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THREE YEARS LATER...
1
Amsterdam, April 18, 2022
Dan
Yamazato is packed as always,but it’s not a problem for me to get us a table tucked in a corner with some semblance of privacy. It’s amazing what a couple of folded bills handed to the host will do for the wait time.
Elise looks as if she’s wound tight, her shoulders stiff and her lips in a straight line. Whatever she and Sebastian talked about has clearly given her a lot to think about, and even though I’m nosy about how everything went down, I need to get her guard down before she’ll let out the more valuable information.
I grab the arm of a passing server, who scowls until he hears me say, “A bottle of your finest sake, please.”
Seeing the flashing euro signs that could come from taking care of me, the server immediately nods with a polite smile. “Right away, sir.”
Elise and I settle in, her interlacing her fingers and looking around without a word while the host hands me a menu and lays the one for Elise beside her.
Menu in hand, I take a moment to savor the fact it’s just the two of us here. There’s no Andries, no Jessica, just us.
After all, it’s not often that I have the opportunity to take the ice queen of the Van den Bosch family out for a one-on-one dinner.
“Comfortable?” I ask.
Her eyes snap back toward mine. “Yes, why wouldn’t I be?”
Ha! I’d forgotten the ice queen is also a mean bitch.
“Oh, it just looks like it must be uncomfortable to sit with that stick up your ass.”
She wrinkles her nose in distaste, scoffing. “Shut up, Dan.”
“Then relax. This isn’t an interrogation, just a dinner with a treasured friend.”
She snorts at “treasured” but I can see her letting go of at least a little bit of the stress she must be feeling.
The server returns with a green, transparent bottle of sake and bowl-shaped cups, and when I tell him I’ll take care of the serving myself, he nods, ready to depart from our table.
“Wait,” Elise says before he can do so. “A bottle of still water for me, please.”
I can’t help but let out a quick chuckle at her statement; if she thinks the sake is only for me, she’s very mistaken.
Once we are left alone, she takes the bottle of sake first, tilting it so she can look at the label as if she’s reading it.
“Can you read Japanese?” I ask, surprised.
“Some. Barely.” She turns the bottle at me, her lips twisting into a smug smirk as she asks, “Are you trying to get me drunk?”
“No, I’m just trying to thaw you out a little bit, so I’m not having dinner with an ice sculpture. Here, let me pour for us.”
With Elise, I’ve learned to speak in absolutes, because if she has a choice in something, there is no turning her away from her path. Reluctantly, she hands me the sake and I open it, filling our cups with a shot before setting it down. “Ready?”
She looks like she wants to protest, but when she watches me pick my own cup up and hold it to my lips, she takes it as a challenge and lifts her own. “Fine. Yes, I’m ready.”
I close my eyes and tip the cup back and the sake fills my mouth like liquid fire, turning smooth as it flows down my throat and warms my belly from the inside out. When I open my eyes again to ask Elise how hers was, it’s just in time for me to see her throat work as she drinks, her lips wet with the liquor. For one-second, it’s irresistibly seductive, but then she coughs, barely raising her hand in time to cover her mouth and grimaces.
“Oh, hell,” she laments through small coughs, which only makes me laugh.
“Another!” I proclaim, even as she’s still getting herself under control, and while she tries to wave me away, she can’t form whole sentences quite yet, and her cup is full before she can stop me.
