“You’re unusually quiet today,” Lydia said as she lifted the pizza slice to her mouth.
I ripped up some of the pizza slice into tiny pieces for Jenni to eat. She loved it.
According to Lydia,Pizza Joe’s was the best pizza place around. She told me how her friend’s boyfriend wouldn’t shut up about it. When I ate a slice a few months ago, I discovered why they raved about the place. I had eaten a lot of good pizza since I grew up in New York City, but Pizza Joe’s was the best.
“I guess I’m trying to get used to working so much. And realizing what a privileged life I led before.”
Which was true, but that wasn’t why I wasn’t talking. It was running into Jenner five days ago. I had been so flustered that I went into the meeting with the owner of the coffee that was delivered to Hard Grind, and I kept calling him Mr. Love instead of Mr. Angrov. His girlfriend’s last name was Love, and she was there too. I couldn’t stop thinking about my heart breaking all over again as I realized Jenner didn’t love me anymore.
“I guess.” Lydia gave me one of her suspicious glares.
The thing about her glares... they were like truth serum to me. I tried to keep my eyes off her, staring at the gray-tiled floor in the pizza place instead of at my friend.
It didn’t work.
“Stop berating me with your eyes,” I cried out, causing Joe to glance over from behind the tall counter.
“I’m pretty sure my eyes can’t talk.” She smirked, placing her elbows on the small red table.
She had me cornered, and she knew it. Lydia would make a great interrogator.
“If you must know, I ran into a guy I hadn’t seen in two years.”
“A guy?” Her smirk turned even smirkier.
“We had a thing, but he’s close to my brother, so I had to stay away from him.”
“A thing...?” Now she just appeared ridiculous, like a cartoon version of herself. She lifted the corner of her mouth so high, I feared her face might tear in half.
My eyes flickered to my daughter, who looked like something out of a horror scene as she happily smeared pizza sauce on her face. I grabbed a paper napkin from the dispenser on the table and fruitlessly attempted to clean her up. Only for her to smear even more sauce on her face seconds later.
“It’s no big deal. I just lost my virginity to him. That’s all.”
“That’s all? Was he bad? Is that why you don’t want to talk about it? Because I understand. I slept with a guy once who was so bad, he asked me where to put it.”
“Put it?” I paused, cleaning up my daughter, and tilted my head to Lydia.
“His penis.” She nodded at me. “The guy didn’t realize how sex worked. I asked if he was a virgin, and he told me he wasn’t. Yet, he didn’t realize that his sausage goes in my oven... if you know what I mean.”
I frowned. That was the least sexy analogy I had ever heard.
“No, Jenner wasn’t bad at it.”
“Jenner? That’s his name?”
I nodded as I grabbed more napkins. Some time had passed, and I noticed Lydia wasn’t talking. She was normally as talkative as me, if not more.
“You okay?” I asked as I used some napkins to wipe up my hands, which were now covered in sauce.
“Jenner, huh?” She stared at Jenni and narrowed her eyes.
My palms started to sweat, which just made getting the sauce off worse. I wondered if my fingers would be permanently orange from staining.
I casually nodded and focused on scrubbing my hand with the disintegrating napkin.
“Lola? Who’s Jenni’s father? You never really talked about him; you only told me he wasn’t in the picture.”
“You don’t know him. It’s not important.”