11. Chapter Eleven
Chapter Eleven
I was early to my date at the Pavilion. Miki still beat me there anyway.
The restaurant sat on Atlantic Avenue, tucked between a brewery with a clever name and a steakhouse that looked at least three notches above a first-date’s budget.
The sun had just started to dip over the horizon as I pulled into a parking spot near the entrance.
There were surprisingly few cars for a Friday night, which I wasn’t sure whether to take as a sign of quality or not.
The name Pavilion hadn’t given me much of an idea what to expect. The internet search I’d done that afternoon came up similarly vague: Google simultaneously considered the place a breastaurant and an upscale gastropub. One look through the front convinced me it was neither.
It was actually a little bit of a dive. I felt overdressed as I stepped through the front door in my blazer—no tie, though, as I’d decided to be even more ‘dangerous’ than Miki joked about.
The walls were dark wood and darker brick, with paper lanterns hung on strings across the ceiling.
Half the chairs didn’t look like the other half.
It didn’t exactly fill me with confidence.
That said, the place smelled amazing. I had to give them that.
I’d barely said three words to the girl at the front desk when I heard a voice call my name.
“Tom!”
I looked. Miki was already there. Of course she was there.
She’d taken over a cozy-looking corner booth near the kitchen, in the back of the restaurant where the atmosphere was quieter.
I did a double take when I saw her. She’d traded the leggings and the mystery band tee for a classic little black dress, and the blue streak in her hair had either been freshly touched up or was catching the light coming from the paper lanterns in exactly the right way.
The little star stud in her right ear sparkled when she turned her head, smiling at me.
She got dressed up, I thought with pride. Damn, she looks good.
“You’re early!” she said, looking delighted as I slid into the booth across from her.
“You’re even earlier,” I chuckled.
“It’s my booth,” she said with a smile, fanning her nails out across the table.
They were glossy, the same black shade as her dress but with a deep red slash in the middle of each.
I couldn’t help but notice the ones on her index and middle fingers were cut shorter than the others.
“Booths are like trademarks. If you don’t defend them, they end up going to someone else. ”
My brows rose. “Is that so?”
Miki gestured with her chin towards the front, where the girl at the front desk stood pretending to look busy while checking her phone.
“The Kims own this place,” she said, leaning forward like she was telling me a secret.
“That’s their daughter. Her and her Mom have been coming to Sakura for like a year and a half now.
I give them a bit of a discount, they give me my preferred booth and extra beef in my bulgogi whenever I do my Tuesday takeouts. ”
“You scratch their back, they scratch yours?”
“It’s loyalty,” Miki said. “The only investment that always pays dividends.”
I thought that over. “Agreed.”
She grinned. “Figured as much.”
I pulled one of the glossy menus out of the holder. Miki hadn’t touched hers—I figured a girl like her probably already had her go-to order down pat. Now that the two of us were sitting across from each other, I felt a surprising amount of nervousness.
Come on, Tom, you’ve got two coeds at your beck and call, I thought. Whatever happens with this girl, you’re going to be fine.
Sure. But there was still something about her. Something I wanted to get to know better.
“You know,” I chuckled, just making small talk, “when I searched this place up online, it felt almost like someone was trying to hide the fact that it exists.”
“The internet doesn’t know about this place,” Miki said. “We like it better that way.”
We?
“Made it hard to figure out in advance what kind of restaurant it is.” I turned my attention back to the menu. “I have no idea what I’m going to order…”
Miki flashed me a knowing smile.
“Actually,” she purred. “Before anything else happens, we have to deal with the test.”
The test?
It must have shown on my face. “I told you there’d be one,” she purred, sounding like this was the most fun she’d had in weeks. “Every first date is full of tests. Most people just pretend they’re not. I’m not like that.”
“You’re direct,” I said.
“I’d like to think I’m a bright, paved sidewalk in a world that’s too often filled with landmines,” she said, her smile telling me I wasn’t the first person she’d deployed that line on.
“I tend to say what I mean and mean what I say. I don’t play games.
” Her smile came back doubled, the energy infectious.
“I hate that whole ‘I’m fine, you should know what’s wrong’ thing people do when they want to be passive-aggressive. ”
I couldn’t help but agree. I’d seen enough of that behavior from Debbie.
“A test,” I said. “And if I fail, I’m guessing the date’s done?”
Miki was already shaking her head. “Not necessarily. But it’s data.”
“And if I pass?”
She shrugged, then shot me the kind of look that got men to turn themselves into baby daddies. “Then welcome to my island, Tom,” she whispered.
Okay. I liked this. “Lay it on me.”
She gestured at the menu. “Here’s the deal. I’ve been here plenty of times, this is your first. So you’ve basically got two choices. You can pick whatever you want off the menu that looks good. The respectable, safe option.”
The harmless option, I thought but didn’t say.
“Or,” she continued, her grin stretching almost as wide as McKenna’s, “you give me permission to order for the table. And you eat whatever shows up, no questions.” A giggle that turned into one of the cutest snorts I’d ever heard. “And I get to watch.”
I think I was starting to pick up what she was putting down. “And what are you planning to order for us?”
She lifted a perfectly manicured finger. “That’s a question.”
“I’m just doing my due diligence before agreeing to your terms.”
Her face lit up. “You really are a banking manager,” she said, her eyes narrowing.
“Fine. I promise I’m not going to do the thing where I tell Mr. Kim to make the tteokbokki extra spicy so the white guy loses his cool.
Everything will be chosen because I think you’ll like it, not because I’m trying to prank you.
” She grinned. “I wasn’t gonna do that anyway—seeing how much spice you can take is more of a third-date thing—but now you know. Deal?”
That wouldn’t have worked on me anyway. I loved spicy food.
And more than that… I liked the idea. In another woman—a woman like Debbie, certainly—it would’ve come off as controlling.
But with Miki, it just felt like an extremely enthusiastic person who couldn’t wait to show off some of her favorite things.
It was something about her energy. Her energy and her ability to plan.
Maybe the spreadsheet guy in me resonated with that on some level.
“In that case, I’d like to buy one ticket to your island,” I said, putting the menu away. “You may order for the table, Miki.”
She gave me a long, appraising look, her lips doing something that made me want to lean over impetuously and steal a kiss from them.
Just when I thought of saying something to break the tension, she leaned over and delivered a rapid-fire burst of what sounded like Korean.
I hadn’t even noticed our waitress standing a few feet away.
The waitress let out a laugh, then headed for the kitchen. I watched her go.
“What did you just order?” I asked, forgetting about the ‘no questions’ thing.
Miki clapped her hands together. “Everything,” she said serenely. “You pass, by the way.”
“That was the whole test? I thought you needed to watch me eat.”
“The second half of the test has been suspended,” she said, her eyes shining with mirth. “You scored well enough in the first half to make it redundant. I like that you negotiated.”
“I like that you’re a… bright, paved sidewalk,” I said, still a little amazed by that phrase. “So the fail state was insisting on ordering for myself?”
“Or doing the thing where you make yourself sound so indulgent by giving me the menu, then narrating your bravery through the whole meal.” She grinned, and there it was again—the laugh, followed by the dorky little snort at the end.
I already liked that sound to a dangerous degree.
It might have been my favorite one from any person I wasn’t currently sleeping with.
The thought hit me in the gut. Camouflage, I thought. You’re with Bailey.
But wasn’t this what Bailey wanted? Hadn’t she suggested the date in the first place?
The food came in waves. Appetizers first: dumplings and some kind of spicy soup that made me glad I’d decided against the tie.
Miki ate like no one was watching, with a level of enjoyment both visual and aural that both shocked me and turned me on a little.
She wasn’t dainty, this girl. Every few minutes I spent in her company made her feel more down-to-earth.
“So,” I said once the waitress had refilled our drinks. “How does a girl your age wind up managing an entire nail salon?”
Miki grinned like she’d been waiting for this. “I’d be happy to tell you all about it.”
And she was.
She talked about it and I interjected with comments and questions.
A couple of things became clear to me very quickly: the first was that Miki clearly treated her business like it was her greatest passion in life, not just a job, and the second was that this girl was absolutely some flavor of neurodivergent.
She could infodump like nobody’s business.
She liked to get granular. I suspected the spreadsheets she maintained for Sakura were so detailed they’d have made Brenda jealous.