mostly just because she was closer to still sitting than leaving anyway.
I get the feeling moving takes a lot out of her.
She pouts a little and I say, “So, what was it like growing up without electricity? Did you scare the horses with that scowl of yours?”
I wait for the snort – there it is – and she admits, “I’m not that old, jerk; I just had my fifth re-birthday, if you must know.”
“Re-birthday?”
“Yeah, it’s kind of like you get a big do-over when you catch the Z Disease. You know, like resetting the game when your guy dies on the first level.”
“So, and don’t take this the wrong way Tia but… you’re only five years old?”
She leans over a little, waits ‘til I do the same and whispers, “Yeah, so… I guess we shouldn’t try to order that bottle of sangria, huh?”
Just then a waiter approaches and says, to me, “Welcome to Gouda’s Café, sir. Can I get you something to drink?”
“Ladies first?” I say, nudging him gently toward Tia’s side of the table.
“But of course,” he says, not even moving. “What will ‘she’ have?”
“I don’t know,” I growl, wanting to launch out my size-12 sneaker and kick him in the shin. “Why don’t you ask her?”
He does this major eye roll-slash-heavy sigh thing and turns to Tia and groans, “Miss?”
“I’ll take a coke and a bowl of sugar, please,” she says, sweet as can be.
“Sugar’s 50 cents extra,” he says. “We’ve had to start charging now that there are some many of… your… kind coming in.”
“I got it covered,” she says, slapping two quarters on the clean white linen.
He turns to me and before he can do the whole eye roll wheeze thing I slap down two quarters of my own and say, “Make that a double.”
He walks away without reading us the specials, which is fine because suddenly a soda with lots and lots of sugar in it sounds about right.
Tia looks around the room, eyes kind of low since most tables are already looking back.
I watch her for a few minutes, noticing the scar on the outside of her wrist when she stretches just a bit and her sleeve flutters up, if only for a second; it looks several years old, and still has some black thread inside, like maybe the stitches never came out.
She looks about my age; 17.
But… older… too.
She’s wearing makeup, but not a lot of it.
Her hoodie is zipped up tight, but another scar creeps over the zipper on the left side of her neck.
Her eyes look sad behind the sexy glasses, and I don’t think it’s just because everyone’s staring at her.
When she’s done watching the room, she fixes her eyes on me; and smiles.
“What?” I ask, twirling another breadstick in my hand nervously.
“Why are you still here?” she asks.
I kind of open my mouth and close it.
“Didn’t you hear?” I crack. “We just ordered my favorite; cokes and sugar!”
“No, I mean… really. Why are you still sitting here once you found out… what… I am?”
“You mean… a sugar fiend?”
She snorts despite herself and then shakes her head.
“You know what I mean, Jordy.”
I shrug. “It’s Saturday night in Ambrosia, Tia. Where else am I going to go?”
She starts to say something else but our waiter comes with two sodas and two white ceramic containers overflowing with sugar packets; one for each of us.
“Will there be anything else?” he asks, setting them all down on my side of the table.
“Yeah,” I say, leaning forward and hearing the leather of my letterman’s jacket sleeves creaking. “You can put the lady’s soda and sugar on her side of the table.”
“I’m required to bring them to the table, sir, not serve them to the… zombie.”
“Jordy, really,” Tia says. “It’s fine…”
“Listen to your friend, sir. She understands—”
“She’s not my ‘friend,’ friend; she’s my date. And if you don’t put that soda and that sugar on her side of the table, I’ll explain to your manager why we’re going to get up and walk without paying for them.”
“You didn’t have to do that,” she says, ripping open three sugar packets at once after the waiter leaves. “I’m a big girl.”
“Yeah, well, he’s a big jerk and if I don’t release a little testosterone every few hours, then I turn into a big jerk and I want to have a nice evening, so…”
I catch a smile and pour one sugar into my soda.
“So, you have to tell me Tia: how does a nice girl like you know a creep like Cosgrove?”
“I was just going to ask you the same question, Jordy!”
“You first.”
She sips her soda and pours in two more packs of sugar, stirring it with her finger.
“He found me on the Z List,” she confesses, avoiding my eyes.
“What’s that, like… a site for hot zombies or something?”
“Very funny,” she says over the lip of her soda. “No, it’s a site where people can hire zombies for all sorts of things. Odd jobs, heavy lifting, dog walking, even—”
“Hold up, hold up; he hired you?”
She shrugs, knocking back half of her soda in two chugs. “No, the Living Dead Employee Pact of 2014 made it illegal to pay zombies. It’s all voluntary.”
“So, hold up; you volunteered to go on a blind date with me?”
“Well, I didn’t know it was you, now, did I?”
“No, I guess not…”
I push the soda away and sit back, the soda far too sweet for my taste.
“You gonna finish that?” she asks, already reaching.
I slide it over and she meets me halfway, our fingers grazing; she flinches, I try not to.
Her hands are so cold, and it’s not just because she’s been gripping her soda glass, either.
“But, why go out on a blind date in the first place?” I ask.
She shrugs and looks at me across the cozy café table.
“Do you have any idea how boring it gets as a… a… you know?”
“More boring than a high school junior on a Saturday night in Ambrosia?”
“Yeah,” she says. “At least you get to go to school. On Z Street, we room alphabetically. Most of the geezers in my building are in their 80s or more. So when your buddy wrote me, even though he sounded like a creep via email, I figured I’d at least get to hang with someone my own age.”
I grin and say, “Well, that explains how you got hooked up with Cosgrove.”
“But not how YOU hooked up with Cosgrove.”
“By force,” I admit.
“Pardon?” she asks, polishing off my soda and sliding it back toward me so the waiter won’t think she’s a zombie and a pig.
I tug on the collar of my jacket and say, “We’ve only been playing football together for the last six years. And baseball, and soccer and basketball…”
“Yeah, but… do you like him?”
“Not really,” I admit. “But then, nobody does. Did you ever talk to him, I mean personally?”
She wrinkles her nose in distaste and says, “We didn’t really talk much; he mostly… cackled. Does he do that… often?”
Uggh; just thinking about Cosgrove’s telltale cackle makes me shiver just to think about it.
“Try every day; all day.”
She nods, and we lapse into a few moments of comfortable silence.
Restless, or bored, or both, she reaches over to my side of the table.
I think for a second she’s reaching for my hand, and I’m not sure how to react when she grabs my sugar packet instead.
And, yeah, okay; I’m a little disappointed.
“What’s with the sugar?” I ask, watching her fold my packet carefully.
She says, “Other than the dried brains the government gives us once a week – don’t look at me like
that – we don’t really need to eat anything else. We can’t really even digest anything else, which is why I said ‘no’ to your breadstick even though I’d love one. But the soda, and the sugar, it goes right into the bloodstream so we don’t have to digest. Anyway, it’s kind of like a treat between servings of brains.”
“Gross,” I say.
“You’re gross,” she shoots back, and we both snort.
The waiter comes, ignores her, I say we’re not ready yet, he comes again a few minutes later, I say we’re still not ready and finally Tia looks up at him and says, “Can we get the check?”
“With pleasure,” he says, slapping it down in front of me.
I reach for my wallet but she slaps a five down over the bill.
“Do you mind?” she asks, already sliding from the booth.
I grab a breadstick to go and shake my head.
I see Melanie on her cell phone as we approach the hostess stand, which is odd because there are still, like, 4,000 people waiting for a table and she’s only been “Employee of the Month” at his place, like, 17 times so I figured she’d be a more conscientious worker than that.
She sees me, covers the phone, says a few things more and quickly hangs up.
“How was your date?” she asks, voice full of irony, not even looking at Tia.
“I don’t know yet,” I say, grabbing Tia’s hand.