Page 27 of Spread Your Wings
“Coffee, black. Please,” he added when Mustafa frowned.
“Tea for me, please,” Mustafa said. “Earl Grey.”
“Milk? Sugar?”
“No, thanks.” He gave the waitress a smile.
“I’ll be right back with your drinks.”
She returned with their steaming beverages. Sammy asked her what she recommended to eat. The place reminded him of an all-night diner, specializing in eggs and fruit pie. Sammy ordered a mushroom omelet and a piece of blueberry pie.
Mustafa ordered a slice of spinach quiche. “It’s eggs and pie,” he said.
Sammy offered Mustafa half of the blueberry pie. He didn’t have room for the giant slice after the plate-sized omelet. The waitress brought Mustafa another fork—she’d already taken his away—and topped Sammy’s coffee. Then she left them alone. The look in her eye said it all. She assumed they were a couple. It made her grin from ear to ear as she sauntered off, drawling, “You boys take your time,” over her shoulder.
Sammy watched her duck behind the counter and then glanced back at Mustafa. He held Sammy’s gaze far longer than was natural for two men to share. They ignored the delicious piece of pie dying their lips purple.
“What?” he asked.
“You,” Mustafa said. “You did not need to invite me. We could have gone our separate ways when we arrived in London.”
“Do you want to leave?” Sammy asked. “Did Vasily make arrangements for you?”
“He has family here. A distant cousin, or maybe someone who owes him a favor. Hard telling. It’s Vasily. I don’t know. I wanted to stay with you, but I thought it was a pipe dream. Is that how you say it? Pipe dream?”
“Yeah,” Sammy said.
“What does it mean?” Mustafa’s forehead wrinkled with confusion. “So many weird sayings you have.”
“It means fantasy,” Sammy said. “It’s from opium den days, the dreams people would have after smoking a pipe full of drugs.”
Mustafa shook his head. “I feel like I could spend the rest of my life learning your language, and still not understand all of it.”
“Don’t worry,” Sammy said. “You already have a better understanding than some people I knew at Yale.”
Mustafa grunted a laugh.
“Yeah. They were in the masters’ program.”
Sammy laughed with Mustafa this time, shaking his head as he shared common misused words like “irregardless” and “supposably.”
“They must have paid someone to write their entrance essays,” Sammy said.
“How did you get into Yale? Isn’t it hard?”
Sammy nodded. “I didn’t get into Harvard,” he said. “Yale was my first choice, but my mom wanted me to go to Harvard law. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I didn’t want to be a lawyer. Or a stockbroker,” he said, tapping Mustafa’s foot with his own under the table.
“Isn’t it expensive?”
He nodded. “My dad’s estate covered it.”
“Dad?”
Sammy nodded, his cheeks heating from embarrassment. He always felt strange when he talked about the family he’d never known. “He died when I was two. Car accident. He never married my mom, but his name is on my birth certificate.” His father, Collier Rollins, had been from one of the wealthiest families in Atlanta. “His family tried to sweep us under the rug, but my mom’s feisty. She had a paternity test done and everything. She threatened to sue if they didn’t cover my college tuition. I applied to all the Ivy League schools, to make them pay.” He still wondered which had made her prouder: Yale’s prestige, or its price tag. “My grandfather came to my graduation, but that’s the only time I’ve ever seen him. He said he was proud of me. I had a feeling he came to look my mother inthe eyes, to see if they had dollar signs in them, or if she was just a mom who wanted the best for her son.”
“Well? What did he see?”
“She’s still alive, so that’s something.” Sammy shrugged. His mom’s eyes always looked like dollar signs to Sammy, but then, he knew her better than Mr. Rollins did. “Sorry. I’ve built them up like they’re a crime family. I don’t know them.”
