A Year Away From Her

Chapter 10

The restaurant that Everly took me to was only a couple of minutes away from my apartment, in Deep Ellum. It was a cajun based restaurant with major New Orleans vibes going with the place but what surprised me was the live band playing jazz music. I typically wasn't one for jazz, but it fit the place perfectly and just made the place very upbeat.

Everly glanced back at me as we waited in line just to get to the hostess stand. "Is this okay? We can leave if you don't like it." She quickly asked.

I chuckled and shook my head, "No, this is great! I would have never have guess Deep Ellum to have something like this, I always just thought of it as a place for people to going bar hopping."

Everly laughed, "You're not wrong, I know countless people who only come to Deep Ellum to barhop. But it's good business for me."

I tilted my head in confusion, "How so?" I would have thought the bar-hopping would be terrible business for her because they aren't staying in one place for long periods of time. But given that her place was a club instead of a bar, maybe it's different.

"Well, people start out wanting to go barhopping, but soon they get tried of drinking and decide they want to go to a club to dance and party and I know a good bit of the owners around here, so if the bartender feels like the customer would like Taste the Rainbow, the bartender recommends it. Once at my bar, they start dancing and get thirsty, and end up buying more drinks, so everyone wins basically." Everly explained and nodded, following along with what she was saying.

Finally, we were seated after Everly told the hostess that she had reservations. The hostess lead us to our table and placed down the menus before returning to her stand. As I went towards my seat, Everly was quick to stand behind it and helped to push in the seat once I sat down. I quietly thanked her before glancing down at the menu, but it wasn't long before I decided to go with the Jambalaya. By the time I had put down the menu and looked back up, Everly was patiently waiting on me.

"You already know what you want?" I asked curiously.

Everly smiled, "I may or may not have been here a few times." She paused, "Do you want wine?"

I raised an eyebrow, "So I should expect this place to be good then, right?" I questioned, but let out a small laugh. "And sure, I'm fine with wine." With being Italian, wine was basically water for my family, by the time I was thirteen, I had already starting drinking it with our dinners. Besides our mafia business, my family owned one of the biggest vineyard in Italy. It almost brought in the same amount of money as the mafia did and to be honest, I loved the vineyard. It was one of the most beautiful places to visit especially because of the hills and the most beautiful sunsets and was overall just so peaceful and quiet.

Without a doubt, I wanted my wedding there, but thanks to Rico and him following tradition, we were having the wedding on the De Rossi's compound. Don't get me wrong, the De Rossi's compound was nice, but it was nothing compared to the country side of Italy.

"Trust me, the food here is pretty good." She then picked up the wine menu. "Do you have preference?"

I smiled at her before shaking my head, "But you choose. You are the one with a club that has a bar, so I expect the best from you."

She smirked, "I'll try my best."

~

Soon our waiter came around and asked us what we wanted. I ordered and then Everly followed. She decided on the blacken shrimp platter and order us both a glass of Pinot Noir. Once we got our glasses we were quick to cheers to our date and it wasn't long before our dinner came out. We continued to chat while enjoying our dinner, and I won't lie, I enjoyed every bit of our date. My food was great, it had just the right amount of spice and surprisingly, the Pinot Noir went well with my dinner. After both of us finished, Everly paid for dinner something I tried to do, but somehow when I wasn't paying attention, she slipped our waiter her credit card before I had a chance. I was a little annoyed about the whole thing, because it was something that Viviana always did. But Everly was smart, when we were about to walk out of the place, we walked in front of the band in which she spun me around and we began dancing.