Page 30 of Up All Night
Chapter 10
Problem: I had no idea where to take Hadrian for dinner. I agonized over that more than I agonized over what to wear.
If I were a decent cook, I would have made him something at the share house. But I can’t cook worth shit, so a restaurant it had to be.
My neighborhood had a ton of restaurants. A lot of them were nothing special, though. A lot of chain restaurants you find in every neighborhood in Japan. A ton of Italian restaurants that a connoisseur like Hadrian wouldn’t find special for a date. There were a lot of Chinese and Indian restaurants that I’m sure were perfectly fine, but I’m so finicky about those cuisines that I wasn’t sure if I could handle them.
The only thing notable about my neighborhood was the plethora of French restaurants, but again, a cuisine I didn’t really jive with. Besides, most of them closed early in the evening, so that didn’t do us any good.
I got lucky when I canvassed the neighborhood that afternoon and found an “American” restaurant ran by a couple of foreigners. (They even spoke English. Whoa.) Although I wasn’t that worried about getting Hadrian to a restaurant. I was more worried about what I had planned for later that night. I hadn’t told Hadrian what I wanted from our last night together. I mean, I wasn’t going to trick him into anything. Goodness, no. But it was going to take some awkward conversations for him to understand what was up.
First, dinner.
I met him outside a nearby train station. He still wore the tight jeans and leather jacket, but his shirt was a long-sleeved turtleneck that made him look so stupidly good (that’s a real description, yes,) that I convinced myself every woman walking by us was jealous of me. They had to be. Look at this handsome devil approaching me with a smile and a pat to the arm. Look how comfortable he is with me. Look at how hekisses my cheek!!!before staying a respectful distance away from me as we walk down the street. He could hold my hand or loop his arm around my shoulders any time he wanted, but I wouldn’t ask it of him. That would’ve been something he worked his way up to over multiple dates.
Too bad we wouldn’t have them.
“You like American food?” I asked.
“American?” What was that face for? Was he going to question what “American” food meant? (You know what it means in a foreign country. Hamburgers. Good ol’ fashioned types of hamburgers. If you’re really lucky, you get a place that also serves up American breakfasts and dishes like country fried steak. If you’re lucky. You are rarely so lucky in Japan.) “Yes. I like American food.”
“Good. Because if you’re moving there, you better like it.” I could’ve said the same thing about Japan and me, oops. There’s a reason I always lose weight in Japan, and it has everything to do with the fact I can’t eat much of the local cuisine.
“American food is good. Although Italian is better.”
“You know, I can’t argue with that.”
The owners of the restaurant waved at me when I brought my date in. The Canadian woman in charge gave me a knowing wink as she handed us English menus. Hadrian instantly gave his menu the most puzzling of looks, so I quietly asked the woman to bring us one of their Japanese menus. She was surprised, but said nothing.
“But I need to practice my English,” Hadrian said.
“You can look at both. It’s best way to practice Japanese, yes?”
He smiled. “Maybe so.”
Good thing I got him a menu he could better understand, because the burgers there were, uh, intense. They allowed you to put almost anything and everything on a burger. Some of it was very American, like bacon and “house sauce,” but other things were hilariously Japanese, like extra octopus ink and pickled ginger. No thanks to both. I would, however, try a bacon burger for the first time in Japan. Do you know how hard it is to get bacon in Japan? It isnotsomething they consume on a regular basis, even though pork is the second most popular meat after fish.
Once we placed our orders of separate burgers and a giant basket of fries to share, the owner left us to our little corner. I admit, I was a bit nervous to have this date within earshot of others who spoke both English and Japanese. But whatever, right?
“Again, I’m sorry about this.” Hadrian showed me his new phone. “It break. I get new one. I message you but too long.”
His panicked face told me that he feared I would be angry with him. Honey, if I were that mad at you over something so silly, I wouldn’t have gone out on this second date with you. “No worries. I understand.”
He sighed in relief. “I’m glad. I think I want to see you again. You ask me to see you. I am happy, but something like this… it happened.”
I nodded. “Maybe I worried a little. Like maybe you didn’t like me.”
“Really?” He laughed, opening the translation app on his phone. He punched something in before showing me the screen.“You are impossible not to like.”
I blushed. I mean, really! This guy was going to lay the flirtations on heavy tonight. Good. He could make up for last time.
“You go back to America?”
That was what he was going to start with? “Unfortunately. I don’t have much choice. I have to go home.”
“Ah, it’s nice. Home in America.”
“Soon it will be your home too.”
