The way he says my full name makes me cringe, as does the reverence in his voice. “Well, here we are,” I say for lack of anything better.
He nods and picks up his own menu. “Yes. Yes, we are.”
I don’t recognize him from Mr. Fulconi’s math class, but I sat at the back and doodled in my sketchbook the majority of the time.
We make small talk about which teachers and classes we have, and he seems to calm down the intensity a bit, which causes me to relax. It’s odd how differently this date is going compared to my last one. It’s been ten whole minutes, and Arthur hasn’t insulted me, asked about my panties, or accurately accused me of being in love with my best friend’s boyfriend. At least Kalani meant it when she said she picked someone who’s the complete opposite of Jay after how vehemently I swore I disliked him.
We order, and the waitress takes our menus. Arthur must be starving because he orders an absurd amount of food for just one person, but I don’t comment on it. Now that the menus are gone and there’s nothing else to look at, we stare awkwardly at each other.
“So, Carina,” he starts, “what do you think of the name Barbara?”
Barbara? “Um, it’s cool, I guess?” I take a sip of water to avoid his unnerving stare.
“Oh, good. It’s my mom’s name, and we’d have to name our first daughter after her.”
I choke on the water, and it goes down the wrong way, making me cough. “What?” He must be joking. He’s trying to break the ice in a weird, memorable way, right?
Wrong. He’s looking at me with a serious frown. He repeats, “We’d have to name our daughter after my mom. Her mom’s name is Barbara too. It’s a tradition. But if we have a boy, I guess we can name him Bob.”
He’s serious. He believes we’re going to have children together. We haven’t even gotten appetizers on our first date, and he’s already picking out baby names.
I set my glass down. “Yeah . . . but maybe baby names are a second date conversation.”
He doesn’t register that I’m joking. His eyes light up, and he sits up straighter. “We’re going on a second date? Yes!”
My eyes widen with alarm. Oh, no. “Um . . . that’s not what . . .”
The waitress arrives with a pitcher of water to refill our drinks, and I let the sentence trail off. Maybe he’s just nervous and I should give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he reallydoesjust have a weird sense of humor.
“So . . . do you have a job?” I ask to change the subject. He’s still staring at me like I might disappear.
“Not right now. I’m focusing on studying. I want to be an accountant,” he says, straightening his tie, and I can totally see him in an office somewhere, clicking away at a calculator. “Do you work?”
My intuition tells me not to specify where I work in case he shows up, but I shove that thought down because it’s mean and probably unreasonable. “Yeah. I work at my parents’ bakery.”
I say it with a sense of pride, because I am proud of Ottavio’s Bakery and my parents for making it the success it is.
“Oh.” His eyebrows draw together. “Are you planning on taking over?”
His disapproving tone takes me by surprise. “Well, I—”
“Because you can’t run a bakery and stay home with the kids if I’m traveling for work. It’s not reasonable. Though perhaps you can do the paperwork stuff from home and pop in when the kids are at school. As long as it doesn’t interfere with the household chores. I’m allergic to dust, so you’d have to make sure the house is always spotless.”
I gawk at him. Like the baby names, he’s not joking. He’s seriously planning a future with me as if we’re already engaged. Am I on a prank show or something? A quick glance around tells me no, this isn’t a joke, since there aren’t any cameras waiting to pop out at me. Not only has Arthur planned out our entire future, but he also thinks he can tell me what I can or can’t do,andhe has an incredibly outdated view of marriage and gender roles within the partnership.
That’s it. I tried, and it obviously isn’t going to work out. It’s time to pull the plug on this date and get out of here before he starts measuring me for a wedding dress. What was Kalani thinking when she set this one up? I didn’t think a date could be worse than the one I had with Jay, but it definitely is. Jay was a jerk, but at least he wasn’t a controlling,clingyjerk.
My phone is barely in my hands when the chair beside Arthur is pulled out.
“Sorry I’m late, I was finishing up with some work. Hello, Carina,” an older woman says, a woman who has Arthur’s brown eyes and a similarly shaped nose. Her hair is a shade lighter than Arthur’s and cut to above her shoulders. She’s in a fitted navy pantsuit that’s only slightly less fancy than Arthur’s.
My eyes flit between Arthur, who stands up to tuck the woman’s chair in as she sits, to the woman. “H-hi?”
It comes out as a question. Are we not on a date right now? Arthur called it a date before, so he definitely knows not to invite other people.
She reaches across the table and sticks her hand out for me to shake. “I’m Barbara, Arthur’s mother.”
Oh. My. God. This isn’t happening right now. My eyes bulge out of my head, and I do a poor job of hiding it.