Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 93785 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 469(@200wpm)___ 375(@250wpm)___ 313(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93785 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 469(@200wpm)___ 375(@250wpm)___ 313(@300wpm)
“Jackie, I love your passion about the drink menu.” I giggle.
She shrugs happily. “It’s a perk of the job to be able to genuinely recommend things to customers. You can’t go wrong, no matter what you choose. I say that with my whole heart.”
“So what do you think?” I ask Drake. “What sounds good to you?”
“I always get a Mexican lager they carry from a local brewery. Although, I did have the lychee mule once and I’d order that again if I wanted something different.”
I wrinkle my nose. “I’m not a beer girl, but I love sangria.”
“Got it,” Jackie says. “Glass or pitcher?”
“He’s driving,” I say, laughing.
Jackie laughs, too. “Great. I’ll work on that while you peruse our menu. Again, let me know if you need recommendations.”
“Thank you,” I say. Once she’s gone, I look at Drake. “She’s so nice.”
“I’ve never had bad service here. You know, the level of service is highly underrated. It’s one of the things that immediately comes to mind when you consider going back to a restaurant.”
“So true. My friends and I have two places in our rotation and a big part of that is because of the staff. For example, one of our favorite servers, Kim, just got a new puppy. How do I know that? Because when we walk through those doors, we feel like family. It’s great.”
“Tell me about your friends. What do they do?”
“Audrey is my doctor friend.”
Drake chuckles. “The philosophy doctor with a specialty in tetanus?”
“That would be the one.” I grin. “Astrid works for Renn Brewer. He owns the Tennessee Royals.”
“No shit.”
My brows pull together, not understanding why that bit of information received that response. “No shit.”
“My buddy, Jory, plays for the Royals.”
“Oh. What a small world. Astrid’s fiancé is Gray Adler.”
Drake nods his head, surprised, I think, but impressed, nonetheless. “Adler is a fucking beast.”
“I’ve heard he’s a fan of a certain sportscaster.”
“You should hook us up.”
I laugh. “Are you breaking up with me already? I’m not opposed to a threesome, you know. But I can’t do it with my best friend’s fiancé.”
“Not a problem. I don’t share.”
My smile is coquettish. “It’s hard to share something you’ve never had.”
His eyes darken, but Jackie arrives with our drinks before he can reply. I would love to hear what he came back at me with, but there’s something fun about leaving the conversation just like that.
It won’t hurt the man to let that marinate for a while.
“Here you go,” Jackie says, setting Drake’s drink in front of him. She pours a glass of sangria for me and leaves the pitcher on the edge of the table. “Have you thought about what you’d like to eat?”
“Everything looks amazing,” I say, wondering how to narrow it down. “How do people decide?”
“My advice is to order a few plates each and see what you like,” Jackie says. “We can kind of go from there.”
Drake looks at me over his menu. “I’m thinking the stuffed dates, potatoes bravas, chicken skewers, stuffed peppers, and definitely the chorizo clams.”
He rattles off his dishes, and then the pressure’s on me. There are so many I want to try, but my eye is drawn to the Hess Sampler—four of the owner’s favorite dishes named after their children: the Max, Mav, Cove, and Casio.
Once Jackie has taken our menus and departed, Drake and I settle in. He picks up his beer, leaning back in his chair with a cool confidence that puts me at ease.
“You were saying something earlier about something being fun,” he says. “We got interrupted before you could tell me what it was.”
I take a sip of my sangria and nearly die. It’s the best damn sangria I’ve ever had.
“I was thinking about how fun it would be if we, as a part of our dating experiment, ran a giveaway of some sort and sent a couple here on a date. Maybe a blind date where we match the couple or something. People could nominate themselves, and we could play matchmaker. Doesn’t that sound like a good time? And it would give your friend some bonus exposure.”
Drake snickers. “Look at you. One date with me and you’re wanting to bring people together instead of tearing them apart.”
“Ha. Ha. Ha.” I take another drink. “Speaking of the podcast, how much of this are we sharing with the public?”
“Have you checked your socials today?”
I shake my head.
He takes a deep breath and blows it out slowly. “It’s wild, Gianna. These people are more invested in our lives than we are. It’s hilarious.” He takes a swig of his beer. “I think we’re going to have to give them something, or they’ll riot.”
“Maybe we can record something—a two-to-four-minute thing—that we can post on Social every Monday or something. We can catch them up on whatever happens, so they feel included. And if we don’t have a date or nothing to report, we’ll just make something up.”