Page 23 of Endeavor

“You are in luck because I do.” I decide to wait to show him how much I like sushi. It’s not often that I can totally shock someone, and right now, I feel like I need the upper hand in some aspect of this so-called date.

“Music?” he asks.

“Sure.”

He turns on his car’s sound system and I’m taken aback to find him listening to Crowded House.

“I wouldn’t have pegged you as a fan of this group,” I admit.

“I guess you’d be wrong, then,” he says as he glances over at me. “People peg me as a lot of things, Emma. But most of what they know is just a made-up façade.”

“You keep hinting about that. But I’ll be the judge of your so-called ‘holier than thou’ self.”

He laughs. “OK. Noted.”

He pulls up to a Japanese restaurant that I’ve been to before and I grin. Not only do I know the menu, but I also know most of the staff.

I open my own door before he can get around the car. He waits for me to exit and then places his hand on the small of my back as we walk inside. I want to roll my eyes at the cliché gesture. But I decide to play it cool and ignore it.

The hostess sees me and says hello. She’s American, but the sushi chef is not, and when we are seated at the sushi bar, he comes over to me.

And that’s when I go full-on Japanese. I greet him and place my off-the-menu order in fluent Japanese before turning to a very shocked Grady.

“Do you know what you want?”

“I…uh…I like tuna,” he manages.

I laugh. “I’ll order for you. I know just the thing.” I rattle off some options to the chef, and he goes about making our rolls.

“You speak Japanese,” Grady states as he stares at me.

I shrug. “A little.”

“Uh, that sounded more like a lot.”

“I may have spent a semester studying in Tokyo.”

“You what?”

“Yeah, in undergrad, I studied in Tokyo. I got pretty good at Japanese, but I’m not nearly as good as I used to be. I come here sometimes to practice.”

“Wow. Well, that’s really impressive.”

“Do you speak any other languages?” I ask him.

He shakes his head. “I know a little Spanish. I try to learn a few phrases when we travel, but, no, I can’t do what you just did in any language but English.”

“You should try learning another language. It’d be a great way to connect with your fans in other countries.”

He places a napkin on his lap and looks back at me. “You are really unexpected, Emma.”

“I’ve been called worse.”

“I doubt that.”

“I guess you’ll have to get to know me better before you judge me,” I say to him as the chef brings us an appetizer.

I pull out my chopsticks that I keep in my purse. I don’t do the cheap wooden ones.

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