SHOOT: A Novel by Megan West, Kristen Flowers

of water. Just then, the server brought out
another dish. “How spicy is this one?” I asked him. He smiled, “Not spicy at
all. Don’t worry, I’ve had my fun. No more spicy foods for you, I promise.”

 
    “Can I trust you?”
I shot back with a skeptical look. Brad simply shrugged his shoulders with a
smirk.

 
    “This is Espinacas a la Catalana ,” Brad told me. I
could clearly see the main part of the dish was spinach and I was happy. I
thought his accent when he pronounced the names of the dishes was cute, but I
kept that thought to myself. He served a bit on my dish before grabbing a
serving of his own and the two of us ate at the same time.

 
    “This is
delicious!” I told him before swallowing my first bite. My hand shot up to my
mouth in shocked horror as a small bit of food fell out.   Brad’s face instantly lit up with laughter.

 
    “First you need
help getting dressed, now eating.” He shook his head in a tsk-tsk motion.

 
    “Hey now!”

 
    “Just teasing!” He
held his hands up in surrender.

 
    After that, he
ordered champagne for us as more small dishes came out, none of which were
spicy save for a couple, but they were manageable and he warned me beforehand. Once
the dishes started rolling out regularly and I had a few more sips of
champagne, I was beginning to loosen up and finally start to feel more
comfortable.

 
    “What’s next?” I
asked.

 
    “Getting demanding
so early?” he asked before draining the champagne in his glass and reaching for
the bottle to get a refill. He noticed mine was low so he filled up my glass as
well. “Maybe I should stop telling you the names,” he said.

 
    “Why?” I
protested. “I love it when you tell me the names!” I felt my cheeks go hot and I
noticed the look in his eyes. I had sounded whiney, but I hoped it was in a
cute way.

 
    He leaned forward,
“I can be cute when I speak Spanish or try to, anyway.” He grinned cheekily. I
started laughing, breaking it up with sips of champagne. Brad played it as if
he were as confident as ever and it made me wonder just how deep his confidence
really went. I liked that about him. He was easy to talk to and had good ways
of keeping me interested, making me want to learn more about him.  

 
    I also liked that he
had asked me some good questions about my hometown and childhood before opening
up about his own. It was like he really had an interest in getting to know me. He
wanted to make sure I was heard, but also wanted to find some sort of common
ground for us to relate to each other on.

 
    “I actually grew
up in Queens,” he told me after swallowing a mouthful of Croquetas Cremosas . Those had been my favorite so far. “My mother,
a single-mother, worked really hard, but it was still tough financially on us.
How was it in Iowa, if you don’t mind my asking?”

 
    “Financially?” I
asked. He nodded. “It was okay, but not great. I wouldn’t say we were poor, but
my parents worked themselves to the bone, pretty much. It always seemed like
they worked all day long, you know? I’m pretty sure our farm wouldn’t have been
as big if we hadn’t gotten it from grandma and grandpa.”

 
    “You started
working from a young age too?”

 
    “Yeah,” I nodded,
thinking back on baking pies as a young girl. It was all I had ever known so I
had no idea how radically different our lives could be. I didn’t know my
parents were, at the end of the day, underpaid through their own business. “I’ve
always wanted to leave Iowa, but my mom wanted me to stay there and help run
the family business.”

 
    There was a brief
pause before Brad spoke up, “You can be anyone you want here in New York, you
know. It’s the city of dreams. I love this place and I know you will too.”

 
    It sounded corny
coming from him, but I actually agreed. Everything up until that point did feel like a dream. There was so much
diversity in New York and so many opportunities