The Shameless Hour (16 page)

“So true,” I agreed. But privately, I was soaking it all in. The music playing in the restaurant had a sexy Latin beat. Tipico had a relaxed, neighborly vibe that was a hell of a lot less stressful than the other place we’d been tonight.

And watching Rafe step behind the counter of his family’s business with a toddler on his hip had a strange effect on me. He’d looked so comfortable there. I’m sure Rafe wasn’t intending to use his Harkness degree to make change for restaurant customers. But he already had a place in the world where he knew exactly what he was doing. Where he fit in. Where he was needed. I’d never had that. And with each passing month, it seemed increasingly likely that I never would.

A teenage girl bounced over to our table and let out a little squeal. “Rafael! What are
you
doing sitting in my section?”

“
Florecita
, what do people usually want when they sit in your section? We’re hungry.”

She put her hands on her hips, her eyes sparkling back and forth between us. “Is this your
girlfriend?
”

“Subtle, Flori. This is my
friend
Bella. Bella, this is Flori, my nosy cousin.”

“Hi,” I said, trying not to smile.

“She must be your girlfriend,” Flori declared. “You’re all dressed up.”

“If I lied and said she was, could we get some food?”

“You are no fun at all, you know that?” But her expression said the opposite. She looked at Rafe with hero worship in her eyes.

“Flori, bring us a couple of beers, and leave your order pad.” To make his point, Rafe grabbed the pad out of her apron pocket and then gave her a little shove toward the back.

She sighed, taking the pencil from behind her ear and dropping it on the table. “Fine. But I’m telling everyone in the kitchen that you’re here with your girlfriend.” Then she flounced away.

Rafe looked at me wearily. “I thought this would be a quick way to score some food. But I may have miscalculated.”

“I think she’s hysterical.”

“That’s one word for it.” He took the pencil and began scribbling on the pad. “I’m going to get a little of everything, okay? You can pick out the dishes that appeal to you.”

“You’re going to tip me, right?” Flori had reappeared. She held on to the beers for collateral, waiting for Rafe’s answer.

He raised one dark eyebrow. “You think I’d stiff you? Really?”

She put the bottles down. “You never sit at a table, so how do I know? Papi says he’ll comp your food but not the beer.”

Rafe shrugged. “I’d pass out face down in the mangu if your Papi ever bought me a beer, Florecita. I’m half expecting him to come out here and remind me to wash my own dishes.”

She patted his shoulder. “Since you brought company, he probably won’t do that. I should try that sometime.”

Rafe handed her the pad and the pencil. “You bring a boy in here, he’s going to chase him off with a chef’s knife.”

Her smile faded. “That is probably true.”

When she went away with our order, he folded his arms on the table and smiled at me. “Hungry? I ordered a lot of food.”

“Sure.” I was, too. “What should I expect?”

“Dominican food is sort of like Cuban. Lots of fried things. It’s not health food.”

I picked up my beer bottle and touched it to his. “Fuck health food. We’ve earned a few fried plantains tonight.”

“Damn straight,” he said, then lifted the bottle to his beautiful mouth.

“You work here during the summer?”

“Yeah. And every holiday. And all the years in high school. They didn’t even pay me minimum wage until last summer. My uncles are slave drivers. They think blood relatives should work for almost nothing.”

“But you get tips?”

He shook his head. “I’ve been working in that kitchen since I could hold a knife. I wrote my Harkness essay about learning to keep my cool in a crowded kitchen.”

“That’s awesome, Rafe. I’m not like you.”

He gave me a lazy grin. Slouched back in his chair across from me holding his beer, rocking a five o’clock shadow on his jaw, Rafe was easy on the eyes. “What am I
like
, then?”

“You’re good at everything.” Honest to God, the sight of Rafe dancing the merengue as easily as he walked was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen. The boy could
move
. It made me want to gobble him down and ask for seconds.

He set the bottle down with a snort. “Right. I wish that was true. School isn’t easy for me.”

“No? You seem like you’ve got it all together.”

His eyes took a tour of the room. “My family thinks I live a cushy life, going to school and working a few shifts in the dining hall. They think it’s like a four-year vacation. And I’m sweating buckets just to keep my grades at a B- average. My mother wanted me to pick a school in the City so I could live with her across the street from this place and work five nights a week.”

“She doesn’t understand, though. You’re going to have the word ‘Harkness’ on your resume in two and a half years. That sticker is going to be worth a pile of money to you, if you want it to be.”

He leaned that handsome face into one of his hands. “What about you, Bella? What are you going to do with your Harkness sticker?”

That was the question, wasn’t it? “I really wish I knew. And the fact that I don’t is starting to freak me out. I mean… it’s not like I’m going to starve. But I really don’t want to move back into my bedroom on East 78th Street with nothing but a diploma to show for my effort.”

“But hey, the diploma will be in
Latin
,” Rafe said. He touched his bottle to mine and then drained his beer. “Where is that cousin of mine. Flori?” he called as she ran past. “Where’s our food?”

“Some of it is up, I think,” she said over her shoulder. “Why don’t you check?”

“What is the deal with this joint?” he asked, and I laughed. He swept our empty beer bottles off the table and went into the kitchen.

Two minutes later I saw him reappear through the swinging doors, a tray in his hands. I was so busy admiring the sexy sway of his shoulders that I almost missed the gorgeous woman hot on his heels. She had exquisite cheekbones, dark skin and wavy hair which had been captured into a clip on the top of her head.

“Rafael!
Adónde vas? Espera a su madre
.”

He answered her in rapid-fire Spanish. Setting the edge of the tray down on the table, he began removing dishes. Each one he put in front of me looked better than the last. And the smell! I was salivating in seconds.

Behind him, the beautiful woman put her hands on her hips. I couldn’t understand what she was saying, but from her tone it was obvious that a) she was his mother, though she looked almost too young to have a college-age son and b) she wasn’t entirely happy with him.

“Ma, stop yelling,” Rafe commanded. “This is my friend Bella. She has never had Dominican food, and we did not have any dinner. So be nice and let us eat.”

Rafe’s mother peered around his shoulder, taking in our dressy clothes. Her face softened just a little. She offered her hand. “It is so nice to meet you, Bella. And Rafael! Why do you not have water glasses? And extra plates, if you’re going to share?”

“That would be a question for Flori, I think.”

But Rafe’s mom had already turned on her heel, running off presumably to get them.

Rafe rubbed his hands together. “Food, at last! Okay. The dish in front of you is called La Bandera.”

“That just means ‘flag,’ right?” I couldn’t resist showing off that I knew a Spanish word.

“Exactly. It’s supposed to look like the colors of the flag. But every Dominican kid is like, ‘What the hell?’ Rice is white. Fine. And the sauce on the meat is reddish. But beans aren’t
blue
. It doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

I picked up my fork and popped a flake of the stewed pork into my mouth. “It’s really good, though. I don’t think it would be better if it were actually blue.”

“This is mofongo.” He pointed at the weirdest looking thing on the table. “Mashed plantains, fried, with a meat sauce on top. But they’re even better like this.” He pointed at gorgeously crispy pieces of plantain on another plate.

“What’s that?” I asked, aiming my fork at another fried thing. It was square, about the size of a playing card. And when I sank my fork into the corner, it squished.

“Fried cheese. Another health food. The only lighter thing is this bulgur salad.” He picked up the bowl and showed me the contents. On top of the grains sat tomatoes, avocados and parsley, with a few grilled shrimp on top.

A clean plate landed on the table in front of me. In a blur of motion, Rafe’s mother tucked a serving spoon on to each of our dishes. Then she set a glass of water down in front of me. “Enjoy!” she said before stomping off.

“Your mother is a whirlwind,” I said.

Rafe grinned at me as he scooped food onto his plate. “The kitchen boys call her
la tormenta
. The storm.”

“Are you going to be in the doghouse for coming in here tonight?”

Rafe looked surprised. “Not a chance. They’d like to have me working in back. But they’d rather I show my face than stay away. We bitch at each other a lot, I guess. That’s just how we talk.” He ate a piece of plantain with a thoughtful expression on his face. “You know, coming back here after I’ve been away for a while, this place looks shabby to me. I want to give it a facelift. I tried to say that this summer and the uncles didn’t want to hear it.”

“It’s comfortable, though,” I supplied. “Not every restaurant needs to be fancy.”

“I know. But I think we could update it a little, then raise the menu prices about thirty percent. But they’re afraid to change anything.”

“My dad is the opposite. There’s no building in New York that he’s afraid to bulldoze. If people actually knew what he looked like, he’d need a bodyguard in certain neighborhoods.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. I don’t mean that he’s knocking down historical treasures or anything. But most people are resistant to change. That’s normal.”

“I don’t know if ‘normal’ and ‘
mi familia
’ belong together in the same sentence.” He stabbed a bite of mofongo with his fork.

“Mmm,” I said, stuffing my face. The food was incredibly good. The stewed meats were tender and flavorful; the rice was fluffy. “You’re going to have to roll me out of here after this.”

A skinny teenage boy was shuffling toward us, wiping his hands on a chef’s apron. “
Hola, primo
.” He put a hand on Rafe’s shoulder. “You know Flori is in the kitchen, texting all her sisters that you’re here with your girlfriend.” The boy smiled, and his eyes crinkled up in the corners. “I tell her that your girlfriend’s name is Alison, but she say maybe you have more than one.”

“Well, that’s me,” Rafe said, putting his fork down. “The Don Juan of Harkness College.”

“Wherever Rafe goes,” I teased, “the girls follow in little packs, hoping he’ll notice them. I had to follow him all the way to Manhattan just to get this close.”

The boy laughed, and Rafe rolled his eyes. Kidding aside, Rafe probably could have girls hanging off of him if he wanted it that way.

Rafe’s mother snuck up behind the kid and asked him a pointed question in Spanish. With a sigh, he headed back into the kitchen.

“He was only here for a second,” Rafe protested. “Just saying hello.”

“We do not stand around in the dining room wearing kitchen clothes.” She sniffed. “It looks unprofessional.”

“Relax, Ma,” he said, his head tilting back to look at her. “Since when do you work Saturday night?”

“There was a party to cater. Nobody else was free. And you saw — Cara was here late with her little one. This is our busy season.”

“It’s always our busy season.” He began to stack our finished plates. Rafe and I had demolished all that food in an almost embarrassingly short amount of time. “Flori!” he called, and his cute little cousin came bounding over. “Can you scare up a check?” He handed a stack of plates to her, too.

His mother lunged for the remaining dishes, practically clucking over him. “There is no
check
, Rafael.”

“We had a couple of beers.”

“Eh. Pablo will live. Do not run out yet. I’ll bring you
dulce de leche en table
.” She turned to me. “Would you like coffee?”

“Oh! No thank you. Everything was wonderful.”

She smiled and darted away. Rafe’s mother reminded me of a little bird, flitting from one place to another in an instant.

Rafe rubbed his stomach. “I needed that. Putting up with the crazy family was almost worth it.”

I gave a little groan. “Sorry, but your crazy is not nearly as crazy as our crazy.”

Rafe measured me with his chocolate eyes. “You only win this contest because of the creepy brother-in-law. Otherwise I think I’d have you beat.”

Gazing at him from across the very small table, my neck heated. Not only was it a beautiful view, but I was remembering the last time we had a contest to figure out which of us had it worse. The crazy night we’d shared was still special to me, even if I’d never figured out why Rafe had been so miserable afterward.

His mother reappeared with a plate holding four little sugary-looking squares and several slices of star fruit. “It was lovely to meet you,” she said, giving me another smile. “I am going upstairs now. You’ll be along soon?” she asked her son.

“I’m going to take Bella home, but then I’ll be right back,” he said quickly.

“You don’t have to do that,” I protested. “I’ll just catch a cab to the train station. Or Uber.”

Rafe’s eyebrows lifted. “You’re going back to Harkness? Tonight?”

I locked eyes with him, wondering why he’d assume I wanted to go home to my parents’ house after that awful scene at dinner.

We had a mini stare-down, but he caved first, looking at his watch. “When’s the last train?”

“Eleven-fifteen. I’ll make it.”

He stood. “I’ll take you.”

“Grand Central is perfectly safe,” I argued, embarrassed that he’d go all that way. After everything I’d already put him through tonight.

“125th is closer,” his mother pointed out. “And pretty girls don’t go there alone at night.”

The path of least resistance was clearly to let Rafe accompany me to the train station. “All right,” I murmured. I thanked his mother one more time for the lovely meal, and then I let Rafe lead me out of the restaurant, his hand at my back. I caught his cousin Flori smirking as we passed by. Her eyes were full of romantic theories about us.