“Will I . . .” I repeated, glancing at Theo, “what?”
“That’s the second part of the surprise,” he replied, reaching inside his sport jacket and pulling out a pink piece of paper with a bow on it. “Here.”
“Theo,” I said. “This is too much.”
“What? It’s our anniversary. Open it.”
Now I did risk a look at Daisy, only to see on her face something worse than offense or annoyance: pity. Oh, God, I thought. All I’d wanted, with this double date, was to show her and Morris why they were wrong about Theo. If I could just get us all together for one meal, I’d reasoned, they would quickly see he was not, as they thought, an obnoxious summer person, know-it-all, or big-city snob. Despite my best effort, though, so far I’d proven just the opposite.
It had started with the sport coat. Actually, scratch that. It had started with the restaurant. My idea was to go to the Inlet Drive-In, which had some of the best shrimp burgers in town, and just eat at the picnic tables there. We’d get some of our favorite food, and Theo would get to experience a bit of the real Colby, done our way. Win-win. But he had other ideas.
“A double date! Sounds great,” he’d replied. “I just read about this new pan-Asian place in the paper. I’ll make us a reservation.”
“Pan-Asian?” I’d repeated. “In Colby?”
“No, it’s somewhere else.” He turned around from the kitchen sink, where he was busy washing some huge grapes Ivy apparently required to have on hand at all times, picking up his phone. After pushing a few buttons, he said, “Cape Frost. That’s not far, right?”
“It’s not close, exactly.”
He squinted at the screen, reading off of it. “‘Offering a range of both traditional and modern Asian fare, Haiku boasts an extensive sushi bar, a wide array of sake choices, and one of the best vegetarian menus in the area.’ Great, right?”
“I guess,” I said, sounding uncertain even to myself. “But it might be easier if we just, you know, stay closer to home and keep it simple.”
“It doesn’t get much simpler than sushi,” he pointed out, going back to his grapes. “Fish. Rice. Seaweed.”
“I don’t think Morris is much of a fan of that.”
“What about Daisy? I’m sure she has a more adventurous palate, right?”
“Why? Because she’s Asian?”
He gave me a look. “Emaline. I don’t stereotype.”
“I’m just saying—”
“What I meant,” he continued, over me, “is that Daisy, from what you’ve said, has a very urban sensibility when it comes to fashion. I figured that might apply to cuisine as well.”
Now I felt like the one stereotyping, which was why I didn’t tell him Daisy, for all her reading of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, preferred pizza above just about all other food. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” He was drying the grapes now, carefully, with a paper towel. “Look, just let me make a reservation. I promise, they’ll like it.”
So earlier that evening, I’d put on jeans and one of my nicer tops, pulled back my hair, and worn some eyeliner—all things I never would even think of doing for a shrimp burger at the Inlet. Because I was dressed differently, I probably shouldn’t have been surprised to see Theo do the same. But the sport jacket still felt like a bit much.
He was wearing it casually, with jeans and a button-down white oxford shirt, expensive sneakers on his feet. Personally, though—and I knew this said more about me than him—I associated any kind of dress jacket with formals and funerals, not dinner. I could only hope Morris wasn’t in shorts.
He was. And a T-shirt, albeit what looked like either a new or newly laundered one. Daisy, true to form, looked gorgeous in a floral dress and sandals, a simple white eyelet cardigan over her shoulders. When they walked out of the house, Theo jumped from his seat, opening the back door for her. Morris, not noticing, got in first.
Oh, dear, I thought. Out loud I said, “Everybody ready for a road trip?”
“Let’s go to the Inlet,” Morris asked. “I could dominate on a shrimp burger right now.”
“We’re going for sushi, remember?” Daisy said to him.
“I don’t eat raw fish,” he grumbled.
“You’ll like this,” Theo assured him. “They have a mix of modern and traditional fare.”
Like this would be a selling point to Morris, who subsisted mainly on Nabs crackers, Mountain Dew, and sausage biscuits. Instead of thinking about this, I concentrated on the road. The next sign we passed said CAPE FROST: 32 MILES. Even though I risked a certain ticket going above the speed limit, I still felt every one of them.
Once at Haiku, I hoped for a reset, a chance to start things fresh. But as soon as we were seated, Morris looked at the menu and announced there was nothing on it he liked.
“It’s, like, ten pages long,” I pointed out to him.
“I don’t eat raw food,” he said again.
“It’s not all raw.”
“Look,” Daisy said, turning to one of the last pages. “They have a basic burger, it’s just got Asian slaw.”
“Oh, no ordering off the For the Americanos section!” Theo said. “That’s against table rules!”
We all just looked at him. I said, “The what section?”