He took a sip of his water. “For the Americanos. That’s what my dad called the section on a menu that’s specifically for people who won’t try anything out of their comfort zone. In our family, you weren’t allowed to get anything like that. You had to go native, or go home.”
“I’d love to go home,” Morris muttered, but I was pretty sure Theo didn’t hear him.
“I’m not the most adventurous eater either,” Daisy, always the peacemaker, said more audibly. “Maybe we can both pick something a bit different but not too radical?”
“Just let me order some appetizers for the table,” Theo said, opening his own menu. “I promise, you’ll like them.”
He wasn’t all wrong. The edamame was great (although Morris, who was not a believer in vegetables other than pickles, avoided it on principle), the tempura shrimp a hit all around. The cabbage dumplings were tolerable, once dunked in soy sauce. Not so much the seaweed salad, which, despite Theo’s insistence that we all try a bite of everything, remained on three out of four plates as they were cleared. One course down, I thought. It had only been thirty minutes.
For dinner, only I’d agreed to sushi. Daisy had gone with a dish that looked not unlike standard chicken and broccoli, which I knew because I was looking at it longingly while forcing down my hurricane and spider rolls. Morris, out of spite if nothing else, had gone all-out Americanos with a burger and fries. Worse, when Theo gave us a detailed tutorial on how use our chopsticks, he’d made a big show of using his to dip his fries in a pond of ketchup. I’d been so ready for dessert, if only because I figured by then we’d be past the worst of it.
Now, I looked down at the folded piece of paper with the bow on it, then back at Theo. “Open it,” he said, nudging me with his shoulder. “It’s not a bomb.”
I glanced at Daisy—who, by her expression, was not convinced of this—then slid my finger under the single piece of tape, letting the paper fall open.
DANCING! MOONLIGHT! PRIZES! GET FORMAL FOR A GOOD CAUSE! it said in big block letters over a background of a picture of a retro-style couple waltzing. I couldn’t even read the rest of it, as I was too busy anticipating the oncoming explosion. Ka-boom.
“It’s this dinner and dancing thing,” Theo was saying excitedly from beside me. “I kept seeing flyers all over the place, so I went into this clothing shop and asked about it.”
“The Beach Bash,” I said.
“From what the girl there said, it’s pretty awesome,” he went on, clearly unaware of the silence from the rest of us. “So I bought us VIP tickets. We get a sit-down dinner before. Just like the prom! I’ll have to rustle up a tux somewhere.”
I had a flash of those poufy, ruffled dresses Daisy had shown me a few weeks earlier. I hadn’t had a fitting yet, but I knew by now one had to be on the dressmaker form in her bedroom, covered in pins and chalk marks, at least halfway to something fabulous.
“Wow,” Daisy said quietly. “I didn’t even know they had a VIP option.”
“Because you’d never do it,” Morris told her.
“You guys have been to this before?” Theo asked.
“They go every year,” Morris told him, gesturing to me and Daisy. “Together. It’s a tradition.”
“Oh.” Theo looked at Daisy, then at me. “Wow, sorry. I didn’t mean to step on any—”
“It’s fine,” she said quickly, forcing a smile. “I normally make our dresses and I’ve been so busy getting ready for school I’ve totally dropped the ball this year.”
I looked at her, surprised. “Really?”
She nodded. “I just didn’t want to tell you, because I feel so slack. I was kind of hoping, you know, we could let the whole going-for-the-win thing slide this year.”
I so, so wanted to believe this. But I knew Daisy. First of all, when it came to dresses and vision, she was never slack. Secondly, and more tellingly, she was always unerringly, overwhelmingly polite. Even if it meant lying about something important to her.
“Why don’t we buy another pair of tickets?” Theo said to her. “We can double-date!”
“She already bought tickets,” Morris said. Clearly, Theo feeling bad was not his concern. “Weeks ago.”
I swallowed, looking back down at the cake. After everything I’d forced myself to try, I couldn’t deny the truth: it looked delicious.
“Hey, I’m sorry,” Theo said to Daisy, clearly meaning it. “I had no idea. The last thing I want to do is, you know, get in the way of something that’s important to you guys.”
“It’s really fine,” Daisy assured him again.
We all just sat there for a second, the awkwardness like another person at the table. What a disaster, I thought. Beside us, the tourists were laughing, having a blast. Of course.
“It’s just,” Theo said, finally, “the thing is, I, um, didn’t really get to do the dinner-dance, prom thing in high school. Like, at all. I know all this fanfare was kind of stupid, with the cake and sparklers, the big reveal . . .”
“Yep,” Morris said. I kicked him, hard.
“But,” Theo continued, reddening slightly, “when I saw this flyer, I thought it was my chance for a do-over. To have that memory, that kind of touchstone moment. The one I didn’t have because I was at home, dateless, watching French films with my parents.”