Valentine's Date Disaster

by Annabelle Costa

  Her cheeks are bright pink and so is her nose by the time we get to the restaurant. She looks adorable. I want to pull her into my lap, but that isn’t a first date kind of move. So instead, I wheel myself up to the pretty blond hostess, who smiles down at me.

  “May I help you, sir?” she asks.

  “I’ve got an eight o’clock reservation,” I say. “Palmer.”

  The hostess scans the book in front of her, while I catch sight of a wall-length mirror in front of us. I know I shouldn’t look, but I do anyway. And then I’m sorry.

  My legs are completely off-kilter. Since I can’t feel or move them, they tend to get jostled on pavement, so I have to take inventory every so often. I can see now in the mirror that even though my knees are together, my right ankle has strayed off to the side and my toes are pointed in—it’s a position I particularly dislike. When I look at myself, casually sitting in my chair, next to this gorgeous girl in the sexy leather boots, I feel sick. I can see why her friends in the movie theater reacted the way they did—I’m struggling to figure out exactly what she sees in me.

  Before I can psych myself out too badly, I quickly fix my legs and look away from my reflection. No good can come out of introspection.

  The hostess is still looking in her book. For a moment, I’m freaking out we’re going to have a repeat of the movie situation, but no, she manages to find my name.

  “This way,” she tells me, cocking a finger at us.

  I follow her, glad we seem to be avoiding the throng of customers and tables in the center of the restaurant. Until she leads us to a staircase.

  A freaking staircase.

  She’s on the second step before I manage to get out the words, “Excuse me!”

  My front wheels tap against the first step, reminding me this is as far as I can go. I glance at Callie, who seems equally baffled. The hostess turns to look at me, that same smile plastered on her face.

  “I can’t go up the stairs,” I say.

  Her eyes widen, suddenly getting it. Are people really this dense? “Oh! I’m so sorry. The table we reserved for you is upstairs though.”

  I grab the pushrims of my chair, squeezing so hard my fingers tingle. “I said on the phone I use a wheelchair.”

  “But you requested something secluded and our most secluded tables are upstairs.”

  My temple throbs. “But I can’t get upstairs. Unless you have an elevator?”

  The hostess shakes her head. “We don’t.”

  Well, shit.

  “Listen,” Callie says. I can see by the way she’s squaring her shoulders that she’s going in “lawyer mode.” As much as I don’t like her making a scene on my behalf, it’s sexy when she does that. “If Dean told you he needed accommodations for a wheelchair and you gave him a table upstairs, that’s completely unacceptable.”

  “I understand,” the hostess says, “but the restaurant is completely booked and—”

  “That’s why he made a reservation,” Callie says firmly. “It was you who failed to accommodate his disability when he specifically mentioned it. If this restaurant is unable to comply with disability laws…”

  “No, of course we can,” the hostess says quickly. I can see her getting flustered. “Just… please, give us a moment to clear another table on this floor.”

  As the hostess rushes off, Callie winks at me. “And that’s how it’s done, son.”

  “I want you to be my lawyer,” I say.

  She grins. “You need a lawyer?”

  “Yes,” I say, holding eye contact with the amazing girl in front of me, “I believe I do need a lawyer.”

  The good news is they manage to clear a table, but the bad news is it’s all the way in the back. The hostess says we can wait for another table, but I didn’t get any popcorn and I’m starving. So I decide to take the risk.

  And immediately regret it.

  This restaurant is crowded. Fuck, this restaurant is crowded. The tables are too close together and every chair is blocking my way. The only thing that would make the situation worse would be a big snowdrift right in the middle of the place. At this point, it wouldn’t even surprise me.

  I make it eighty percent of the way to our table when I slam into a table with one of my wheels, and all the waters on the table spill. One spills harmlessly onto the table, but the other dumps directly on the lap of a guy who’s clearly on a date like I am.

  “What the fuck?” he yells. He lifts his eyes, clearly preparing to give me a piece of his mind, but he falters when he sees me. I see the fight quickly go out of him.

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  “Uh, don’t worry about it, buddy,” he says. And then? He pats me on the shoulder.

  Christ.

  We make it to our table without further incident. But I feel wrecked. Everything about this night has gone wrong so far. It’s like we’re cursed.

  Or maybe it’s not that we’re cursed—maybe it’s just me. Maybe this is the stupid shit I’m going to have to deal with now that I’m in the chair. Maybe every date is going to be like this. After all, the upstairs table wouldn’t have been a big deal Before. And if I didn’t have my wheelchair, I could have sat in the front row with Callie at the movies. It would have sucked, but it would have sucked together.

  “So one time,” Callie says to me, as she tugs off her coat, “I was at a restaurant and it was super crowded. I mean, really crowded…”

  “Uh huh,” I say, still not able to look my date in the eyes.

  “So on the way into the restaurant, I knocked over this woman’s water glass. It totally went everywhere. Like, on her lap, on her shoes, on her food—flash flood, you know?”

  I manage a tiny smile. “Pretty bad.”

  “They got it all cleaned up,” she says. “Eventually. And I finish up my meal with my friend. And then as we’re leaving, I knock over another water glass. And it’s the same woman!”

  I shake my head at her. “You made that up.”

  “I didn’t! It really happened!”

  “Liar.”

  “Swear to God. It happened.”

  I still don’t believe it. But I appreciate her trying to make me think it happened.

  Chapter 7: Callie

  It did happen, you know. With the water glasses. I really am that big a klutz.

  I pick up my menu from the table as Dean does the same. His hair is slightly tousled from his hat and I want to reach out to fix it for him. But I don’t because it’s sexy that way. He’s so sexy. It kills me that the table is too long for him to comfortably lean forward and kiss me.

  It’s a relief to see the menu is in English, but what’s troubling are the prices. This place is expensive. Like, ridiculously expensive. And I know Dean lives with his parents for at least partially financial reasons, so it kills me he’ll have to pay over a hundred bucks to take me to dinner. Yes, he picked the place, so he presumably knew what he was getting into, but still.

  “Hey.” I lean in to whisper to him. “Dean, this food is really expensive.”

  He smiles crookedly. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Don’t play like you’re rich, Palmer. I saw your car.”

  “Get what you want,” he says firmly.

  To hell with that. I’m getting the cheapest thing on the menu.

  After we place our orders for food and wine with the waiter, we’re left staring at each other while we sip from our water glasses. Dean has this smile playing on his lips that makes my whole body tingle. I don’t know much about this guy, but I just like him. I’ve never had this kind of instant connection with another person.

  “So are you caught up with your schoolwork?” he asks me.

  I flip my palm back and forth. “As much as I’ll ever be. We’ve got a Contracts exam on Monday.”

  “Contracts. Is that hard?”

  “The textbook is twelve-hundred pages long. So… kind of.”

  His eyes widen. “Twelve-hundred pages. Wow, that’s even longer than the last Harr
y Potter.”

  I make a face. “And you can imagine it’s just as interesting.”

  “So what do you learn about in Contracts?”

  I think for a minute, trying to come up with a case that won’t be a total bore. “There’s the hairy hand case.”

  He laughs. “The hairy hand case?”

  I nod. “Hawkins vs. McGee. Hawkins’s hand was scarred from electrical wiring when he was a child, and a surgeon named McGee offered to do a surgery that he guaranteed would make his hand into a ‘one-hundred percent good hand.’ Since this happened in the 1920s, you can imagine he wasn’t successful.”

  “So how did the hand get hairy?”

  “McGee took a skin graft from Hawkins’s chest,” I explain. “So the hand started growing thick hair. Not exactly what you want on your hand.”

  “Hmm. Couldn’t the surgeon have just done another graft on the guy’s bald spot and called it even?”

  “No.” I roll my eyes. “It was a breach of contract, so the damages were awarded as the difference between a one-hundred percent good hand and a hairy hand.”

  “Well, how do you know the hairy hand was from the surgery?” Dean says. “Aren’t there other things that cause hairy hands?” He winks. “You know what I’m talking about, Callie.”

  I giggle. “Yes, I do. And believe me…” I hold up my palms. “If that caused hairy hands, I’d be like an ape.”

  Hmm. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that. Maybe ‘fessing up that my love life is so abysmal that I have to pleasure myself on a nightly basis wasn’t the best first date conversation ever. But Dean seems more intrigued than anything based on the smirk on his face.

  Now that we’re talking, all the disastrous events of the evening seem insignificant. Maybe that broken mirror didn’t ruin our night. No matter what else happened so far, I’m here now with a guy I really like. And he’s a lot of fun to talk to. I’m already thinking about second dates.

  “Dean? Oh my God, Dean!”

  Seriously, do we need to cross state lines to go on a date without running into a ton of people we know? This is getting ridiculous.

  I raise my eyes and see a very attractive girl about our age standing over us. She’s wearing a red dress that looks painted onto her curves, and her blond hair had been pinned up elegantly on her head, but now is coming loose around her face. Even from a foot away, I can smell the alcohol on her.

  Dean is gawking at the girl. “Chloe?”

  She sways on her feet. I wonder how much she’s had to drink tonight. “You remember me…”

  “Of course I remember you,” he says. “You were my first…” He glances at me for a moment, then back at the pretty but clearly sloshed Chloe. “Yes, I remember you.”

  “I saw you sitting here and I just…” Chloe’s eyes fill with tears, threatening to ruin her thick mascara. “I heard a rumor about what happened to you, but I was hoping it wasn’t true.”

  He nods grimly. “Yeah, well…”

  “So it’s really true?” she asks. “Is it…” She lowers her voice a notch. “Permanent?”

  He nods again. “Yes, but… Chloe, look, it’s fine…”

  The tears spill over now, and people are starting to turn to watch. Oh my God, they must think she caught him with another woman. This is so mortifying. But what can we do? I mean, she’s crying. We can’t exactly shoo her away.

  “I’m so sorry,” she says, her words starting to slur. How much has this girl had to drink? And moreover, where is her dinner date? “I’m so sorry this happened to you, Dean.”

  Dean’s ears are bright red. “It’s okay. Really.”

  Her hand comes to rest on his shoulder, and I feel a sudden urge to reach over and yank her red-painted fingernails off my date. Chloe may be drunk, but she’s still very attractive, and it’s obvious she and Dean have a history together. But somehow I manage to control myself. “You were so good on the wrestling team,” she murmurs. “Do you remember that?”

  He shifts in his chair, trying to escape from her grasp. “That was a long time ago.”

  “Yes,” she says sadly. She swipes at her eyes with the back of her hand. “You’re so brave, Dean.”

  Where in freaking hell is her dinner date?

  Dean looks at me again, mouths the word “sorry” and then gently but forcibly removes Chloe’s hand from his shoulder. Good.

  “I’m okay.” He looks her straight in the eyes. “Really.”

  “Yes.” She smiles through her tears. “I’m sure you are. There are lots of desk jobs out there. You were always so good with computers.”

  “Right, so…”

  “Also…” Her smile brightens. “There are so many medical advances. Stem cells, right? I bet one day you’ll be able to walk again.”

  He cringes, clearly not nearly as convinced as his drunken ex-girlfriend. “Yeah.”

  Chloe just stands there for a moment, swaying over our table. She looks very pale. What if she throws up? That’s all this romantic date needs right now—Dean’s ex-girlfriend vomiting all over the table. That would be one for the history books.

  But instead of hurling, Chloe turns her attention in my direction. She blinks her bloodshot eyes a few times, as if noticing me for the first time. A deep furrow appears between her carefully plucked eyebrows as she works to figure the whole thing out. Finally, she says, “It this your… care assistant?”

  Okay, she is clearly even drunker than I thought. I mean, what the hell? We are having dinner in a romantic French restaurant. In a secluded corner. There’s a candle on the table. It’s Valentine’s Day. There is no way this looks like anything besides a date. It’s almost funny, except the red in Dean’s ears is spreading down his neck now, and I get a sudden surge of anger.

  “Listen, girly,” I snap at her. “I’m not his nurse. I’m his date.”

  Chloe’s eyes widen as she registers this information, as if such a thing hadn’t even occurred to her. She doesn’t even seem to realize how pissed off I am.

  “Oh!” she says, covering her mouth with her hand. “Oh wow, that’s… great. So great.” She puts her hand on my bare arm, and it’s so cold, I nearly let out a shriek. “You are such a kind, good person.”

  Dean is massaging his temple with his fingers. I want to reach out and give him a hug. Or else belt Chloe in the mouth. One or the other.

  I’m not sure if Chloe would have ended up with my right hook, but fortunately, we get rescued at that moment by her extremely apologetic date. He looks so thoroughly frazzled that I don’t have the heart to yell at him for letting his date harass us. Apparently, she told him she was just running over for a second to say hi.

  Chloe’s date pulls her away from us even as she’s promising Dean she’ll pray for him. My shoulders don’t relax until I see her date settle her back into her seat all the way across the room. If she vomits now, she’s his problem.

  “Jesus Christ,” Dean says, shaking his head. “I’m so sorry about that, Callie.”

  I glance over at Chloe, who is taking another sip of her wine. Because obviously she hasn’t had enough. “It wasn’t your fault.” I smile at him. “Actually, I’m impressed a computer dork like you dated such a pretty girl. Seriously, she is really hot. You must have had game.”

  “I did not have game.” He laughs. “And Chloe and I never dated. We just… hooked up a few times in high school, that’s all.”

  I remember what Dean said when he laid eyes on Chloe: You were my first…

  First what?

  First kiss?

  First blond cheerleader?

  First fuck?

  Eh, it’s probably better I don’t know.

  “Well, I’m not that surprised she liked you,” I say. “You’re pretty damn hot yourself. That can overcome some degree of dorkiness.”

  “Oh yeah?” he says. “Like, how much dorkiness?”

  I tap my finger against my chin, contemplating my answer. “Well, it could probably be enough to overcome being on the math team, but
not enough if you’ve ever dressed up as anyone from Star Trek.”

  “How about if I can solve a Rubik’s Cube? Am I hot enough to overcome that?”

  I raise my eyebrows. “You can solve a Rubik’s Cube?”

  “Sure. Why? Is that a deal-breaker?”

  “No.” I grin at him. “It’s just that I’ve always wanted to learn how to solve a Rubik’s Cube.”

  “Well, I’ve always wanted to teach a beautiful woman how to solve a Rubik’s Cube.” He winks at me. “So it works out.”

  “So Miss Chloe over there wasn’t ever interested in learning?”

  He rolls his eyes. “I told you, she and I were never dating. And anyway…” He reaches across the table and places his hand on mine. It’s warm and large, and I can feel the beginnings of callouses on his palm. “Chloe’s not beautiful. You are.”

  He’s so full of it. I might be a solid seven, but Chloe is more like a nine or ten. Objectively. “Am I?”

  “Fuck yeah,” he says, and he looks me in the eyes like he really, really means it.

  I could live in this moment forever—staring at this sexy guy across the table in a romantic restaurant, his hand on mine setting off every nerve ending in my body. But the waiter arrives with our food, ruining the moment. Dean pulls his hand away so we can eat, but food isn’t what I’m hungry for right now.

  I ordered a soup, because it was one of the cheapest things I could get on the menu. It doesn’t look like much food, but that’s fine because I had to eat the popcorn all by myself. Dean got an entrée, but I noticed he picked one of the cheaper things on the menu too. He’s not fooling anyone.

  As he’s attempting to pick up his fork from the table, he accidentally knocks his napkin to the floor. It lands on the ground right next to him. I stare at it for a split-second, wondering what the etiquette is if a guy in a wheelchair drops something. Do I pick it up? Or would that be patronizing?

  I wish I had read up on this beforehand.

  Dean lets out a sigh. He moves his hand against the wheels so his chair turns to the right, then he leans forward to pick up the napkin. As he sits back up, his right leg jumps a few times in the leg rest. He grabs his knee with his hand until his leg stops moving. Even though he doesn’t say so, it’s clear to me he can’t control the movement.