“Holy shit, you look great.”
She tried to keep her smile from stretching across her entire face but may have failed.
“Thanks! So do you.” She reached up to hug him and he leaned down to kiss her. She hadn’t quite expected them to be at the kiss hello stage yet, but she liked kissing him so much she’d take any excuse to kiss him.
“Hungry?” he asked, when they finally pulled away.
She wiped her lip gloss off his mouth with her thumb and walked with him to his car.
“Starving. I only had a salad for lunch in preparation for this meal.” In retrospect, she should have at least had a snack after yoga. Oh well, at least she knew there would be plenty of food where they were going.
He opened the passenger door for her.
“That is one of the biggest compliments anyone has ever given me,” he said.
She smiled at him as he started the car.
“You said you were the food expert. I’m trusting you here.”
“You were right to trust me, and I’m very grateful, especially after I insulted you so gravely by questioning your allegiance to Mexican food.”
She shook her head sadly.
“I’m still not over that. You’re going to have to give me a little time.”
He squeezed her thigh before moving his hand back to the gearshift.
“Take all the time you need.”
He accelerated as he got onto the freeway.
“You know, I never learned how to drive a stick.” She traced the outline of his fingers with her fingertips. “But boy, do I like watching other people do it.”
He glanced down at her hand, then looked back up at the road.
“My dad made both me and my sister learn to drive stick before we could learn an automatic. He said if you learned an automatic first, you got too lazy to really learn how to drive, but if you learned how to drive on a stick, you’d be a better driver for life.” He frowned at her, but still with a smile in his eyes. “I still can’t believe you had the gall to say I drive too fast. Me, of all people.”
She lifted her hand from his and pointed at the speedometer.
“You’re currently going fifteen miles over the speed limit, Mr. Safety First.”
He shrugged.
“I can’t help it if everyone else on the road is so timid, can I?”
She laughed and shook her head and settled back into her seat.
“I hope you have passenger-side airbags and good insurance.”
Fifteen minutes later, after a drive through some of the less gentrified parts of the Eastside, they pulled up in the parking lot at his new favorite taqueria.
“Here we go,” he said. “Taqueria de los Campos. Before we go in, really, is there anything you don’t won’t eat? I mean, other than blue cheese and olives.”
“Oh, there are plenty of things I won’t eat other than blue cheese and olives, but I don’t think those things are going to be at a taqueria.”
He narrowed his eyes at her.
“What do you mean? Have you never been to a real taqueria? There are lots of things there that plenty of people don’t eat.” He paused. “Wait. Do you go to . . . Chipotle?”
She laughed and opened the car door.
“Okay, yes, I have been to Chipotle in my time, but I’ve also been to a lot of real taquerias. I’ve lived in California most of my life, I told you!”
He got out of the car and came around to her.
“Hmm, okay. Where in California?”
He still sounded very suspicious.
“I grew up in Sacramento. My parents still live there and are very confused about why I live in L.A. now without what they see as a stable job, instead of moving back home. They’re very supportive of my career, even though they don’t understand it.”
Carlos grinned at her.
“I’ve seen how that goes with some of my cousins who have jobs their parents have never heard of. Sacramento is respectable, but I’m still reserving judgment on your taqueria cred. What are the other things you don’t eat?”
They walked the short way up to the entrance, and he opened the door for her.
“Jell-O in all forms, custard in all forms, but especially when it’s inside of a doughnut, chicken breast, carrot cake, raw peaches—cooked ones are fine—and shredded coconut. There, are any of those things going to be inside of a taco?”
He sighed in relief.
“Chicken breast could potentially be inside of a taco, but don’t worry, I would never order it here. And I promise, this place does not have any Jell-O or carrot cake tacos.”
When they got up to the front of the line, Carlos ordered in Spanish without consulting her. She regretted her inability to speak the language. Sure, she spoke a little Spanish, just from living in California, and the bits that she’d learned from listening hard when she did interviews of Spanish-speaking sources with the assistance of interpreters. She’d taken French in high school and college, a decision she’d lamented for years once she realized how useful even semi-fluency in Spanish would have been to her life.
“What do you want to drink?” he asked her.
“Pineapple agua fresca, por favor,” she said to him, in her not terrible but also not good accent, which Carlos and the counter guy both laughed at.
He paid, and they slid into an empty booth with their drinks and their order number on a stick.
“Did you grow up speaking Spanish?” she asked him.
He shook his head.
“No. My parents emigrated when they were both young—my mom was three; my dad was eight. They both grew up only speaking Spanish at home and English at school, and they got teased a lot for their accents and not speaking English well enough. They didn’t speak Spanish to me or Angela when we were kids because they didn’t want the same things to happen to us. I wish . . .” He sighed, and she resisted the impulse to grab his hand. “That’s a long way of saying that no, I didn’t, and I wish I had. Especially growing up in L.A., everyone would look at me and hear my name and speak to me in Spanish, and I couldn’t respond. I didn’t really learn until college. I took it in high school, but I always felt self-conscious about it there, I guess.”
She took a sip of her agua fresca. She’d had other friends who grew up with Spanish-speaking parents who had the same thing happen, and they’d both hated and understood the choice that their parents had made.
“Sixty-three?” A man picked up their number and put two huge trays of food in their place.
“Oh my God.”
There were so many tacos in front of her. Thank God she was hungry. She counted at least six different kinds, but there were at least two of each kind. And there were chips, and guacamole, and a big dish of refried beans and rice. It was a good thing her jeans were stretchy.
He laughed at the look on her face.
“I can’t decide if you’re excited or horrified.”
She shook her head and kept her eyes on the food.
“I can’t, either.”
He picked up the squirt bottles of salsa at the corner of the booth. She reached for another, but he took it out of her hand.
“Wait. Only certain salsas go with certain tacos.” She started to object, to say that she could select her own salsa, thank you very much, but she reconsidered.
“Okay, food guru, tell me what to do here.”
He touched her hand and flashed a smile at her. She’d last seen that smile on Wednesday night, right before he pulled off her underwear. She was not in the habit of asking men to tell her what to do, but apparently, they liked it.
She wasn’t planning to get in that habit, but it was always good to know these things.
“Well, when you put it that way . . .” He lined up the plates of tacos in front of her and added the salsa of his choosing to each one. “
Now. Rank them. I’ll tell you what everything is afterward.”
She rubbed her hands together and took off her leather jacket. This date was already more fun than her usual “drinks at a hipster bar, dinner at the upscale pizza place next door afterward” L.A.-style dates.
She took bites of each taco in succession, and then second bites of all six.
“Okay.” She looked down at all of her tacos, and then across the table at his; while she’d been tasting each one carefully, he’d decimated his.
“First, I have to say, ranking these from number six to number one doesn’t give number six enough credit. I would eat this taco every day if I could, let’s be clear.” He motioned for her to get on with it. She picked up a plate and set it at the far end of the table against the window. “Six.”
“Carne asada, but I’m sure you already knew that.” She nodded and tried not to smile like her favorite teacher had just complimented her in front of the whole class. She put another plate next to the first one.
“That’s tripas. Are you sure that wasn’t too weird for you?”
Tripe. Huh. Okay, that was a little weird. She hadn’t really expected tripe to be one of the things she’d eat tonight. Or that she’d rank it over steak.
“If it had been too weird, would I have kept eating it?” She hoped he didn’t notice that she didn’t quite answer the question.
She hesitated for a few seconds with the next selection, then moved a third plate over.
“Carnitas!” He pulled the basket of chips toward him and squirted salsa on one of his empty plates. “Only fourth place for carnitas, wow.”
She couldn’t tell if that was a good wow or bad wow.
“I loved the carnitas! I’ve always thought carnitas was my favorite before, and it hurt me to put it in fourth place, but . . .”
He dipped a chip into his salsa with a huge grin on his face.
“This is fun. Keep going.”
None of the guys she’d dated in the past five years would have even imagined ordering this much food for two people. Not even for four people. Thank God she wasn’t here with any of them.
She moved a fourth plate into line.
“Cabeza in third place!” Carlos said.
And she’d never dated anyone who would have ordered her a cow head taco. A delicious cow head taco, to be clear.
He rolled his sleeves up to his elbows, and she couldn’t hold back a sigh at the sight of his forearms. Did men have any idea how sexy it was when they did that?
She moved the next plate in line.
“Lengua.” He dug into the bowl of guacamole with a chip. “Well, you should have ranked that one the first, but you can’t get everything right.”
Why was she not surprised that his favorite was the tongue?
“As much as I love that one . . .”
“Mmmm, you sure do. I know that now.” He smirked at her, and she tried hard not to laugh.
“As I was saying, as much as I love that one . . .” She pushed the last plate into line. “This is my favorite.”
He held out his hand, and she slapped it.
“Respect. Al pastor is an excellent taco favorite to have, especially here.”
She finished the al pastor taco and raised an eyebrow at him.
“So did I pass?”
He stopped, a guacamole-laden chip halfway to his mouth.
“What do you mean pass?”
She rolled her eyes at him.
“This test. I know it was a test, don’t even try to pretend it wasn’t.”
At first he shrugged and didn’t meet her eyes. Then he gave her a puppy dog smile.
“Okay, yes, you definitely passed, but I didn’t really intend it to be a test. It was just that . . .”
Nik spooned some rice and beans onto a plate. She was already so full that putting more food on her plate seemed ridiculous, but she couldn’t not try the rice and beans, could she? When she had a little bit of both on her plate, she sat up straight and looked Carlos in the eye.
“It was just that what? I’m going to make you finish that sentence now.”
* * *
• • •
Carlos sighed and put his fork down.
“It was just that you kind of seemed like a girl who stayed in the safe parts of L.A. and who moved in bougie kinds of circles, and who . . . who . . . I wasn’t sure how you would react to a place like this and food like that.”
She didn’t break eye contact. He’d thought that maybe she’d get distracted by the food on her plate, but she’d clearly listened to every word he’d said.
“And who . . . dates the whitest of white guys? Is that what you were going to say?”
Well, yeah, but he’d caught himself at the last second.
“I was, but I thought the better of it!” Shit, she was going to get mad at him for this, wasn’t she? She had every right to.
She laughed and reached for another chip.
“Don’t judge me by Fisher, come on now. I’m not going to claim that he’s the only white guy that I’ve dated, but he’s definitely one of the worst.”
He’d take her word for it. She seemed more relaxed about the Fisher thing than she had the last time they’d talked about it. Maybe it was her self-defense class making the difference.
“How’s your self-defense class going? Are you kicking some ass?”
She put up her fists.
“I sure as hell am,” she said, before putting her fists down. “I didn’t really expect to enjoy the class; I think I expected it to be some empowerment bullshit, but I feel like I’m learning a lot, and it’s actually really fun. The instructor is the owner of the gym, and she’s pretty fantastic.”
He’d kind of expected her class to be some empowerment bullshit, too. His dad had made Angela take a self-defense class when she went off to college, and Angie had complained about it the whole time. She’d said it was just talking about your feelings and beating up a dude covered in padding, but that she hadn’t really learned how to defend herself. He’d had to take her into the backyard and show her how to throw a punch to feel comfortable with her leaving.
“Oh man, I’d love to hear more about that. That’s the kind of place I’d love to silently pass their brochure to some of my patients. And their moms, though I bet it’s outside their price range.”
She shook her head.
“Probably not—that’s one of the interesting things about it. She has a sliding scale for membership and all of the classes. Pretty great.”
“Wow.” As he well knew, it was hard for low- or even moderate-income people in L.A. to access a lot of the stuff that hipster L.A. took for granted. “Are you planning to write about it? I read that Anna Gardiner thing you told me you wrote for Vogue; it was great.”
“You read it?” If he had known she would look so flattered when he told her that, he would have told her days ago. “Thanks, I’m glad you liked it. I actually hadn’t even thought about writing about Natalie’s Gym, but that’s an idea.” She shrugged. “We’ll see.”
“What other kinds of writing do you do? Is it all freelance, or are you on staff somewhere?”
“All freelance. After college, I got a job at the New York Times, which was overwhelming and amazing. I learned a ton about writing and researching there, especially about investigative reporting, just from listening to some of the reporters there and asking them a lot of questions.” She made a face. “And asking for feedback on my own work, which was horrible at the time but ultimately very valuable.”
He grinned at the look on her face.
“They were very blunt, huh?”
She dropped her head into her hands.
“You have no idea. God, I still get humiliated sometimes when I think about the draft of a story I gave one guy. Oh, it was so bad, and he told me, in lots of
detail, why it was so bad. But you know, that one terrible conversation was probably worth at least an entire class of journalism school.” She took a sip of her water. “Then I came back here to be an editor for the L.A. Times entertainment section. It was such a different job, but I learned a ton about the ins and outs of the industry here in L.A.”
Hers was a very different part of L.A. than the one he’d grown up in. The part with the movie stars and the rich people that he’d always known existed, but it seemed so foreign compared to his life that it could have very well been across the country.
“This was a long way to answer your question about what kind of writing I do. I left the L.A. Times about a year and a half ago. There was a big buyout, but I was ready to go. I was getting tired of only doing celebrity stuff, as entertaining as it can be. Now I do a good combination of writing: some celebrity profiles, especially women of color. But also some investigative journalism, and other short fun pieces when I have time for them. It’s been a little scary, but also fun to craft my career in this way.”
He nodded. He’d known some of that from when he’d Googled her to find that Anna Gardiner story, but not all of it.
“What kind of investigative journalism? Who pays for stuff like that these days, other than like, the New Yorker?”
She grinned.
“I had a piece in the New Yorker last week, actually. My second piece there.”
He’d walked right into that one, hadn’t he?
“Holy shit, that’s awesome! What was the story about?”
“Thanks. This one was a celebrity piece; it was a profile of a screenwriter who has two movies coming out this summer. I was really glad to get to write about her.” Her grin lost a little of its sparkle. “I was really excited to see it in print, but I just realized I didn’t even open the magazine. It came the same day as the Dodgers game, see.”
He suddenly hated that Fisher guy. What a way to ruin the joy of her accomplishment.
He looked at their table: plates of half-eaten tacos lined up neatly, the beans and rice basically untouched on both of their plates, their drinks all empty.
“Do you want to get dessert?” he asked.
She laughed, and the sad look disappeared from her face.
The Proposal Page 14