KARMA COLADA

Chapter Six

"THIS is the best Chinese restaurant in the area!" Naomi cheerily announced, withholding the fact that it also happened to be the only Chinese restaurant in the area.

She looked upon Leon's unmoving scowl, hopeful for a reply but getting zilch in return.

Disappointed, Naomi directed her attention to her chow mein, picking up a small curl of prawn with her dainty chopsticks and lopping it into her mouth. She decided Francine was telling the truth about her ex-fiancé.

Initially, Naomi thought Francine was just blowing things out of proportion to justify her actions, but after knowing Leon Fink for less than an hour now, he really was the most cold, heartless fish.

Francine's words, not hers.

Who goes to a Chinese restaurant and just orders tea? Not even a fried spring roll?

Leon Fitzwilliam Fink, that's who.

Naomi's eyes followed his every move as he picked up his cup of hot tea for a dignified sip. Everything about him reeked of money.

Like, really old, generational money.

Leon wasn't flashy with his wealth like Xavier and his family, but Naomi could tell—from his neatly-cropped dark mahogany hair, perfectly-tailored clothes (was that a Patek Phillippe on his wrist?), down to his trimmed nails—that Leon was born into money.

Even a single lift of his finger was controlled and elegant, but most of all, calculated.

All of this made it terribly difficult for Naomi to maintain eye contact with him. Plus, the fact that his icy blue eyes made her stomach flip for some mystery reason.

At least, his companion was much warmer a person in comparison.

"Are you sure you're not hungry, Fink?" said companion asked, flashing a brief smile at Naomi. She liked him. Hank, was it? She could sense he had a goodness in him that not a lot of people possessed. Or maybe it was the moustache reinforcing that bias.

"I'm not hungry," Leon replied exasperatedly. "Besides, I don't like Chinese food."

His statement horrified Naomi, as well as Phoenix Cuisine's waitress, Ruwan, who nearly dropped Hank's side order of spring rolls to the floor upon hearing his blasphemous words.

With obvious animosity, Ruwan slapped the side dish down next to Hank's mountainous plate of fried rice. "Do you not like food with flavour, sir?" she demanded, settling her hands on her hips.

Leon replied, unblinking, "Just greasy food."

When Ruwan looked about to begin a one-hour lecture on how decidedly un-greasy the food was at her family's restaurant, Naomi stopped her with a slight shake of her head; as if saying, 'Don't even bother'.

Ruwan clasped her lips into a thin line, fuming. She then furrowed her brows at Naomi, asking in Mandarin, "Are you okay with these two strangers?"

Despite her limited grasp of the language, Naomi mustered a reply, "I'm okay. No need to worry."

Ruwan persisted, "Are you sure? One of them is a real stupid egg."

Naomi stopped herself from chuckling just in time. "Don't be mean, Ruwan."

But what happened next caused Naomi to choke on her saliva.

"You two should be ashamed for gossiping about someone in front of their faces," Leon admonished in fluent Mandarin.

Everything from his diction and grammar sounded like he spoke the language all his life, unlike Naomi, who was actually Chinese.

Her mother would've been so disappointed.