“No, I mean, where are you right now?” She frowns. “Are you in bed?”
Oh, damn.
In the FaceTime preview, I see Yasmen and me sitting shoulder to shoulder, propped up by pillows, our heads nearly touching as we both try to fit into the shot.
Yasmen straightens, leaning a few inches away from me. “We’re, um, just waiting for room service.”
“We were in meetings all day,” I add. “And didn’t feel like going out, so we’re eating in your mom’s hotel room.”
“Cool,” Kassim says, not questioning. Deja’s eyes, however, remain on us, fixed and suspicious. “Guess what Grandma told Deja today.”
“Oh, Lord,” Yasmen says. “What?”
“She said,” Deja begins and laughs. “‘You so hardheaded, you don’t believe fatback is greasy.’”
“Itisgreasy!” Kassim pipes in. “She fried some and there was grease everywhere.”
“And she started playing her music while she was cooking,” Deja goes on. “But stuff I’ve never heard like ‘Merry Christmas’ by the Temptations and ‘Jesus Is Love’ by the Commotion.”
“The Commodores,” I correct.
“Put your grandmother on the phone,” Yasmen says after a few more minutes of them relaying all the weird things Carole did with chitterlings and bins from the Container Store.
“Okay,” Kassim says, running from the room and holding his phone. “Grandma!”
“I’m gonna take this into the sitting room,” Yasmen says, standing and leaving the bedroom just before I hear Carole come on to greet her.
She doesn’t want her mother asking the kinds of questions Deja did, doesn’t want her to realize we had to share a room. Carole and Yasmen are still chatting when our food arrives. I tip the server and set our tray down at the small table in the dining area.
“Mama says hey,” Yasmen offers, sitting at the table across from me.
I lift the lid from my dish to reveal the chicken piccata I ordered. “They haven’t driven her crazy yet?”
“Not yet.” Yasmen laughs, lifting the lid from her dish too. “Ooooh. This steak looks delish.”
She eyes my chicken covetously. So predictable.
“And yet,” I say, my smile knowing, “you want to taste mine.”
“I mean, just a little.” She holds up two fingers, squeezing a tiny bit of space between the tips.
I slide my plate across to her, and she slides hers across to me. We always shared our food, sampling whatever was on the other’s plate.
“Oh, this is so good,” she moans.
I bite into the steak, which seems to dissolve in my mouth, it’s so tender. “Damn, that is good.”
“Halvsies?” A hopeful grin crooks the corners of her lips.
Wordlessly I slide my plate across the table, and she divides her steak and puts half onto my plate and then does the same with my chicken. She passes the plate back to me and we dig in, grunting at how good it is.
“Not bad for hotel food.” I wipe my mouth with the linen napkin and lean back in my seat. “Want dessert?”
“What I want,” she says, “is to taste that Yamazaki.”
“Seriously?”
“Break it out. You’ll just take it to your house and let it molder for the next half century.”