And I welcome you to the exhibit with open arms. Touch everything. But for real, ‘macaroni’ is the best. In name alone. You can’t say it without smiling. Here, I’ll prove it.” He turned to me. “Hey, Oliver, guess what? You’re a macaroni, and I mean that as the utmost compliment.”
“No, you’re a macaroni,” I said with a giggle.
“See, my dudes, macaroni comes with its own sense of humor, in word and history. And we can’t leave out the fact that it’s the OG content creator of comfort food.”
“Well, you’ve certainly made your case. I’m sold.” Micah said.
“Damn right you are. They should put me on payroll at Barilla. I could sell pasta to an Italian grandma. Or better yet, I’ll start my own pasta company. I’ll call it ‘Pastativity.’ Pasta that’s not just good for the gut but good for your soul.”
Ezra smirked. “Changing lives one noodle at a time?”
“You know it. Every box would come with little affirmations printed on the inside flap,” Luke said. “Stuff like, ‘you are al dente enough’ or ‘even when you’re a tangled mess, you’re still worth twirling for.’”
“Just because you’ve been through boiling water doesn’t mean you’ve lost your shape,” I offered.
“Nice one, Ollie! Naturally, the marketing manager would come up with the perfect affirmation. In fact, we gotta go into this business together. Both of us, or no dice,” Luke said.
Compliments were another thing Luke gave me on a consistent basis, insisting what I had to offer was valuable and impressive.
I would have been inclined to believe that he did it because of my situation, but it never came across as disingenuous.
His tone held genuine enthusiasm and often a hint of pride when he delivered his praise.
“How about, ‘you’re saucy in all the right ways,’” Ezra added, waggling his eyebrows at Micah.
Micah batted his arm with a playful smile. “I cannelloni imagine how great you’re going to do today.”
“You are pasta-lively extraordinary,” Luke said.
A timer went off.
“That’ll be the pilaf,” Micah said, turning to the stove.
“That means dinner is close. Can I make anyone anything to drink?” Ezra asked, gesturing to the cart.
“I’m equipped to provide whatever suits your fancy.
We’re doing pan-seared salmon with a citrus glaze, herbed rice pilaf, and green beans with a touch of garlic and lemon zest in case you’re the type to pair your drinks with your food. ”
“Scotch for me,” Luke said.
“Oliver?”
“Um . . . well, my favorite is a pina colada?” It came out more as a question than a statement.
My drink choice had always been one of Vincent’s favorite targets.
According to him, if I ordered cocktails decorated with umbrellas and fruit, I had no right to call myself a man.
Though I didn’t think Luke would judge me, I became self-conscious about my choice when he had ordered the kind of stiff drink Vincent would have considered the ultimate mark of masculinity.
“Oh! Scratch that,” Luke cut in. “Make mine a pina colada too. That sounds delish. Love me some vacation in a glass.”
Luke continued to surprise. Take that, Vincent. Pina coladas are for everyone. No way you could accuse Luke of being less than a man, when he could probably bench press you into the next century, I thought.
“You got it. Babe, you want anything to pair with your dinner?”
“You know I love it when you surprise me,” Micah said as he returned to the island, winking at Ezra.
Ezra responded with a wink of his own. “And you know you inspire only my finest improvisations.”
Luke leaned into me, stage-whispering, “Those winks are their code for giving each other smooches. It started as a way to ‘kiss’ each other while Ezra worked behind the bar at the club, but now they wink at each other constantly regardless of the setting.”
“I regret ever telling you what that meant,” Ezra said.
“That’s your own fault, you had to. At the rate you were both winking at each other, I thought you were going into some sort of medical distress. I was a minute away from calling paramedics and describing the world’s most suspicious case of synchronized eye spasms.”
“You’re just jealous you have no one to share curated ocular sonnets of love with,” Micah defended.
“I love you, babe, but in Luke’s defense, your winks do kind of look like you’re malfunctioning.”
“Ugh! I know. I hate that I can’t argue with that. How do people get their facial muscles to move so smoothly?”
“I think it’s beautiful and romantic you have a language only the two of you speak,” I said, surprised I’d spoken up.
“Ha! Thank you, Oliver,” Micah said. “Glad one of us can recognize the sentiment over my poor execution.”
“I’d love to have that for myself someday,” I confessed, surprising myself further. Blurting out a secret hope in a room with strangers present was not on my bingo card of expectations for the night.
“You’ll have it, and when you do you’ll speak that kind of language fluently too,” Luke whispered for my ears only.
“What?”
“I mean, let’s lay out the facts. You’re thoughtful and sweet.
You look for the best in people. And let’s not forget the most obvious, you haven’t run for the hills to get away from me, which deserves mad props on its own.
Means you’ve got the patience of a saint.
Whoever gets to build that kind of connection with you is gonna be stupid lucky. ”
Luke did it again. Speechless. He’d rendered me speechless. There were words I could say, so many words. All of them tangled. “I um . . . thank you.”
Ezra handed Luke and me our drinks, saving me from having to respond further.
Taking a sip, I couldn’t help the delighted little hum that escaped me.
“I take it the recipe’s to your liking?” Ezra said.
“It’s perfect, thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Now, what does everyone say to moving this shindig to the dining room?”