“Food, Ryder. What kind of thing were you in the mood for?”
“Um, I don’t know. Whatever’s dead or seriously slowed down,” he said.
“Haha. You’re hilarious. There’s a cool sushi place just up the street.” More often than not, I sent Inari there to get lunch.
“I know I’ll eat just about anything, but raw fish is not on the list.” That sounded like something someone who had never actually tried sushi would say. Because it was freaking delicious.
“Why, Ryder, are you a sushi virgin?”
He looked at me in shock. “No. I just don’t like it.”
He was totally lying.
“Ha, you’ve never had it. You shouldn’t have said anything because now I’m going to make you try it.”
I skipped ahead of him, leading the way. Ryder reluctantly followed. Oh, this was going to be fun.
~*~*~
“Well?” I asked as Ryder bit into his first piece of sushi. He put one finger up, asking me wait. He chewed and swallowed.
“How is it that raw fish doesn’t taste disgusting?”
I beamed and dipped my own sushi in sauce. I’d gotten a variety for him, including a vegetarian roll in case he did have a problem with the fish after all. He moved from the tuna roll to yellowtail. I grabbed a shrimp and then moved on to the spicy salmon. It was a challenge not to eat it too fast because it was so damn good.
“Okay, I was wrong, you were right,” Ryder said when we’d consumed the entire assortment. I sat back in my chair and knew it was going to be a while before I was ready to move.
“I always am,” I said, putting down my chopsticks. I’d given Ryder a lesson on using them and he’d taken to it with barely any effort.
“So modest for one so beautiful,” he said, and the compliment wrapped in an insult made my face go red.
Fortunately, our waitress appeared and asked if we needed anything else.
“Just a coffee for me,” I said. I couldn’t stomach dessert tonight.
“Same here,” Ryder said. I’d almost ordered sake, but changed my mind. It was no fun drinking if you couldn’t share it with someone else.
Our coffee arrived, along with the check. Ryder grabbed it before I could even attempt to reach for it.
“Don’t even think about it,” he said, waving it in front of my face and then snatching it away.
“Good reflexes,” I said, pretending to be put out, but I wasn’t. I’d known he was going to pay; he’d already said he would.
“How much training to you think it requires to be a professional ninja? I mean if I have the reflexes already, I might as well use them, right?”
“Um, I’m not sure, but put that on the list of potential careers,” I said, trying not to laugh.
“We should probably be writing these down,” he said, grabbing a napkin and making two columns. He wrote YES and NO on top of each column. Under NO he put drug dealer and restaurateur, and under YES he wrote ninja before folding the napkin up and putting it in his wallet.
“You are a strange human being,” I said.
“Thank you.” He pulled out his credit card and put it in with the check, leaving it on the edge of the table so the waitress would see it.
“It’s much better to be strange than normal. My mother used to say something a little like that,” he said. My parents told me that I was a freak. I wished I’d had Ryder’s parents. Sometimes, though, I thought that maybe if my parents hadn’t been so negative, I wouldn’t have had so much to prove. So much of my drive to succeed came from wanting to show them that I could make something of myself, even if they told me I was nothing, over and over. Which they had.
“Agreed. Normal people usually don’t have the balls to go for their dreams. They’re too scared that people won’t think they’re normal.”
He nodded. “Exactly.”