Under the Summer Triangle

Chapter 2: The Starting Line

We head back out towards my car and I open the door for her.

"In you go my lady."

She smiles and hops right in. "Do I get to have you close the door for me too?" She jokes about it wanting me to be her knight in shining armor or something.

"Nope." I leave it widely open and proceed to the driver side and hop in.

"Are you serious now?"

"I am starting the car now aren't I?" I rev up the engine and look at her with a sneaky smile on my face. "Please close the door my sadistic passenger."

She sighs hesitantly and closes it. "You have no sense of being a man don't you?"

"I just do not choose to. So anything good to eat around here that you know of?"

"Not really, I just transferred a couple days ago."

"Oh really? Where did you come from and why did you transfer here?"

"I'm from overseas actually. I lived in France before here. I guess I just wanted to escape life there."

I start to get more interested in her for some reason. I do not know why as I back up the car and head out from the parking lot in search of our place to eat, wherever that is.

"So why did you want to escape that life you had there?" I didn't expect a reply from her at this point, I was prying too much already.

"I just hated life there, everyone was so annoying and treating me as if I am an object to be abused by people there, they only ever want me for things that I have or because of my grades or something else, if you also didn't know, Europe has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy. I guess I wanted to avoid that as well."

" Are you serious? Especially that teen pregnancy thing?"

"Do you think I am lying? I kicked your nuts when you asked me to in front of alot of people didn't I?"

I retreat back to myself and felt embarassed at that thought of what transpired earlier. "Can we forget about that? Please?"

"Sure, find us a good place to eat first, I'm starving and I really do expect you to pay for it."

I bring back my eyes towards the road and look for a decent place to eat and maybe crash to because now that she brought it up, I felt like dying over the thought of how many people saw me in such agony awhile ago. "Papa John's? Looks like a Pizzeria, wanna try it out?"

"Aren't you going to take me to some place fancier than that? I did pay for your groceries."

"If I had the money for some place fancier you wouldn't have to pay for my groceries in the first place right?"

"Okay fine, let's eat there, hopefully it tastes good." Amidst all that she just said, she has this wanting smile on her face as if she wants to dine here so bad.

I park out in front of the restaurant and proceed to go down, luckily I don't have to do anything like open the door for her as she hurriedly gets out and rush in the restaurant while shouting, "I'll get you to close the door for me one way or another!~."

"Are you kidding me?!" I sigh and just proceed as told, lock up the car and head inside the restaurant.

As I walk in, I am attacked by vibrant colors of green, white and red, the signs of an Italian pizzeria, the main dining areas however are lined with vibrant brass colored walls and ceilings, wooden tables and gleaming utensils on top of them. I looked around to find Alex to notice her have this sort of glow in her eyes and starting to drool up a bit.

I snap my fingers in front of her face. She gets startled and immediately realizes what sort of personality she was showing me at that point, a glutton. A very bad glutton at that, that drools to the mere smell of fresh pizza. "Hey people are watching you, you're creeping them out."

She wipes her saliva off her face with her palm and proceeds to take a shot at controlling the situation. "Is that so? Shall we let them know what happened 20 minutes ago in Target?"

"Uhm.... No..... Let's get seated..." She got me good there, and probably all the times I want to argue about anything at this point, I'll be at a loss, for now. "Table for two please!." I shout out to catch the lady's attention that was manning the cashier.

She calls at a waitress to come over and help us. "Hello! My name is Jane, how can I help you two?"

"Yes, table for two please."

"Right this way sir." She leads us to a restaurant booth near the entrance that was just recently left vacant by the previous customer and quickly cleaned just moments before, obviously since we see the other employee put on the finishing touches on it before our waitress served us. We proceed to sit in that booth and she gives us the menus. "Thank you for choosing Papa John's sir, today we have a special for twenty dollars, it comes with 2 pizzas of your choice in 10 inch thin crust pizzas and 2 Carbonara spaghetti pastas along with complimentary drinks of your choice. Would you like to avail of that sir?"

The thought of the deal went across my mind as I do my usual thinking of computing expenses and how this would affect all of it. 20 dollars for pizza, that would leave me 30 dollars for the week. Roughly another 10 to 15 dollars for gas this week so that would leave 15 to 20 dollars for my miscellaneous needs. Not a bad deal if I do say so myself. "We will take that then."

Alex looks at me dead in the eye and asks. "Are you sure about that? You looked skeptical for a second there."

"Yes I am, I did the math already."

"Well you heard him Jane, we have a smartass here."

The waitress laughs it off and proceeds to ask us of what pizzas we wanted. Alex chooses to go with classic Pepperoni. "I'll go for whatever the chef recommends then, surprise me if you will."

Alex, after hearing my choice, changes her's. "Wait if he can get it like that, then do the same for me, but something different from him too of course."

The waitress laughs at us and says the weirdest yet most piercingly real joke I have ever heard in a long while. "Okay then, you two have fun now! You guys are such a great couple!" She hurries to input the orders at the registrar and leaves us with pale looks on our faces.

"Did she just say that...?"

"Yes, yes she did."

"Do we really look like ----"

I stop her before she finishes it, "Please, let's just forget about it." I look away from her and proceed to look outside of the window avoiding eye contact from her.

....

...

.

As i blush in one of the most hardest in my life.

~END OF CHAPTER 2~