Page 22 of Gave Proof Through the Night

"Solo tenemos Tabasco."

"Tabasco." I say it the way you'd say parking ticket. "Ay, chavo. No tienes salsa o algo? Algo con más sabor?" More flavor. I lower my voice, glance back toward the ballroom, lower it further. "No me gusta la comida de los güeros, chico." Not my thing, this white-bread stuff.

That gets him. He barks out a laugh, head tipping back, and claps me on the shoulder.

"¿Tú eres de los del hockey?" You one of the hockey guys? He looks me over again, more curious now than impressed.

"Uno de esos, sí."

"Ah, órale. Pues…" He's grinning now, already glancing toward the back of the kitchen. "Deja me ver."

Awesome. He says he's going to look, but I'm pretty sure he's just going to check if they have enough to share. Fair enough. That's all I can ask for.

"Órale, primo," I reply, appreciative he'll at least go look.

He disappears toward the back, and I drift out before anyone notices I’ve wandered into a room I have no business being in, and head back to the ballroom with my hopes modestly raised.

Line 1’s deep into something by the time I sit back down, and I’ve clearly missed the beginning.

“All I’m saying,” Ted Powell says, gesturing with a piece of bacon. “Is that Micah’s plate is a structural hazard. That’s not breakfast, that’s a Jenga tower.”

“It’s called carb loading, Ted.” Micah doesn’t even look up from said tower. “Some of us don’t do things halfway.”

“You’re gonna do things sideways in about four minutes, when that whole thing tips into your lap.”

Jake’s a few seats down, quiet, doing a convincing impression of a guy who’s somewhere else entirely. His oatmeal hasn’t moved in ten minutes. I get it, man. Takes one to know one. Two days ago he stood me up at a coffee place, swore on his life it had the best matcha in DC, and never showed. Knowing what I know now about whatever’s going on with him and this PR thing, I’d bet money he’s caught up in the arrangements.

Fine by me, honestly. I ended up buying my own matcha and getting backed into by a stranger, who spilled the whole thing down my shirt, which, in hindsight, might be the best thing that’s happened to me all month.

I almost smile, just thinking about it. I catch myself and look down at my eggs instead, very seriously, like they need my full attention.

“And that’s the thing about fake dating,” Dash DiFranco is saying. “You gotta commit to the bit. Like, full method-actor stuff. My buddy did it once for a soda commercial. Ended up actually marrying the girl.”

“That tracks,” Erik Schultz says. “That’s basically how arranged marriages used to work, if you squint.”

Dash snorts. “Don’t squint at marriage, Erik, that’s how you end up alone.”

“All that hand-holding and stuff in public sounds exhausting,” Neal Sanderson says.

Bryce Chambers leans back, the scar at his mouth doing the thing that makes his smirk look extra smug. “You’ve clearly never held hands before.”

I don’t know what comes over me. Maybe it’s the hot sauce withdrawal.

“Your mom doesn’t count.”

Dead silence, the kind where you genuinely don’t know if you just landed a joke or laid a rotten egg. And then the whole table goes off. Neal makes a strangled noise. Ted nearly chokes. Micah points at me like I just invented yo mama jokes.

I am the last person on the planet to be telling yo mama jokes.

“Sounds like a cry for help,” Micah says, delighted, and now half the table’s repeating your mom doesn’t count back at each other, and Neal’s the color of the home fries, and I sit back, pleased with myself for the first time all morning.

See. I can be present. I can be locked in. I delivered a joke. Basically the picture of focus.

Ten more minutes of escalating chaos, a heated debate about hash browns versus home fries that Stone Reilly settles by eating both off two plates, and then the ballroom’s side door opens and my guy from the Magnolia Room slides in with a tray.

He’s carrying a small white ramekin on a tray tucked behind a stack of clean cups like contraband, and a bundle wrapped in a cloth napkin beside it. He catches my eye across the room. Sets it down fast, right by my arm, like he’s planting evidence.

“Salsa de la casa,” he murmurs with a wink. “Y unas tortillas. No le digas a nadie, eh?”