Sev­er­al peo­ple turned to stare. Per­haps I had spo­ken too loud­ly.

'Yes, miss?" she asked, ut­ter­ly con­fused.

“Can I have a menu?” I asked in a whis­per. Both she and Whit­tak­er just stared. The bread guy laughed and the wa­ter guy

190

whacked the bread guy's leg. My face burned. “Oh. Sor­ry. Can I have a menu, please?”

Beth looked at Whit­tak­er for di­rec­tion. He smiled in­dul­gent­ly and nod­ded.

“One mo­ment,” Beth said.

She smiled tight­ly, eye­ing me as if I was a dog off the street, beg­ging for a free meal. When she fi­nal­ly walked off again, I leaned in to­ward Whit­tak­er.

“Did I do some­thing wrong?”

“Oh, no,” Whit­tak­er said. “I like that you're so ... in­de­pen­dent.”

“Be­cause I want my own menu?” I asked, my shoul­der mus­cles coil­ing slight­ly.

“It's just, this place is old school,” Whit­tak­er told me. “Usu­al­ly the man or­ders for the wom­an.”

“Well, that's ar­cha­ic.”

“No. It's tra­di­tion,” Whit­tak­er cor­rect­ed.

I felt like a five-?year-?old. In­stant­ly, re­sent­ment took over. I didn't want to be here. I didn't have to be here. He had some gall, talk­ing down to me that way. Beth re­turned with my menu and I opened it with­out thank­ing her. I scanned the list of meals quick­ly and ruled most of them out be­cause they ei­ther 1) con­tained seafood, to which I was al­ler­gic, or 2) were un­pro­nounce­able. I closed the menu and placed it on the ta­ble.

“De­cid­ed al­ready?” Whit­tak­er said, lift­ing his eye­brows.

“Yes.” My foot bounced up and down un­der the ta­ble.

“What would you like?” he asked.

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'You re­al­ly need to know?" I snapped.

He blinked. “If I'm go­ing to or­der for us, I do.”

“I can or­der for my­self, thanks,” I said.

Whit­tak­er let out an im­pa­tient sigh that curled my toes. He slow­ly low­ered his menu and looked at me al­most stern­ly over the flick­er­ing can­dles.

“Reed, at least let me or­der for you,” he said. “That's the way it's done here.”

I stared at him. What kind of guy was he? This was the way he want­ed to spend his eigh­teenth birth­day? At a restau­rant so old school my grand­fa­ther would have felt out of place? I couldn't be­lieve that this was his idea of a good time.

“Whit­tak­er, can I ask you a ques­tion?” I said, lean­ing for­ward.

“Of course,” he said.

“Why are we here? Why aren't you out par­ty­ing with Dash and Gage and those guys?” I said. “I'm sure they could have fig­ured out some­thing de­bauch­er­ous for you to do tonight. I mean, isn't that what friends do on their friends' birth­days?”

Whit­tak­er flinched ev­er so slight­ly and looked back down at his menu. He cleared his throat and made a big show of scan­ning the op­tions. “Dash and Gage have . . . oth­er things go­ing on tonight,” he said. “And be­sides, I told you, you're the on­ly per­son I want to spend my birth­day with.”

In that mo­ment it all be­came clear. It was a lie. All of it. It wasn't that he didn't want to hang out with Dash and Gage and Josh, but that they hadn't shown any in­ter­est in hang­ing out with him. For

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