Page 5 of Total Dreamboat

Hope

“I can’t believe you’re complaining about too much food,” Lauren says to me as I side-eye the buffet. “You love food.”

“I like curated meals,” I say. “Not the opportunity to eat camembert, mashed potatoes, and Singapore noodles on one plate, with a side of E. coli.”

“Please. This place seems more sanitary than a doctor’s office.”

“That’s because you go to that sketchy place in the dirty thirties.”

“They do a fabulous Botox,” she says.

“Your forehead does look like it came off an eight-year-old.”

“Thank you! Anyway, go pillage the raw bar or something. You’re the worst when you’re hangry.”

I get up to survey the fare. I decide not to risk raw cruise ship oysters, but reason that steamed crab legs probably won’t compromise my intestinal tract.

I return to our table to find Lauren tearing into a steak—her primary food group.

“Look who just sat down,” she says in what passes for sotto voce if you have the loudest voice in the world, which she does. “Behind you.”

I glance over my shoulder to see the British family. I whirl my head back before I get caught looking, but not before clocking, with some disappointment, that the boy isn’t with them.

“Don’t worry,” Lauren says. “He’s at the salad bar.”

He passes by us, and his plate looks like it was assembled by a professional chef. I would never have thought to dress salmon, feta, and beets with cilantro. I might copy it for my next course.

“I wonder if he happened to have some culinary tweezers in his pocket,” I say.

“I wonder what else is in his pocket.” She gives me a lascivious wink.

“Please stop before someone hears you.”

“You know, the dad is handsome,” she says. “Do you think I should seduce him? Then I could set you up with the hot boy and you could get married and I’d be your stepmother.” She pauses. “I’d be very wicked.”

“No, you’d be a great bonus mom to a trio of devastated adult children. So wholesome.”

She goes on about the other potentially eligible men in the room, but I’m only half listening because I’m concentrating on extracting the meat from my crab legs, which are buttery and delicious. In my enthusiasm I use too much force and a shell goes flying.

I yelp, turn around, and see it has landed… directly in the British guy’s hair.

“Oh my God,” I cry, leaping up and dashing over to him. “I’m so sorry!”

Instinctively I reach to pick out the shards from his hair, then retract my hand because what am I doing?

He gives me a slightly crooked smile, removes them himself, and hands the whole mess back to me.

“Thanks,” he says, “but I actually prefer my food plated.”

His sisters are laughing uproariously.

“How brilliant of you,” one of them says to me. “He deserves it. He’s awfully vain about his hair.”

“Says the one who gets four-hundred-quid haircuts,” he shoots back.

“Can I get you a napkin?” I ask him.

He shakes his head. “You’re good. Don’t worry. Nothing that hasn’t happened before.”

“He’s a chef,” the other sister says. “You wouldn’t believe the things he gets all over himself.”

“ Offal ,” the other sister whispers theatrically. “That means organs .”

“I’m sure she knows what it means,” he says.

“I’m Pear, by the way,” she says. “Pear Segrave. And this is my sister, Prue, and our parents, Mary and Charles. And of course you’ve met Felix here.”

They all murmur pleasantries at once.

“Nice to meet you,” I say. “I’m Hope.”

Lauren has at this point come to join me, and adds, “And I’m Lauren. I’ll try to help Hopie here with her aim next time she attempts to eat a crustacean.”

Mary laughs. She’s plump and pretty, like her daughters, and has a lovely, warm laugh that makes me think of Christmas and hot apple cider.

It makes me long for my own mother, back when my mother was happy.

“We’ll be sure to sit far away in the dining room this evening,” Charles says.

“Where are you girls from?” Mary asks.

“New York,” I say.

“By way of Texas,” Lauren says.

“Um, not me. Vermont.”

“Where,” the one named Prue asks, “is Vermont?”

“Nowhere important,” Lauren says at the exact moment I say, “Just below the Canadian border, by Montreal.”

“I love Montreal,” Prue exclaims. “Have you had poutine? Felix does an excellent poutine at his pub. He makes the cheese curds himself.”

“Ugh,” Pear groans. “Don’t say curd. It’s a sickening word, isn’t it?”

“Where are you all from?” Lauren says, as she has the social graces that seem to have deserted me in my humiliation.

“London,” Prue says. “Though Mum and Dad have decamped off to Hampshire in their dotage. Horribly dull of them.”

“Well, we’ll leave you to your lunch,” I say. “Very nice to meet you, and Felix, I’m sorry again about—”

He shakes his head and gives me an affable smile. “It was my pleasure,” he says. “But avoid the scampi. No one wants to be pelted with prawn heads.”

“You got it,” I say.

Before I can be even more awkward, I turn around and return to my seat.

“I can’t believe I just did that,” I whisper.

“Actually, it was smart,” Lauren whispers back. “Now you’ve broken the ice with him and I won’t have to drag you by your armpits to introduce yourself.”

“Yeah, instead he’ll think of me as the socially inept girl who threw food in his hair.”

“Nah,” Lauren whispers. “I think he liked you. Did you see the way he smiled? Maybe I won’t have to break up the family to get you laid after all.”