+ nueve
I sat across from Dieter as we ate at an Italian restaurant a half hour away that was not too formal and not too casual. My eyes looked over the menu with excitement.
"I hope you like Italian food." He told me with a nervous smile.
"I love it." I flashed him a grin. Everything looked amazing.
The waiter came to our table after about ten minutes, to give us enough time to consider our options, and I ordered the cheese ravioli plate while Dieter ordered the chicken alfredo. As we waited for the food to be served, he began a casual conversation with me. "So, how do you like Mexico?" He asked with a smile.
I raised an eyebrow at him in question. "How can you tell that I'm not from here?"
He gave the tiniest shrug of his shoulders, like it was painfully obvious. "You just have an air of being a foreigner. Plus, your Spanish is good, don't get me wrong. But you don't use any slang like we do. You talk kinda...formally. And you have a very slight accent." He was choosing his words carefully. Like he was afraid I would get offended.
I blushed at his words because it made me realize that he was so observant. He had gathered all of that from just talking to me twice. I wondered what else he might have noticed about me.
With a shrug of my shoulders, I decided to answer his previous question. "I haven't seen much of it. But what I have seen has been really lovely. What about you?"
If it was difficult to know about the personal lives of musicians and actors, it was even harder to know about the personal lives of athletes. Still, it was common knowledge that Dieter Damm Villalpando had been born in Guadalajara after his parents married. Hid father was the heir of an important communications company in Germany and he had travelled to Mexico to study abroad. His mother was from a family that owned a bakery in town. They had met when the bakery started offering free coffee to the university students during finals week and he was in there for hours in order to study.
The family then moved out to the US for two years, and then Canada for two years, before moving to Berlin when Dieter was four. They didn't return to Mexico until he was seventeen, probably around the same time that Enrique moved to Mexico from Venezuela.
A smile graced his lips as he told me, "Same." Adding, "I've spent most of my time since moving to Mexico at the Chivas training facility."
Soon the waiter set our plates in front of us and we started to eat. I had been so indecisive about choosing my meal because ravioli and chicken alfredo were my all time favorite Italian meals. Dieter caught me staring at his food hungrily and he gestured down at his plate. "Do you want to try some?" He asked with a polite smile.
I bit my lip, about to say no, but my hunger got the best of me. "Yes."
He scooted his plate close to me and I picked up a forkfull of noodles. Stuffing them into my mouth, I sighed happily. Thinking to make things a fair trade, I stabbed a ravioli square with my fork and leaned over the table, offering it to him. "Open up, Dieter." I giggled, moving the fork like an airplane before his face.
The twenty one year old shook his head. "You don't owe me anything."
I shook my head, refusing to take no for an answer. "Just eat it, Dieter. Please."
Rolling his eyes at me, he sighed. "Fine."
Opening his mouth, I slid the ravioli square into his mouth and he ate it happily.
-
After dinner he took me to a local park that had a lake in it and we waited for the sun to go down.
