Free Starting with the Unexpected by Andi Van

your mouth full,” Jordan told me. “And yeah, of course I’m going to lunch. Usual place, right?”
    “Of course. Noon.”
    “I’ll be there,” Jordan promised as he carried his bowl to the sink. When he saw the pile of dirty dishes, he made a disgusted noise. “How the hell did we manage this?”
    “With the sheer force of our laziness,” I said, grinning at his back as he grumbled under his breath. “It’s our superpower. We’re like the Wonder Twins, only more useless.”
    Without completely turning from the sink, Jordan reached a closed fist in my direction. “Shape of used butter knife.”
    Laughing, I leaned over from the table to bump my fist against his. “Form of fuzzy green mold.”
    “Great,” he sighed as he went back to scrubbing. “Now all we need is a blue space monkey.”
    Once I’d eaten and helped with the dishes, I holed away in my room again to start plotting. I hadn’t been making excuses when I told Jordan I needed time to think, but I hadn’t been completely honest about it either. It wasn’t that I needed to think about whatever was going on between Marcus and me. I was pretty confident I already knew my mind on that.
    No. What I needed was to figure out how I could bribe Christophe to earn me a Friday afternoon reservation. Sure, we were friends. Considering how busy they were, though, it would probably take an act of God to find a place to seat us. Eventually I simply called my boss, asked him if me talking on air about a restaurant I particularly enjoyed would be pushing too close to the “free advertising” line for his comfort, then called Chris and left a message on his voice mail explaining the situation.
    He called me back around midnight, sounding less than pleased with me.
    “You want me to do what exactly?” he asked, not bothering with a greeting.
    “Please, Christophe?” I whined into the phone that I’d tucked in between my ear and my shoulder. “You keep saying you want me to check out the restaurant.”
    “Yeah, but a lunch reservation with so little warning?” Christophe said uncertainly. On the plus side, he sounded less irritated and more likely to listen to my pleas. “What’s the rush?”
    “It’s a first date,” I admitted, hoping it would sway things in my favor. “A really, really important first date. Please?”
    “A first date? Now I’m really confused. Jordan was telling me the other day that you have a boyfriend.”
    I groaned and rolled my eyes. “He’s not my boyfriend.” Yet , I amended silently. “We’ve been spending time as friends since his last relationship ended, and this would technically be our first date.”
    “And you think I can magically pull a Friday afternoon reservation out of my ass?”
    “Ew,” I said, making a face despite the fact that he couldn’t see it. “I don’t need to know what goes in or out of your ass, man. You’re cute and all, but so not my type.”
    Christophe snorted, and I could tell he was grinning. He only made that noise when he was trying to keep from laughing. “Fine. I’ll see what I can do, but you owe me.”
    “Free advertising,” I told him. “You know I’ll be happy to extol the superb taste of your cooking on air.”
    “Okay, now you’re being a suck-up,” Christophe laughed. “Again, I’ll see what I can do. Now go away. I have things to do.”
    “Yes sir,” I said cheerfully. I disconnected the call and tossed my phone onto my bed, feeling better than I had all morning. We had a date, and now I just had to survive him meeting my mom.
     
     
    W ORK WAS interesting, to say the least. Nearly everyone there exclaimed over the state of my face, and Kat felt the need to mention it at the beginning of the show. I knew Marcus always caught the first hour of the show before he fell asleep, so I turned the story into an amusing anecdote in which I got into trouble just so Jordan would have to throw someone to save my ass. I also left Marcus out of the story completely.