Page 170 of With Us

“What?” My eyes shot down the table to where Luc sat with his parents. “Luc, the manicotti is amazing.”

Smiling, he lifted his fork a little. “Savor them ‘cause I only make them once a year.”

“Twice,” Celia, his mom, corrected, “if I ask for it for Mother’s Day or my birthday.”

“Why?” I asked.

“They’re a pain in the ass,” he said.

“Luca, watch your language.” Celia beamed at me. “He’s not lying, though. He makes most of it from scratch. The pasta, ricotta, and sauce. It’s all he can cook, but he does it so well.”

“Because it’s for a family thing, Faust provides the mozzarella and sausage,” Luc further explained.

“Is he still not letting you eat at his restaurant?” Luc’s dad, Matt, asked.

“No.”

“And he still spits after he says his name,” Theo added.

Rachelle poured a glass of wine. “That man can hold a grudge.”

“What did you do?” I asked, giving in to my curiosity.

Everyone’s focus turned to me, and I had a moment of panic.

Uh oh. Did I overstep in asking? Why are they all looking at me? Did I just ruin the entire day?

Most of the people started laughing. Luc and his parents, plus Theo, Gabe, and Tina started speaking at once.

“Okay, hey, quiet!” Luc shouted above them. “It’s my story, so I get to tell it.”

“No way,” Tina said, shaking her head and earning a glare from him. “Side-eye me all you want. Anytime you tell the story, you change it into a work of fiction. Dahlia wants to hear the truth.’

“I got this,” Gabe said. Setting down his fork, he cleared his throat and launched into full storytelling mode. “Faust likes to enter food competitions. He’s very competitive, so, unlike most everything else in his life, he takes them very seriously. Two years ago—”

“It was three,” Luc interrupted. “See, you’re bad at this. Let me—”

“Three years ago, Faust was entering ravioli into a competition. He’d spent weeks perfecting a goat cheese and mozzarella blend for the filling, then a different one for the mushroom shallot sauce. Weeks of trial and, in his eyes, error. He made about sixty cheeses, then another sixty ratio variations. He finally had it perfected.”

“Okay,” I prompted, both intrigued and hungry.

“So two nights before the competition, Luc gets drunk. I’m talking, totally shitfaced.”

“Oh no.”

Gabe grinned. “Oh yes. He pours himself into a cab and decides he’s hungry. So, he heads to Faust, but not before stopping at a twenty-four-hour convenience mart.”

“At the time, I still had a key to Faust’s,” Luc put in. “He took it. And changed the lock. And he changes the security code on a weekly basis.”

“Faust comes down a few hours early to begin making the raviolis for the contest,” Gabe continued, “to find Luc, totally naked, sleeping on one of the long metal carts.”

“I was overheated.”

“And he’d used every last bit of competition cheese.”

I looked at Luc. “Oh, Luc, no.”

“To Faust, that still wasn’t the bad part,” Gabe said.

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