The Café Vanellas

6: on date nights

// Toriv

The moment the professor left my shop that evening he asked me to go on a date with him, I opened up my phone's planner app and dutifully typed in: Tuesday, 6PM, date with Prof.

But that felt weird, so after a second I changed it to Tuesday, 6PM, dinner with Prof.

"God, no." Dinner with Prof. Singh. "Damn it." Date night with Mahendra. "Goddd."

"Your mom is going to love this," Maveliv said from the counter. She gave me the cheekiest smirk her sixteen-year-old part-timer self could muster and lifted up her phone.

"If you text her about this, you are fired," I told her distractedly, because I was still kind of trying to process what had just happened, and apparently my struggle with the title of my upcoming appointment was the way I had chosen to work it all out. Dinner with Mahendra? That was nice and neutral. Maybe I was just being weird because it was the first time I was using his given name.

Mahendra. Mah-hain-druh. I thought it sounded musical, almost like an elven name. Not like that opinion of mine has any stock in it, considering my own name is just two drab little syllables. Tore-iv. You should hear the French try to say it. Though I guess it's probably even worse for the musically-named Professor Mahendra Singh.

I guess I was in shock for the whole rest of our encounter that day, because it wasn't until later, when Mav The Part-Timer and I were closing up shop, that it sank in: "He asked me out."

"And I'm not allowed to tell Auntie Vani about it, I know," Mav said grumpily.

I waved at her impatiently with the handle of my mop. "No, I mean--the professor. Asked. Me out."

"Uh, yeah."

"Like. Me? And him?"

"Are you just going to keep rubbing it in or--"

"Does it sound like I'm trying to rub it in? I'm honestly more confused than anything."

"Why?" Mav nudged my mop bucket out of the way so she could Windex the next table. "He's good-looking. You're good-looking. You've already got at least one thing in common."

"Well, yeah. That's not the bit I'm surprised about."

"Sooo...?"

"I don't know. It's weird. You're just a kid, why am I telling you all this?"

She stopped wiping the table to give me a spectacular eyeroll. "Uh, what happened to me 'having buckets of potential' and being 'so much more mature than my years'?"

"You do have buckets of potential! And more maturity than most people, including myself. But it's different in matters of...going on dates."

"How, exactly?"

"It just is," I insisted, really professionally.

She gave me a very teenage "whatever you say" look and went back to cleaning surfaces. I felt a bubble of affection rise up in my throat as I watched her. When I first met her, she was eleven years old, undersized and skittish as a squirrel. Barely said a word when spoken to. Even now, in times of uber stress, she can still shut down, decide to not use her words until the danger is well past. But she's gotten a lot better over the years. This must be what a proud parent feels like. Or a proud big brother, as it were.

"You know," I told her, leaning on my mop and gazing at her like how I imagine a mama doe gazes at her fawn, "sometimes I feel like you're the one who's the big sister and I'm the little brother."

"I'm pretty sure that's not how it works," Mav said, but I could hear the smile in her voice.

We finished cleaning up soon after. I double-checked all the fridges and locked the doors then we went our separate ways.