Lucid

by Gabrielle Castania

  “Yay!” she squeaked loudly, her voice revived by my change of heart. “Let’s go to the mall before to celebrate the rebirth of Ashley Dawson with iced coffee and window shopping. My mom can drive us. I’m so excited, ohmigosh!”

  And with our plans set, she hung up without giving me a chance to reconsider.

  Chapter Eight

  Ellie nudged me from her seat beside mine at The Arigato later the following night, and I stopped looking frantically around the room, trying my hardest to focus on her. Her mother had dropped us off a little early, and the extra time was giving my nerves a chance to fray that much more than they already had been. “You’ll be fine, Ashley. We’re going to get some of whatever this kind of Japanese food is, we’ll maybe find something fun to do, and that’ll be it. This is not the end of the world, so stop looking around for the fastest escape route out of here.”

  “It’s hibachi,” chimed an anonymous voice. Behind the grill built into our table stood one of the restaurant’s cooks, a Japanese boy with soft features decked out in their signature black chef uniforms. He looked to be around our age, and he smiled warmly at us as he set a basket of tools and ingredients on the prep station next to the grill top.

  Ellie looked at him, dumbfounded. “I’m sorry, what? Who are you?”

  The server smiled once again. “My name’s Yosuke, and I’ll be your chef tonight. You seemed to be drawing a blank on what kind of restaurant this is. It’s hibachi-style.”

  I didn’t much care for the coy, flirty look on Ellie’s face. “Well, thank you for your help, Yosuke, and for the surely yummy food you’re going to make for us. I’m Ellie, and this is my best friend, Ashley.”

  In the traditional style of the restaurant, as all the servers did when introduced to their customers, Yosuke bowed to us, and I tried not to crack up at the gimmick. He moved on quickly enough, and asked, “So, will it just be you two tonight?”

  “Nope. We’re waiting for a few more,” I announced, trying to save this kid from whatever Ellie was thinking. Knowing her, he might be in trouble if I didn’t jump in, so I threw him a bone and forced myself to make conversation. I wasn’t above forcibly restraining her, if it came to it. “She has me set up on a blind date, so excuse me if I seem really nervous – it’s because I am.”

  Instead of calling out my awkwardness, Yosuke only grinned warmly at me. “You can’t let yourself be nervous about things, about dating or about life in general,” he advised as he situated his chef’s hat and began to prep his workstation. “My dad always tells me that success is more about the mindset than it is about knowledge or familiarity, and I keep that with me. I think it helps a lot to step back and look at things abjectly.”

  “Although a little cheesy, I appreciate it, but it’s easier said than done,” I told him in reply. “Apparently, my date is a big-shot.”

  “You might know him, if you live on this side of the city,” Ellie came back, not quite giving into my attempts to shut her up. She’d been name-dropping all day, as if anybody other than her cared about her matchmaking abilities. “She’s going out with Joey Attollicci, the kid whose family owns The Bistro.” Yosuke looked at me for a moment, his eyes a bit wide, and I saw the recognition in his face, trying not to pay much attention to how uneasy the scrutiny made me feel. At least he smiled, though, which was comforting. “Speaking of, I think I see them pulling in now.”

  My stomach dropped so hard, I was afraid it was about to fall out of my butt. Still looking at me, Yosuke noticed, and didn’t bother to bite back a chuckle. “Remember, it’s more mindset than knowledge. Besides, you guys seem nice – if things get awkward, I’ll try to pitch in and save you. Consider it a favor from one constant bundle of nerves to another who seems to be in need.”

  His offer made only a miniscule dent in my fears, which hit a crescendo as Ellie waved her arm in the air. I turned to the table immediately, almost unable to look, feeling like I was choking on the knot in my throat. I wanted to crawl behind the hibachi grill and hide out at Yosuke’s feet all night, but when two shadows loomed over our table, I could tell I’d waited too long to reach for the panic switch. With nothing left to do, so as not to seem rude (and earn an earful from Ellie), I turned to greet my date.

  I could almost instantly tell why Joey was so popular – there was nothing about him that wasn’t breathtaking. Or, maybe that was just my nerves strangling me. Either or.

  Everything about him was somehow rebellious against what I’d expect a kid with a family restaurant and impeccable social skills to be. His sleek, black hair touched at the shoulders of the leather jacket he wore with a black thermal shirt, black jeans, and motorcycle boots, and his body was toned in a tempting kind of way, despite his constant access to delicious, carb-filled food. At a glance, he seemed like a bad boy if ever there were one, like the kind of guy that guys wanted to be and girls wanted to be with, like the kind of guy I wouldn’t even think of touching if Ellie weren’t forcing my hand.

  I barely registered my friend laughing beside me as I tried not to stare. I’d seen him around The Bistro before, and I knew who he was, but his hair had been tied back into low buns, and he always wore the uniform that all the other employees were made to wear. Free to express his own style, he was far more intriguing.

  Ellie said with an audible smile after giving me a moment to drink him in, “Ashley, meet Joey. Joey, this is my best friend, Ashley.”

  “Nice to finally meet you,” Joey smiled warmly at me, his voice smooth and rich, “after Josh talked so much about you for the past few days.”

  I glanced over to Ellie, uninterested in trying to engage Josh; I’d have better luck conversing with the wall than getting him to talk to me. “I didn’t know that Josh knew enough about me to do such a thing,” I not-so subtly inquired.

  “He doesn’t,” Ellie announced, defending Josh’s perpetual oblivion and answering my question. I’d known him for years, but I was still lucky if he got my name right. “I might have fed him some information so he could share.”

  I turned to Joey once again, smiling in spite of myself. “Well, she’s kind of a bad spokeswoman, then. She was so busy hyping me up to you that the only thing she ever really told me about you was your name and that you’d be here.”

  Josh laughed harshly, staring at me as he talked to Joey. “I told you, man,” he cackled, “she knows absolutely nothing about you. She’s this weird little hermit.”

  Everyone around the table, Yosuke included, glared at him, which made me feel a little less isolated by what he said. Trying to move past the snide comment, Joey took a seat on the other side of me than Ellie, casually putting an arm around the back of my chair. “Forget about Josh; he’s kind of a moron.”

  Said moron chuckled obnoxiously, almost snorting and not taking the hint. “And yet, you’re still friends with me!”

  Luckily, Joey picked up on my discomfort, and fired back, “Yeah, and sometimes, Josh, when you act like this, I kind of wonder why.”

  The rejection was just what was needed to knock Josh down a peg or two, to wipe his smile away, which I, admittedly, reveled in. “Sorry, bro,” he muttered, taking his seat. I’d be remiss not to note just how much I couldn’t stand him. To me, he had always been Ellie’s stupid boyfriend – nothing more, hopefully someday much less.

  My date took notice of my increasing discomfort, and put a hand onto mine, where I’d folded them together awkwardly on the table. “Hey,” he said gently to me, coaxing me to look at him instead of my lap. “Ignore him. I think he’s too focused on his own insecurities, so picking on other people distracts him from himself. Kind of like, ‘Hey, this person has this going on; everyone, notice them instead of me’.”

  “And just how good at psychoanalysis are you?” I perked an eyebrow, leering at him. “Can you read me like a book, too, then?”

  My comment elicited a grin, and he pulled his hand away now that he had my full attention. “I’m kind of good at it. I just read people well, I guess. I
’m actually planning to double-major in Psychology and Small Business Management next year for college. What about you?”

  “I haven’t given it too much thought yet,” I confessed, concluding to myself that I should probably start getting around to that. After all, schools weren’t just going to let me stroll in on the first day and have a seat. “I don’t know where I’ll go, but I’d like to do something involving art. It’s kind of my thing.”

  He grumbled as an elderly woman placed cups of off-color, almost brown liquid in front of us. “I wish I were artistic. I appreciate art, sure, but I’ll be damned if I could ever make something.”

  “It’s a subconscious thing to me. I never really had to think about it; it always just kind of happened. Not thinking about it is why I enjoy it as much as I do, actually. I like just losing myself to it for a while.” His gaze was becoming too much for me to withstand, and to avoid feeling like he was seeing too much of me too soon, I dropped my eyes to the cup before me, poking at the lone mushroom floating in it with my soupspoon. “Yosuke, what is this stuff?”

  My new friend looked up from his preparation. “Onion soup with leek and mushroom for flavor. Personally, I think it’s pretty good.”

  Joey watched in amusement as I wavered on taking a bite, smirking at my hesitance, and asked me rhetorically, “How boring would life be if you never tried new stuff?” Not waiting for me to decide on my opinion, he spooned a bit into his mouth, sitting for a long moment with a thoughtful expression on his face before rambling off a full evaluation of our appetizer. Hearing him assess the texture, flavor, richness, and various other parts of the dish made me laugh.

  “Spoken like a true restaurateur,” I commented as I finally decided to also try the soup instead of just poking at its embellishments. It was all I could do not to spit it back out, instead settling for a sour expression that brought a hearty laugh out of Joey.

  Thankfully, he was willing to overlook how adorable I almost certainly looked scrunching my face like I had, instead of making fun of my aversion. “Food evaluation past, ‘it’s good’ or, ‘it’s gross’ is important when the only scenery on the path of your life is likely to be the inside of your family’s restaurant. Julian always tells us in the kitchen to ‘check the CASO’ – color, appearance, taste, and smell.” When he noted my confusion at the discrepancy in the acronym, he was quick to explain. “Well, in Italian, those things abbreviate to CASO - colore, aspetto, sappore, e odore. If you put it in English, the acronym would be CATS, but it’s probably not a great idea for him to run around yelling for everyone to ‘check the cats’.”

  “I mean, probably.” After a quick chuckle, I asked, “So, are you fluent in Italian, or do you just know a few words from your parents?”

  Joey looked at me with a sideways glance between bites of soup. “Do you really not know, or are you just being conversational? I can’t actually tell with you.”

  “I honestly have no clue,” I shrugged, almost embarrassed that he was asking, as if I were expected to just sort of know. “All I know is that you’re Julian’s son, and that you agreed to come tonight because you had nothing else to do.”

  “Partially because I had nothing else to do,” he corrected, pointing at me with the end of his spoon before setting it down in the bowl, “but from the way the two of them have been talking about you for the past few days since they invited me out with you, you sounded really awesome, like someone I’d have fun hanging out with. I guess I’m here to see if the show is anything like the previews.” I turned cherry red and forced myself to look away from him. “To answer your question, though, I speak fluent Italian. My parents were about to move here from a town just outside of Milan when Rosetta found out she was pregnant with me, and I guess I put a hold on things, so they could have some family around to have help with raising me. I grew up learning English and Italian at the same time, and we moved together as a family just after I turned three.”

  “I wish I had cool stories like that,” I replied as he continued to work at his soup. I almost felt bad for distracting him with conversation, or is that what you’re supposed to do on a date? “If I can ask, why do you call your parents by their names instead of ‘mom and dad’?”

  “I’ve done it since I was little,” Joey smiled. “If you call them Mom and Dad, they’ll see you as a child forever, and as you start to grow up, it gets kind of awkward to have them babying you.”

  The same woman as before came back again, this time serving up a salad of sorts. I nodded in thanks as I picked up my fork, hoping this would be better than that god-forsaken soup. “I get that – my mum is still like that with me sometimes.”

  “Your mum?” he asked with a bright smirk. “I didn’t know you were British.”

  I nodded. “She is. She stopped for coffee one day and bumped into Roger, who was in London on a little vacation across Europe with his friends to celebrate graduating from college, and they just clicked. They kept in touch as often as possible for a few months, and she moved to the US on a whim and lived with him after the job she got in London fell through. They got married a few years later, and then I came along.”

  “There you go. Instead of ‘Dad’, it’s ‘Roger’,” he pointed out. “You’re already on the right track.”

  I just shook my head, though; he didn’t need to know anything about that. That night was about me having fun, and I couldn’t very well do that if Roger were involved. Thankfully, Yosuke lighting the grill and blowing a decorative plume of sizzling water vapor from the surface absolved me of having to find a way around what I’d said, officially beginning our dinnertime entertainment.

  ✽✽✽

  I dropped my chopsticks onto my empty plate. Our table watched Yosuke prepare an absolutely absurd amount of fried rice, noodles, stir-fry vegetables, and assorted meats for us, and I felt just about ready to explode after eating my share of it.

  Dinner had gone along swimmingly. The food preparation was really entertaining, everything tasted amazing, and Yosuke even stuck around for a few minutes once he was finished to chat, since he’d worked himself well into our group dynamic. He talked primarily with Ellie, since Josh had busied himself with another girl who’d sat down with some friends at our eight-top table, freeing Joey and I up to tuck ourselves away together, laughing, talking, and getting to know each other a little better. I was so relieved to find he was more than just attractive, that we actually shared a lot of the same views and opinions, and that he wasn’t afraid to speak his mind. I admired him for all of it; his pretty face was quickly falling into second place behind how well he and I got on.

  As the guys paid in a courteous act of chivalry, Joey asked, “Did Ellie tell you we were planning to find something else to do after dinner, too?” I’d confessed that the date hadn’t necessarily been my idea, and he was amused by my predicament, albeit grateful that I decided not to back out, no matter how much convincing I confessed that it took to get me there.

  “Yosuke, why don’t you come with us?” Ellie suggested with a vibrant tone, inspired by the reminder that Josh wasn’t going away just yet.

  Our new friend grinned. “I’d love to, but I’m stuck here until midnight tonight. How about we all exchange numbers, and I’ll come out the next time you guys all hang out? I’ll bring my girlfriend, too, if that’s cool, so I’m not the fifth wheel.”

  Ellie’s face fell dramatically at the mention of a girlfriend, but she whipped out her phone nonetheless and handed it to him. “So what are we thinking for tonight?” she asked as our new friend punched in his number.

  “Know what I haven’t done in the longest time?” I asked, quick to finish my thought before someone could interject. “Laser tag! We should go to Globe for that and roller skating and the arcade.”

  As everyone agreed, we said our goodbyes to Yosuke, promising to get his number from Ellie before the night was over, and we headed out to the parking lot. Joey led our party in the direction of a big, black SUV. We’d informed him we’d
need a ride, and he was more than happy to oblige.

  At first, I was excited to drive around in a somewhat flashy car with people I enjoyed being around (well, two out of three isn’t bad), but all at once, my good vibes fell flat. As soon as Joey turned the car on and plugged in his phone to play some background music, the stereo filled the car with the unmistakable sound of Tragic Magic, and Danny was crooning to us before I knew what hit me.

  Ellie and I looked at each other the instant we recognized the song, our eyes as big as possible to the tune of “Even Though You’re Sad” launching full-force into its intro. Once he caught our expressions, Joey explained what he thought we might have wanted explained. “I know a lot of the people I hang out with aren’t really into this kind of thing, but I’m all about rock and alternative music.” He waited for one of us to say something about his statement, to make conversation, but I felt paralyzed. He grabbed my hand softly where he sat beside me in the driver’s seat. “You okay?”

  “She’s fine,” Ellie answered for me without haste, to try to get her big night back on track before my feelings could derail it too much. “We’re just really big Tragic Magic fans, but I don’t think either of us expected you to like them, too.”

  “Really?” Joey asked, a grin tugging at his lips in obvious delight. “I wouldn’t have pictured either of you to like them, too, to be honest.”

  “I like them very much,” I murmured absentmindedly. Immediately, Ellie regarded me with a warning look. “But this song is too serious for a fun night like tonight, so let’s listen to something a little more upbeat.”