Bobby pushed his plate aside. “Nina, we really need to talk.”
Mouth full, I said, “We’ve been talking.” Okay, he’d been talking. I’d been chewing.
143
He put his elbows on the table, leaned in. His dark blue eyes told me this was serious.
I’d known that, though, hadn’t I?
I set my half-eaten egg roll down, pushed my plate aside too.
“All right.” I put my elbows on the table in complete defi-ance of every one of my mother’s manner lessons.
“I know you’ve been preoccupied lately, what with the death and all.”
Great. I hadn’t even been thinking of that. I’d been too wound up in what Bobby was going to say, do.
Now all I could see was Russ Grabinsky’s stick figure outline in my head.
The egg rolls weren’t sitting too well.
“Nina?”
“I’m fine.”
“You sure?”
I nodded.
“Well, I have something I have to ask you. Something important. That I need you to think about. I know it’s bad timing, but I need to know.”
I braced myself. Was this really it? Was he asking me to marry him? Here? In the Magic Sun? If I said yes, would they put our picture over this little booth?
But I wasn’t saying yes, was I? I couldn’t. Not with Kevin, not with everything going on.
“Are you listening, Nina?”
I looked at Bobby. He was everything a girl could want.
Everything. I wasn’t blind. I saw his faults. Actually . . . I tried to think of a fault.
There had to be something.
“Nina?”
“Hmm?”
“Listening?”
144
Heather Webber
I loved him. I did. It was a mixed-up sort of love, to be sure, because of all my confused feelings about Kevin, but it was love.
But marriage . . .
I couldn’t.
It was too much, too soon.
Absolutely not.
No way.
“Nina?”
“Yes!” I shouted. The little Chinese woman tending the buffet dropped a pan of won-tons.
“Sorry,” I said.
She hurriedly stuffed won-tons into the pan and looked at me as if I was possessed.
Bobby was smiling. “What?” I asked.
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, what? What?” Had I just agreed to marry him when he hadn’t even asked?
He shook his head.
I reached for my egg roll.
I had been going to say yes.
Yes.
What was wrong with me?
“Listen.”
I swallowed. “I’m listening.”
