Kaya

I let out a satisfied sigh as I finished eating my humongous burger and fries. Folding my napkin, I set it down on my plate before looking across the table at Alejandro. He’d been answering my barrage of questions about Barcelona, but he’d stopped speaking a few seconds before. This was because he was staring at me with an expression I couldn’t immediately identify. Self-conscious, I wiped at the right and then the left corners of my mouth with my thumb.

“Is there ketchup on my face or something?”

He shook his head. “No, you’re perfect.”

I cocked my head to the left and gave him a wry look. “Really? Because you’re staring at me like I’m a science experiment.”

“No, no, nothing like that,” he hurried to explain as he gestured to my plate. “I’m just marveling that you took down a burger damn near the size of your head and a giant side of fries. And that’s not even including the wings and buffalo cauliflower we had as appetizers.”

I shrugged and leaned back in my chair. “What can I say? I love food. More accurately, I love good food. If you’re used to dining with women who nibble on bits of salad, I must seem like an alien.”

The last bit came out a bit snippy because I found myself oddly sensitive to the idea that he might think I was weird.

Alejandro shook his head. “No, Belleza. You seem like perfection. I was more wondering where you put it all. You’re so tiny.”

Ah, that I understood since I’d gotten it my whole life. I made a dismissive gesture with my hand before leaning forward to pick up my glass of lemonade. “I’ve been asked many versions of that same question my entire life. I guess the answer is a combination of genetics and exercise. Later tonight I’ll run three miles on the treadmill in Emery’s sunroom and tomorrow when I wake up I’ll do twenty laps in the pool.”

“Bear with me here, but I have to ask,” he said as he leaned forward in his chair. “Do you have any kind of weird collection, a dead body in your garage or a penchant for stealing weird shit?”

I could tell that he wasn’t serious so I rolled my eyes. “Nope,” I answered, popping the p as I did. “Why?”

“Have you ever watched Seinfeld?” he asked as he leaned back and draped his arm over the empty chair beside him.

“All the time,” I answered. “Dean lives for Seinfeld. A few years ago I gave him the entire series on DVD for Christmas.”

“Who’s Dean?”

Unless I was crazy, Alejandro was jealous. I did my best to ignore the shivery feeling that gave me as I hastened to explain. “Dean and his wife Gigi raised me. I call them my fairy godparents.”

“Ah,” he nodded, “that makes sense. Not a lot of people our age watch Seinfeld. My brothers and I watched because my father and my late Uncle Quino were very fond of the show. They insisted that it was a much-watch comedy.”

“It’s a classic,” I agreed.

“So you remember some of the girls Jerry had weird relationships with then, right?”

I leaned forward and set my arm on the table so that I could prop my chin on my hand. “You mean man hands Gillian, good light bad light Gwen, Marla the virgin, Erica the phone sex worker who couldn’t spare a square, Lena who had the lifetime supply of contraceptive sponges, Pimple Popper M.D. Sara, Celia and her giant toy collection, Beth the racist and Sophie who got gonorrhea from riding a tractor in her bathing suit?”

Alejandro threw his head back and laughed, his delight in my knowledge of Seinfeld readily apparent.

“Yes, them,” he said with a low laugh. “It’s been a long-running joke within my family that I have Jerry’s luck with women.”

I ignored the nervous feeling in my stomach. We were dancing close to a line where there could be an admission that there was an attraction between us and I didn’t think I was ready for that.

“How close to the truth is that?” I asked.

He grimaced as he twirled the straw in his soda between the thumb and index finger on his right hand. “His luck would be a step up. My dating history is more Twilight Zone than Seinfeld.”

“Oh, hush. That can’t be true.”

“Trust me; it’s brutal.”

We weren’t officially on a date—I’d have said no to that—but I suspected that he wouldn’t mind if we were. That meant my best course of action was deflection.

I was dying to ask questions, but I knew that my questions for him would open the door to him asking me about my dating history. There was nothing I wanted to talk about less.

“Well, you’re safe right now,” I said playfully as I sat up straighter. Turning my iPhone over, I checked the time. ““Someday you’ll have to tell me all about it, but not today. If we don’t leave in the next few minutes, we won’t have time to stock up on candy and snacks before the movie starts.”

I could tell by his expression that he knew I was deflecting and I held my breath for a second as I waited to see what he would do. Instead of calling me on it he nodded his head and smiled. “If you think you can really fit candy into your stomach after this huge of a lunch, who am I to stop you?”

I chuckled as he raised his hand to get the waitress’s attention, relieved that he’d let it go. That he hadn’t pushed it only made me like him that much more.