Most Likely to Succeed

“You lower your voice,” my mother seethed.

“Why should I,” I challenged her, “when I’m already grounded?”

“You’re not grounded,” Dad said patiently. He told my mother, “Kaye’s not really going to a dance that doesn’t exist with a boyfriend she doesn’t have.” He suggested to Barrett, “Tell us more about your classes this semester. When do you get to particle physics?”

I turned to Barrett as if I was interested in his sophomore-level physics classes too. As if anyone was. Dad could carry on pleasant conversation when nobody else wanted to. He’d honed his talents over a period of years in this family. The whole dinner was giving me a headache, though. I was clenching my teeth so hard I’d made my jaw hurt. I realized this and opened my mouth to relax my face, forming a hideous expression, I’m sure, just as Sawyer came around the corner balancing a tray with a wine bottle and an ice bucket.

He wasn’t even looking at me, though. He set up a stand for the tray, placed the bucket on the table, then picked up the wine in a white towel. He stood there until Dad finished what he was saying to Barrett. Dad finally glanced around at Sawyer. Then my mother glanced over her shoulder at him too. Sawyer’s nervous gaze flashed between them.

“What are you waiting for?” my mother asked.

“Normally I would show the label to Mr. Gordon,” Sawyer said, “since he ordered the wine. But I was waiting for some indication from you, because it seems like you might ask why I assume I should show the bottle to the man of the party.”

Dad and Barrett burst into laughter. Diners at the surrounding tables looked over.

My mother saw people looking too, and bent forward over the table. “Why are you laughing? I wouldn’t do that.”

“You have done that,” Dad and Barrett said at the same time. Dad added, “At that restaurant on our trip to Miami, for starters.”

Sawyer kept looking from one of them to the other, with the demeanor of an accused murderer waiting to hear his verdict in court. He still didn’t glance at me, which was just as well. He knew he’d gotten himself in trouble, but he had no idea how angry he’d just made my mother.

Or how, if we ever did have any chance of going out together, he’d just killed that possibility.

When Dad was finally through chuckling, he wiggled his finger, inviting Sawyer to show him the bottle. My mother scowled as Sawyer maneuvered through an impressive display of ceremonial wine pouring. First he cut the foil over the top of the bottle with a large pocketknife he produced from his waiter’s apron. I wondered if he brought this thing to school every day, too, and whether that was legal. Next he brought out a corkscrew. Remembering all the comedies I’d seen in which people got hit in the eye when someone popped the cork on champagne, I gripped the edge of my seat, expecting disaster—but Sawyer opened the wine like it was nothing.

He offered the cork to Dad—who shook his head as if that wasn’t necessary—placed the cork by Dad’s plate, then poured a splash of wine into Dad’s glass, turning the bottle carefully so it didn’t drip, I supposed. Dad sipped from his glass and nodded. Sawyer filled my mother’s glass half-full, then Dad’s, and with one practiced movement shoved the bottle into the ice bucket, keeping the white towel wrapped around the top.

My parents always ordered wine with dinner at restaurants. I must have seen this dance performed a hundred times, but I’d never appreciated the choreography, or the performer. Funny how a crush changed everything.

Sawyer stepped back. “Is there anything else I can do for you right now?”

“You have done a lot already,” my mother said.

This time Sawyer focused on me, his blue eyes huge, before escaping to check on the next table.

My mother shook her head at me. She didn’t say a word, but her message was clear: You are dating Sawyer De Luca over my dead body.

At the same time Dad was asking, “What did you prove, Sylvia, attacking that child? It’s not a fair fight. Let it go.” He turned to Barrett. “Next time you’re home, I’m hoeing the potatoes and catching the shrimp myself.”

“You’re making a joke out of it,” my mother said, “but your daughter just declared she is going out with him.”

“That’s not what she declared.” Dad asked me, “Is that what you declared?”

I turned away from both of them to speak to Barrett, for once. “Please, tell us more about particle physics.”

That got my parents asking Barrett questions again, at least. I stayed silent and worried about what Sawyer was thinking, and whether he hated me, as he strode from table to table to the kitchen and back to another table. I saw now why he slept so soundly.

After about twenty minutes, he brought out another tray and set up a stand. He placed redfish in front of my mother, trout in front of Dad, shrimp and fries in front of Barrett (damn Barrett and his shrimp and fries for causing all this), and the same in front of me. A couple of weeks ago when a bunch of us from school had eaten here, Sawyer had arranged my shrimp around the edge of my plate like the curls of my new hairstyle. This time the shrimp were piled humorlessly with a garnish of parsley. Judging from this, our prospects were ruined.

After he’d served us all, he drew the wine bottle out of the ice bucket, wiped it carefully with the towel, and poured my mother another glass. She looked up at him and asked, “Isn’t it illegal for you to serve alcohol before you’re twenty-one?”