“They hurt you,” he said with a shrug. “I don’t like them.”
He guided me on to the seat of the BMX and took off down the sidewalk in the same fashion we had before. I held tightly to the middle of the handlebars, with his hands on the outside. His thumb reached over slightly and ran down the length of my little finger.
“Your skin is so soft,” he said quietly, his lips near my ear. I felt my body shudder, whether at his touch or his soft voice, I didn’t know. I leaned back just enough to feel his chest against my back as he veered off the sidewalk, onto the road, and then back on the sidewalk across the street.
It wasn’t long before Ethan pulled into a side alley and parked his bike next to a brick building. There was a white door propped open, and the smell of simmering tomato sauce and fresh bread wafted out into the air around us. Ethan took my hand to help me off the bike and then looked down at my fingers wrapped up in his. He glanced up at my eyes, quickly looked back down again, smiling that crooked smile and—holy shit—blushed again. He kept a light grip on my fingers and pulled me through the kitchen door.
“Isn’t there a front door?”
“Sure,” Ethan said. “But it’s all the way around in the front.”
He led me through the bright white lights and stainless steel of the kitchen, calling out “yo” a couple of times and nodding his head at the kitchen staff. One of the guys with a floppy chef’s hat whistled, and Ethan told him to fuck off but smiled when he said it. The kitchen erupted in laughter just as we reached a set of saloon doors that opened into a small dining room with about twelve tables in it. Each table had a tiny votive candle and tiny vase with a single white rose in it. The linens were deep red and added to the atmospheric warmth emitted by the dark-stained hardwood floors.
It was quaint, cozy, and undoubtedly the most romantic place I had ever been.
“Hi, Ethan!” A tall woman with long, striking red hair and wearing a hostess uniform reached out and grazed her fingers down his arm. I bristled and glared at her. I mean, I realize this was a first date and all, but she didn’t necessarily know that. Even if she did, that was just rude. I stepped a little closer to Ethan’s side and wrapped the fingers of my free hand around his arm.
“Hey, Sheila,” Ethan said, looking sideways at me. “This is Ashlyn.”
“Ashlyn,” Sheila said. She looked over my outfit, all the way down to my shoes, and I could have sworn she was smirking. “Right this way.”
Sheila led us to the table in the middle of the small establishment, and I started to sit, but Ethan pulled me back to his side.
“Not here,” he said in a low voice. He turned to Sheila and indicated with his head. “Over on the other side of the fireplace.”
“Fine,” Sheila replied in a surly tone while flipping her hair. She took us around to the back of a large, round fireplace designed to sit in the middle of the room.
“This place has the best Italian food in the city,” Ethan said after we sat down and Sheila left. “Alfero makes everything from scratch; he even makes his own mozzarella. I worked here for a while, and he showed me how to make it. It’s really cool.”
“That’s sounds interesting,” I said with a nod. “How long did you work here?”
“Just that one day.”
“You worked here for one day?”
“Yeah, it doesn’t take that long to make the cheese—just a few hours, and most of that is waiting for it to cool.”
“That doesn’t seem like much of a job,” I said.
“That’s okay. I got paid in pizzas!” Ethan laughed. “I got to use the cheese I made on it.”
“So, where do you work now?” I asked, starting to fear the answer.
“Well, I’m kind of between jobs,” Ethan said, granting me a vision of his half-smile again. “I was working down at the pier with one of the crab boats a couple of weeks ago, but they were heading up to Alaska this week, and I didn’t want to be away from my friends that long.”
“Dare I ask how long you worked fishing for crabs?”
“Oh, I didn’t do the actual fishing,” he said, snickering again. “I went out on the boat and played my guitar while they were working. Once we got back, I helped them unload.”
“Did you get paid in crabs?” I had to ask.
“Nah, I don’t really like seafood,” he said. “I just wanted to know what it was like on the boats. I’d seen them out in the water all my life, but I had never been on one.”
“So you got actual money for that job?”
“Nah,” he said again. “I just needed something on my resume.”
I looked into his eyes, trying to decide if he was serious or not. His eyes were laughing, and he was biting those rings in his lip again.