Lucky

“So that’s it? You didn’t say anything else?”

“Nope,” I shrugged, reaching for a packet of soy sauce and squeezing it over my rice. “Nothing the entire ride back here.”

“Well, that must’ve been awkward,” Jenny muttered, biting off some of her egg roll as the rain pattered against the glass outside. It was the heaviest rain of the summer, and with the added humidity outside, the glass front of Yummi’s was fogged over. The entire day, there were barely any customers. That’s what always happened when it rained: customers slowed down for the day and Jenny and I could relax a bit longer for lunch.

“Oh, you have no clue, dude,” I muttered, mixing my rice. “He apologized, too.”

She winced, sharply sucking in air between her teeth. “Have you even talked? Or texted? Something?” she asked, her eyebrows furrowing in concern.

“Nothing.”

“He’s come by this week, right?” she wondered aloud, mixing some of her rice with some orange chicken.

“Nope.”

She started, her spoon poised in midair. “He hasn’t? What the hell, dude.”

I nodded, stabbing some Szechuan beef with my chopsticks. Since I ordered some last week when Maxx and I had lunch, I hadn’t been able to stop eating it; it was so delicious. I didn’t even care that I had to drink my weight in Coke to wash it all down. But there was something about the sting of the food that numbed the sting of the fact that Maxx and I hadn’t talked or seen each other for nearly a week. “But what I can’t figure out is why he didn’t… I don’t know. I mean, I’m pretty sure I was the first to doze off, okay? So why didn’t he wake me up or anything?” I wondered, still looking down at my food. “I might just be over-thinking it, but it’s just really weird to me. I don’t know. And after the whole kiss at the Halo tournament…” I trailed off, still aimlessly stabbing the slices of beef with my chopsticks.

“See, I totally predicted this!” Jenny claimed, pointing her chopsticks at me. “I said this, right after you came back from that concert of his. I told you! I said that one of these days, you’re gonna look at him and all of a sudden you’re gonna want to mack him, and lo and behold, here you are, one month later almost, admitting you like the guy.”

“I never said—”

The old brass bell that hung on the door chimed, and Jenny and I both turned to see who had come through the door.

“Hey, Sara.” Maxx said, slightly waving his hand. “Jenny,” he added, sending her a quick smile.

Maxx was sopping wet. There was already a small puddle forming on the floor from his soaked jeans, and his Vans were practically submerged in water. His hair was plastered against his forehead and drops of water clung to the lenses of his glasses.

“Dude, what the fuck?” Jenny muttered, quickly getting up from her chair and rushing to the counter to reach for the mop we kept in the corner. She quickly ushered him with the dirty end of the mop towards the workers’ entrance into the kitchen, Maxx derisorily chuckling at her persistence. She was already wiping away at the trail of rainwater he left on the linoleum floor when she gave me a pointed look and nodded towards the kitchen, pointing with her thumb before going back to cleaning up Maxx’s mess.

I finally got up when Jenny whispered my name, giving me another harsh look. I shrugged and tossed my unopened fortune cookie on the table, not really up to asking Maxx why he had been ignoring Yummi’s Egg Roll this entire week. All the other guys had stopped by, even if they didn’t order anything, but Maxx didn’t show up. I even asked Andrew the day before if he knew why Maxx hadn’t come by; all he knew was that he claimed to be overcome by a sudden wave of allergies, not even answering the door when Austin had swung by at the beginning of the week.

As I pushed open the swinging door to the kitchen, I heard a muffled grunt as the door hit something hard. I backtracked, then slowly nudged the door open to see Maxx biting his lip and staring cross-eyed at his red nose.

“Ow,” he groaned, rubbing the bridge of his nose as I let the door swing shut behind me.

“Sorry,” I muttered, weaving around him to the front counter.

“No, it’s fine. I didn’t break it or anything,” he muttered, twitching his nose. Lenny silently chuckled as he flipped another page of the newspaper he was reading in the corner by the stoves.

“That’s good.” I opened one of the cabinets under the counter and grabbed an old rag, clutching it in my hand. “Here,” I said, tossing the rag at Maxx. It smacked him in the chest, but he caught it before it fell to the ground. “Dry yourself off before Miss Xiong throws a fit over all the water in the kitchen. She’ll be here any minute.”

“Thanks,” he muttered, already wiping his glasses with the terry cloth towel.

Jenny suddenly pushed her way through the door, hovering the mop over the kitchen tile. “Incoming,” she mumbled as the front door swung open.

Miss Xiong walked in hastily, her proverbially curled hair matted under the clear disposable parka she had shrugged on. She was here like every other Sunday afternoon to take the cash in the register to deposit it at the nearby bank, but by the looks of her deep scowl, she wasn’t in such a good mood.

“Hey, Yímā!” Jenny called, rushing over to the drain at the back of the kitchen where the mop bucket was.

“Hello, Jenny,” she called, walking up to the counter as she bustled through her purse. “Business not good at other restaurant, so I come to take money to bank…” Her words slowly trailed off as her eyes landed on a sopping wet Maxx in her kitchen, where under no circumstances were customers allowed to be.

“What is blond boy doing there?” she asked me, a finely plucked eyebrow arched in wonder. “No customers allowed behind counter, Sara. You know rules!” she scolded, quietly tisking me as she set her purse on the counter next to the old, brown cash register.

“I, uh…”

“Sara, please get the boy out of kitchen, yes?” she asked me, keeping her eyes on her purse as she pulled out a pen.

I swallowed the lump caught in my throat, adverting my gaze to my shoes. I could hear Maxx uneasily shift behind me as the rain endlessly pattered outside. “Can’t I just—?”

“No, Sara. Out,” she stressed, pointing with her maroon-painted thumb behind her.

“But it’s raining, Yímā,” Jenny said, walking up from behind me, the mop still clutched in her hands. I bit my lip, feeling even more stressed by the second. But then I felt a heavy, warm hand set on my shoulder, and turned around to see a nervous Maxx, a small blush creeping up his neck.

“We could… Your car?” he abashedly suggested, his eyebrows shyly furrowed.

I sighed and nodded, silently walking over to the stove and grabbing my keys from my beat-up messenger bag hanging on the apron hook. I signaled Maxx to follow me, keys in hand, as I untied my apron and pulled it over my head. I nudged the back door open behind me and ran headfirst into the pouring rain, Maxx following swiftly behind me.

Even though my car was only a few yards from the back entrance, by the time I unlocked the doors and slid in the driver’s seat, I was soaked nearly head to toe, as was Maxx. It was thickly humid inside the old family Corolla, so I turned it on and cranked the air conditioning. I quickly bumped off the CD player, the Set It Off mix CD Maxx had given me a couple of weeks ago left blasting from when I listened to it on my way to work that morning.

I threw my apron in the back row and turned in my seat to face Maxx. His cheeks were a dark crimson, and he kept his gaze at the stereo as he fiddled with his many bracelets. His hoodie was soaked black with rain and his white Henley underneath was wet around the edges, too. There was a bit of peach fuzz on his upper lip, clearly visible through the rain drops cascading down his face. He took a quick glance at me, but looked back at his bracelets, heaving an annoyed sigh.

“What?” he asked haughtily, playing with the beads on a bracelet that Jenny had made him shortly after the Halo tournament – it spelled out LOSER with a heart in place of the ‘o.’

“Don’t ask me what’s going on. You’re the one who decided to stop by for a visit.” I folded my arms and stared down Maxx, kind of already fed up with the idea of having to talk through things we’d already established: he kissed me at the Halo tournie, we cuddled last Sunday, and we hadn’t talked since then.

“I didn’t come all this way – through the pouring rain, might I add – to get a door shoved into my face,” he muttered, pulling off his glasses and quickly wiping them off.

“Really. Then why did you come all this way? To bitch about the weather?” I quipped, mustering up the hardest look I could give him.

“No,” he said offhandedly, pushing his glasses up his nose. He sighed again, this time more deeply. “I’m… I didn’t mean to… to ignore you. I just…” He sighed again. “And the whole… Ugh.” He shook his head, and I could feel a drop of water hit my arm as I wrapped my hands around my folded knees. “You know what? Andrew did this already, so there’s no reason… I mean, I just…”

“Maxx, what the hell are you talking about?”

He took a breath as if he was about to say something, but let it out, and instead stuck his hand into the front pocket of his jeans, pulling out a strip of paper between his calloused fingers.

“The fortunes from, uh, Sunday? Mine… I, uh…” He stuttered a few more syllables, eventually just reaching out and taking my hand in his, placing the soggy fortune in my palm.

I read it once in my head, a little irked by the idea that this kind of fortune would land in his hands:

Stop searching forever, happiness is just next to you.

“This doesn’t even mean anything,” I muttered, dropping it into the cup holder separating us. “I mean, my fortune turned out to be about how buying myself a four-wheeler would be a good investment. These things mean nothing, Maxx. I mean, if you’re looking for friendship, I-it’s… That’s what I’m here for,” I admitted, slightly shrugging my shoulders.

“But that’s not it, Sara,” he muttered, running his fingers through his hair. The ends were still wet, but his Henley was starting to dry out in the cool air conditioning.

“What’s not it? Maxx, just spit it out—”

“I like you, okay?”

He was looking straight at me then, his eyes unmoving from mine.

“And just so we’re clear, I like you, like you. Like, uh… I-I want to hold your hand and take walks to the supermarket. I want to – hell, I don’t know, play Halo with you and kiss you when you beat my ass into a pulp. I just want to be with you, alone, at night, cuddling on my couch and talking about whatever comes to mind. Sara, I just… I-I-I just want to be with you.”

I kept my eyes on my stereo, too overwhelmed to even look in Maxx’s direction.

“I mean, I always thought you were pretty cute—”

I automatically scoffed, running my teeth over my bottom lip nervously.

“And then, one day, you just talked to me. I mean, I didn’t even care that you were only talking to me because you thought I was setting up fliers without permission. You were actually, finally talking to me,” he chuckled, shaking his head. “And then you came to our show, which just made me even more motivated to become your friend, and then I learn that – I mean, not only do you actually like to play Halo, but you also kick major ass at it?” He made a whooshing sound, waving his hand over his head. “I was a goner.

“And then I fucked up, okay? I fucked up. I… I-I guess I took advantage of you. No, no…” He shook his head and cracked both his thumb knuckles, something I’d notice him do before when he was nervous. “No, I did. You fell asleep, and you just fell back on my chest, and I didn’t wake you up, I just let you sleep there. I-I…” He cleared his throat, another blush quickly creeping up his neck. “I guess I just wanted to see you sleep? I mean, not in a creepy way. But I just wanted, for once, t-to not see you completely fazed by all the time you spend working at Yummi’s.

“And then you woke up, and you freaked out, so I freaked out, and I’m still freaking out because I’m just now admitting I like you, even though I’ve kind of known this since I first saw you working Christmas Day at the restaurant.”

“You remember the first day you saw me?” I asked, my voice just carrying over the pattering rain.

“As lame as it sounds, yeah. I do.”

Maxx bit his lip as he tried to hide a shiver raking his body, but I could see his shoulder jerk from the corner of my eye. I reached forward to turn down the fan, but like with the egg rolls at my house last week, our hands collided again as he reached for the fan switch.

But Maxx didn’t pull away this time. He slid his fingers between mine and brought our hands into his lap as he stroked the back of my hand. We both peered at each other momentarily, but Maxx broke his gaze and looked down at our hands, his neck now bright red.

“Your hand’s so cold.” He nervously chuckled, momentarily looking back at me.

He leaned over the center console where his soggy fortune was tossed, his hand leaving mine and reaching over to gently cup my knee. At first, it didn’t register; it was so light and sudden and shy that I didn’t notice it until his lips left my cheek. But once I realized what was happening, I slowly reached over to clutch Maxx’s damp hoodie in my hand as I timidly kissed him. He instantly kissed me back, his chapped lips shyly brushing against mine as he pushed himself further over the center console. I could feel him smile, his hand cool against my knee.

“God, you have no idea how long I’ve waited for that to happen,” he murmured, easily kissing me again. I laughed against his warm lips as he reached up to cup my cheek. He raucously chuckled, breathing in deeply as I wrapped a hand behind his neck and buried my nose into the crook of his neck.

He sighed, chuckling. “Okay, wow. You are cold,” he said, running his hand down my arm until he intertwined our fingers again.

“I think my AC’s on the fritz,” I lied, letting him pull me closer – well, as close as he could, since we were still separated by an old stack of mix CDs and my gearshift.

“Yeah, sure it’s broken,” he scoffed. I could feel his warm breath blow over my skin as he kissed my tangled hair, my heart easily speeding up. “But before we go back into Yummi’s so you can get tackled by Jenny for details, and before I can finally get some lunch, I’ve got to ask you one thing.”

I slightly turned my head to look up at him as he grinned, briefly brushing his thumb over my lips. His hand left my cheek and snuck its way down between us. A small slip of paper with lucky numbers on one side and a fortune in smudged, red ink on the other was handed to me, and I took it between my fingers.

“I don’t know how I’m doing this. Maybe it’s just because I-I-I got lucky with you. But…” He mockingly cleared his throat and gestured to the fortune in my hand. “Will you go on a date with me?”

I tried not to laugh, but I couldn’t help it; a small giggle escaped my lips. “That was the stupidest thing ever,” I muttered, untangling my hand from his to fold the fortune in half.

He cracked his thumb once more as his cheeks started pinking up again. “Okay, so… Uh, is that a no—?”

But his words were lost between us as I kissed him.