audacity // kryoz

eight

The hostess walks away as I sit down opposite him and he sticks his hand out for me to shake.

"Hello, I'm David and you are?"

"I'm Anna," I say as I shake his hand over the table.

"So, how are you?" David asks to break the ice.

"Um, I'm doing great still quite cold though. I forgot my jacket at my apartment."

"That's not too great is it?"

"No, definitely not in the chilly Oregon September," I say with a slight smile. I look down at the table to look at the menu and flip it open.

After a moment of silence, David speaks, "Have you ever been here before?"

Looking up I answer him, "No I haven't, however, my mom is Italian so I hope it's good,"

"Your mom is Italian?"

"Yeah, she is. Her parents immigrated here just before she was born,"

"So can you speak Italian?" He asks me.

Oh my god. He asks so many fucking questions. When is the waiter going to get here? "I can understand it but I can't speak it too well," I shrug a bit, "Out of practice really,"

Finally, my saving grace arrives, our waiter. He asks what we want to drink and David waves his hand at me silently telling me to order first. The waiter looks at me expectingly so I quickly order a cheap Cabernet Sauvignon not necessarily thinking about what I was going to be drinking. Unsurprisingly, the waiter asks for my ID. I open my purse to grab my wallet and hand my drivers license to him. After about 2 seconds he smiles at me and hands it back to me. Our waiter now looks to my date and he orders a Moscato. The waiter asks for his ID too and David quickly pulls his drivers license out of his wallet. The waiter looks at it for a second or two and hands it back to him. Our waiter tells us he'll be back in a few with our drinks and leaves.

Speaking up I comment on his drink choice, "You do know that Moscato is a dessert wine right? It's too sweet to pair with any type of real food besides dessert"

He looks surprised, "No I didn't. How do you know that?"

I softly smile as I remember my nonna before she passed away. "My nonna, which is 'grandma' in Italian, always taught my brothers and me about food and wine. Every weekend she sat us in her kitchen and taught us how to cook some Italian dish saying that someday we would thank her for teaching us. I loved the makeshift lessons with all my heart but my brothers, on the other hand, hated them. They wanted to be outside with their friends instead of being cooped up in her house,"

"Oh, it seemed that they really missed out. How many brothers do you have?" Jesus, he asks a lot of questions. I'm getting tired of talking.

"I have 2 brothers, one older and one younger. What about you? Do you have any siblings?"

"Yeah, I have one younger sister. She's turning 7 in a month,"

Pausing our conversation our waiter arrives with 2 wine glasses and sits them in front of us and asks us what we would like to eat. Yet again my date waves to me to order first. Fuck. I don't know what I want yet nor have I rehearsed it in my head 50 million times until I order and trip over my words anyway. Trying not to panic I calmly look up and ask our waiter, "Uh, I've never been here before and everything sounds so delicious. What do you recommend?" Huh, ironic. I was just asked that question earlier today by John. 

***

I am incredibly bored. I had asked our waiter what he recommended and he mentioned their tortellini with tomato spinach cream sauce so I had ordered that not necessarily paying attention to what David had ordered after me.