Are You Sure? (Marina)

Ten.

Carina

Maya ordered us breakfast waffles from a breakfast truck. She handed me a cone with a waffle curled to fit the cone shape and it was filled with fresh fruit and powdered sugar. She handed me a side of syrup. "Is there a particular way to eat this? Am I supposed to dip it or sip it."

"That's the fun part you eat it in whatever way makes sense to you" she smiled and I just continued to look at the creative way Americans served food, because somehow a plate with utensils was now beneath the classic breakfast. She pulled out a chair for me to sit down.

"Thank you." I opened the little plastic container holding the syrup and ran through the ways in which eating this would not result in spilling syrup all over my clothes. "What's your favorite color?" The question made me look up questioningly because it had come out of nowhere, I laughed nervously, "Scusi?"

"Favorite color. Mine is red or orange depends on the shade." I expected a lot of things to come from Mayas mouth but such a regular question was odd.

"Blue like the ocean." Not just because her eyes, a color I could never let go of since I first saw them, but because they reminded me of the beach back in Italy. They reminded me of home.

"Why did you want to be a doctor?" She drizzled a little syrup over the edge of the waffle and immediately took a bite before it could fall off. Her tongue ran over her lips to clean off the stickiness and I almost forgot the question.

"My dad is a doctor. He- I looked up to him growing up and the way he saved lives. I guess it was a way to make him proud but then I got into it and chose my specialty for myself. My brother felt the same though he's a lot more like my dad than he will ever admit." Andrea was another reason I came to Seattle, he was now the age our father was during his first episode and I needed to be here for him. Especially the last couple of weeks I've noticed him working more and sleeping less. He had even stopped taking me to PT because he was working.

"Your brother doesn't have your sexy accent." Her cheeks turned red and tried to hide it behind another bite of her food. I nodded and copied Maya's way of eating since it seemed to be working for her. The waffle was delicious and the syrup tasted very natural, I would let the odd choice for breakfast slide.

"He grew up here. He moved here with our mother when I was 16 and Andrea was 11. I stayed behind and took care- I stayed with our papa." The fight played in my head the week before mama and Andrea left, his screaming and my mothers crying.

"Does your mom live here too?" I wasn't ready for this question. I filled my mouth with food because this was not where I thought this would go. Somehow I imagined being back at Maya's with my legs in the air not me facing the sky to hold in the tears thinking of my mother brought to my eyes.

"She umm- she died a while ago.. Maya these aren't the flirty questions I imagined you asking." I flipped the hair on my shoulder away since I couldn't toss it over my head.

"Carina, I want to know you. I've told you so much about me and all I know is that you're a smart n' sexy, Porsche driving, Italian OB/GYN who studies the female orgasm, gives great ones, cooks like an angel and is picky with her coffee. I know how to make you come but didn't know what your favorite color was." I couldn't help but laugh at her description of me. The way she whispered the last sentence also amused me because she wasn't shy in the bedroom but in public, the mention of sex somehow made her nervous.

I shrugged my shoulders, "Sounds like you got it all. Nothing more to add really.." Nothing she would need to know if sex was all she wanted from me. I didn't need to feel more attached to her than I did from just the way she held my hand.