The Way You Make Me Feel(14)

There was already a line. Rose nervously smoothed down the front of her shirt then glanced at my dad—waiting for permission, it seemed. “Go ahead and ask what they’d like,” he said, nodding encouragingly.

She leaned over the counter and spoke loud and clear. “Hello, what would you like to order today?”

I laughed. “You sound like a robot.”

Another poke in my temple from Pai. “Knock it off, Clara. Get ready to prep.” He pushed me toward the food prep counter, which was on the opposite side from the windows.

A nebbishy white guy in round tortoiseshell glasses ordered one lombo and one pastel, which my dad repeated loudly to me. Rose fumbled with the cashbox, dropping wads of cash onto the floor. “Oh God!”

My dad swept it up and handed it to her before she could even reach down. “You’re fine, Rose,” he said with a wink. She smiled but still looked rattled taking the next order. Dang, she really was nervous.

The nervousness seeped into me, too, suddenly. Why was I in this stupid predicament? Sweating over a stove, worrying about people’s dumb lunch orders when I should have been floating on an inflatable unicorn in a swimming pool. I took a breath, then started to prep the ingredients—my dad would put everything together later.

Things were going smoothly until the orders started coming in quickly. Really quickly. And a harried Latina girl with thick black bangs and a nose piercing put in an order for five different plates and ten pasteis.

Sweat pooled under my cap, and one thick lock of hair kept tickling my nose as I rushed to get all the ingredients together. “What the heck, is she catering an event in that dumb coffee shop?” I cried, opening the jar of pickled daikon radishes.

“You guys made an extra lombo order instead of picanha!” Rose hollered, her voice panicky and on edge. The three of us were so smashed into that small space that I felt her breath on the back of my neck as she yelled.

Pai was plating another batch of pasteis. “That’s okay, you can—”

“Just deal with it!” I yelled back, at my wit’s end. I lifted up a hand as I said it, and the latex glove that I had been pulling off flew into the air. I swiveled around to see where it had landed, and when I did, I was standing face-to-face (or to be more accurate, face-to-neck) with Rose.

The kimchi-coated glove was plastered to her cheek.

I burst out laughing at the same time that someone outside yelled, “Yo, where my pasteis at?”

“Coming right up!” Rose called out as she peeled the glove away from her face.

“Coming right up!” I mimicked in a high-pitched voice. I couldn’t help it; my stress levels were off the charts and my resentment had failed to die down over the course of the day. In fact, it was increasingly fueled.

My dad was handing out food through the pickup window. “Clara!” he barked in warning.

“Can’t you just do your job?” Rose snapped. “You’re such an incompetent clown.”

Without thinking, I whipped off my other glove and threw it so hard at her face that it made a satisfying smack.

She gasped and clutched her cheek.

My dad stepped between us again. “I swear to God I am going to kick you both out of here unless you calm down. Can you manage to grow up for three seconds and do that?”

Rose nodded, taking a deep breath, smoothing down her shirt again. It was like rubbing the shirt gave her magical calming powers. “Sorry, Adrian,” she said with a little smile.

He looked at me, arms crossed, his forearm tattoo of my birthday written in Gothic font obnoxiously displayed.

I tilted my head back and rolled my eyes as deeply as humanly possible. “Okaaaay.”

Rose went back to taking orders and me to cooking and assembling them. I had just finished wrapping the pasteis up in foil when Rose bumped into me as she reached for the cashbox.

We glared at each other but didn’t say a word, feeling my dad’s eyes on us. But when I turned to hand the pasteis to my dad, Rose stepped back again and her shoulder knocked my head, shooting a jolt of pain straight through my skull.

I grabbed my head. “Watch it, clumso!”

“You watch it!” As she said it, Rose swept her arm and knocked over a bowl full of vinaigrette onto the floor.

We both froze. My dad turned at the sound and cursed. “Are you kidding me right now?” His voice did this funny squeaking thing.

“Sorry!” Rose said as she reached over to grab a towel.

I picked up the bowl. “Has anyone ever told you it’s annoying when girls say sorry all the time?”

She threw the towel on the floor where it landed with a wet splat. “That’s it. I’ve tried to be the bigger person here and let you act like a little jerk to me. But you need to be put in your place!”

Something about Rose’s anger really gave me life. I let out a brittle laugh. “This isn’t Elysian. You have no power here.”

Her face was inches away from mine. “We’ll see.”

The guy who was ordering at the window clapped his hands over his head. “Fight, fight!”

“PARE!”

We all stared at my dad. He shook his head. “I mean, stop. That’s it. You guys are not only acting like kids, you’re affecting business!”

And within seconds, we were both pushed out onto the sidewalk and the KoBra’s door was locked against us. I pounded on it, but my dad refused to open it.