The Chemistry of Love(24)

I hadn’t even picked up the menu. “Not yet.” We both looked over our menus in silence until I admitted to him, “This restaurant wasn’t what I expected.”

“What did you expect?” he asked, as if he already knew the answer to my question.

“Something expensive with portions too small for a bird. This place is . . . homey.” Much more me.

“I was in the mood for pizza,” he said. Also surprising, because given that he didn’t look like he had an ounce of fat on him, I had a hard time believing that he ate carbs at all, let alone pizza. “Do you want to split one?”

“I’m lactose intolerant, and I didn’t bring any pills with me,” I said.

“They have a cheese-less pizza here.”

“Which is basically just bread with sauce on it, but okay.”

“You can put pepperoni on it, too,” he offered cheerfully.

As if that would solve the issue. “I suppose I could.” I probably wouldn’t, though. All those pepperoni slices would just slide around. I knew that from experience and the first-degree burn I’d gotten on my arm.

“They have really massive salads here. We could split that, if you’d like. Do you want one?”

Hadn’t he just said the whole reason he’d come here was to have pizza? “The only way I’d order salad is if the world ended and it was the only thing left to eat in order to survive.”

“You’re not into salad?”

“I’m also not into splitting things.” Why did he keep asking me to do that? “Why do you say things like that with so much surprise in your voice?”

He shook his head. “I’ve just dated a lot of women where that’s the only thing they eat.”

Honestly, I wasn’t even a teensy bit shocked. That was probably where the offer to split everything came from, too. “I guess I’m not like someone you would typically hang out with. You should know that when you can find me not working out, I will also be making very unhealthy food decisions.”

“Noted,” he said, an actual twinkle in his eye. “I guess that means the 5k hike after lunch is out of the question.” He laughed at my expression. “I’m teasing. Vegan pizza for you, then?”

“Yes, I’m getting the vegan pizza, but only because there’s no cheese. Not for any other reason. You can’t trick me into making healthy choices.”

“Do you know the hardest part of making a vegan pizza?” He asked me the question seriously, and I wasn’t sure what he was trying to ask.

I blinked a couple of times. “Literally nothing?”

He shook his head. “Skinning the vegan.”

That was a joke that reminded me so much of my father I felt a physical twinge of longing. “Huh. I thought they had a thin skin.”

That made him grin at me, and then I added, “I could be a vegan.”

His eyes widened. “Are you?”

“I’m not. And I think vegan jokes are only okay so long as they’re not cheesy.”

At that, he laughed, his voice deep and rich, and I found myself wanting to join in. It had been a long time since I’d sat around and traded bad jokes with someone. I felt all warm and fuzzy inside and enjoyed the sound of his laughter more than just an acquaintance should.

Because deep, drunken confessions aside, we didn’t really know each other.

“Okay, so now that we have the food all sorted—what would you like to drink?” he asked.

Was Marco trying to take my order? Like, we had a waiter who was going to ask me all of this. Or was he just trying to make conversation? It made me think he was nervous and this was how he was coping with his anxiety.

“Something strong? Hair of the dog?” he asked.

“What?” I was so disoriented by all of this and the magical quality of his laughter that I didn’t understand what he was asking.

“You know that saying, about when you’re hungover you should drink more alcohol, so you should drink the hair of the dog that bit you?”

“Oh. My grandpa always says drink the feather of the bird that pecked you. Which makes more sense, because odds are higher that you’ll get pecked by a bird.”

“I’ve never been pecked by a bird.”

“Do you want to be?” I asked. “I can easily arrange that.”

“No thanks,” he said breezily, as if I’d offered him a dish he didn’t want to taste. “But . . . drinking feathers?”

“Drinking hair?” I countered.

“I feel like hair would go down much more easily than feathers.”

“Depends on the size of the feather,” I said, wondering how we’d ended up at this point. “But the shorter answer is no, thank you, I don’t think I’ll be drinking again for the next century.” One night of crying on a bathroom floor with the CEO of my former company was quite enough for me. “Plus, it’s the middle of the afternoon and I’m not really much of a day drinker.”

“You’re not much of a night drinker, either,” he said with a grin that was so adorable, I’d be willing to bet a lot of money that he had never been in trouble once in his entire life. All he would have to do is flash that smile and all would be forgiven.

It was like a weapon. Somebody should make him register that thing.