“Anybody can be charming when you first meet him,” Reb said as we pulled up in front of the Four Seasons, the only minivan in the brick-paved entry.
My head jerked to her. How did she know about Dom? But then I realized she was talking about the boy of the moment. I said, “Quattro was hardly charming, unless you call almost running me over charming.”
“Where are you taking him?”
“I was thinking Oddfellows.” Coffee shop by day, restaurant by night, the place had a great vibe: cool without taking itself too seriously. Best of all, there wasn’t a whiff of romance about it.
“How’s about I go ahead and wait there for you?” she asked as a valet in a tidy chocolate-brown uniform started to hustle to her side of the car until he noticed me. So intent on her question, Reb didn’t notice him circling to my side first. “That way, if he turns out to be a total sociopath, I can be your personal extraction team.”
“You’re being paranoid,” I told her. The valet opened my door. I unbuckled my seat belt. “Thanks for the ride, Reb.”
“No, trust me,” she said firmly and leaned over the parking brake to peer into my face. “You can never be too sure of anyone.”
Reb should know: Her dad had up and left her family unexpectedly over the summer, not completely unlike Dom. I exhaled hard, as though I had been holding my breath.
“You’re on,” I told her, nodding. “Oddfellows in twenty-five minutes.”
Chapter Three
Inside the wood-paneled hotel lobby, Quattro was hard to miss, dressed in a long-sleeved, traffic-stopping orange T-shirt. He rose from a cream-colored chair as soon as he spotted me. To be honest, he was better looking than I remembered, but that might have been the halo effect of the unexpectedly good Gum Wall shots I’d reviewed for way too long last night. Even before we reached each other, I bypassed the whole awkward do we hug or do we stand with our arms at our sides moment and cut directly to “Now about those doughnuts…”
“Bars, not doughnuts,” Quattro corrected, then spread his arms wide. “Totally different.”
“There’s a difference in fried dough?”
“It’s like saying golden retrievers and Labradors are the same breed.”
“They aren’t?” I asked, deadpan.
He laughed. Without waiting a beat, I sighed as sorrowfully as I could. “Hate to break it to you, but bacon maple bars aren’t in your foreseeable future.” I explained the car situation with my mom and proposed walking to Oddfellows instead.
“That’s cool,” he said with an easygoing shrug that I appreciated. Once we were outside, Quattro said, “Just as I predicted, my sister freaked out when I told her I met you.”
“Really?” I smiled, flattered in spite of myself.
His realistic impression of a bubbleheaded middle school girl—“No way!”—made me snort from laughing hard. I blushed; it wasn’t exactly the most feminine sound to produce.
“So Kylie had some questions for you, but I can’t remember them. She’s going to kill me.”
“No prob, I’ll give you my number so she can text me.” Was I smooth or was I smooth? I made a mental note to tell Ginny how to slip her number to all the other Chef Boys in her future. As I started to unclip my messenger bag for my phone, I asked, “How about I just call your cell now so you have it?”
“I don’t have a cell.”
“For real?” Stunned, I stopped on the sidewalk to stare at him.
“I know, I know. Weird.”
“Well, yeah.” I dodged a piece of suspicious-looking garbage. The route to Oddfellows cut through a few sketchy blocks. “Oh, hey, did your dad recover from the bedbugs?”
“Yeah, they moved us to a new room, but once he found out that he got the job he was interviewing for on Friday, nothing would have bugged him. Literally.”
“Wait, I thought you were here looking at UW?”
Quattro shrugged, then nodded at the crosswalk light that was about to change to red. We charged across the street together as I asked, “Your dad’s actually following you out here?”
“He prefers to call it relocating.” His face tightened. “But Chicago’s our home. He and Mom… It’s the only house I’ve ever lived in.” His eyes flicked to mine, then down to the sidewalk like he was embarrassed.