RISKY BUSINESS

Chapter 6

MARCH,
BLUESTONE PLAZA, THE SILVER CROWN
b r o o k l y n l e s l i e c o o p e r
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Clearly someone up above enjoyed punishing me, because —to my dismay— my family had been invited out for dinner at a fancy restaurant called The Silver Crown with the Hood's. All I wanted to do was hide away from Calum and his constantly changing moods, but somehow, my days always spontaneously changed to fit him into my schedule.

I hadn't spoken to him since the night he scolded the pizza delivery boy for hitting on me,, and I was dreading having to see him soon —really soon— because I wouldn't know what to say. Would we act like that night never happened? Like we didn't have a moment of honesty about ourselves between each other only to have it ruined by some random boy with a deep voice and an interest in me? It wasn't like we were dating or married. It wasn't like he had the right to get upset about a boy giving me his number. He had no say in who's number I kept, even if I still would've thrown away the receipt with the number on it.

I barely even knew Calum. We'd only started speaking recently. And it wasn't like we spoke every day, or hung out everyday— although it was becoming a constant. Before he and his family moved into the house next door to mine, Calum didn't even know I existed. Now he was treating me like I was some quest he wanted to conquer. It wasn't obvious, but there were signs of it.

I looked out the car window as we pulled up into the parking lot of The Silver Crown. It sat just outside the Bluestone Plaza, which was the towns own local shopping mall. The Silver Crown had been around for a few years now, and for those few years my family had dined there more times than I could count. It was a 5-Star quality food restaurant for 5-Star quality customers, like my mother. I think she loved the place more than our dining table, and that was saying something.

The only times I ever got to dress myself up was for special occasions, and my mother considered this one of those. Especially because we were eating out with the Hood's, a highly respected family. However, when she explained to me that Mali couldn't make it as she already had plans, I noticed something.

"So, who exactly is going to be at this dinner? Just Joy and David?" I had asked as my family of three seated ourselves in the car and buckled up.

My mother was the one to answer. "We'll be dining with Joy, David and their son . . . Calum. Mali had already made plans." I noticed that when she mentioned the son of the family, Calum, she said it sourly. It made me remember that she caught him dropping me off on his motorbike, and that he smirked when he saw the looks on our faces. I didn't have to ask her to know that she was disappointed.

The three of us quietly walked through the large entrance doors and into the foyer of the restaurant, where we were greeted with the cool air conditioning and soft classical music being played by a live band in the corner of the large room. Past the register was a red carpet that lead to to the dance floor in the centre of the room, and surrounding were tables of different rectangular sizes.

We walked up to the counter and my mother smiled politely at the person behind the desk, who had a name tag that read Charlie. He smiled at each of us before looking at my mother to speak. "Good evening, Mrs. Cooper. Do we have a booking or walk-in tonight?"

It didn't surprise me that he knew who my mother was, she basically lived here. Her workplace had meetings here, her and her friends dined here, she dragged dad and I along on occasional get-togethers, like tonight with the Hood's.

"We have a booking under the name Joy Hood." She spoke formally.

Charlie nodded and checked for our table number before leading us down the red carpet and through an opening on the right between tables, where the Hood family were seated a few tables away from the dance floor. They sat at a table for six on one side, the other three seats across from them unoccupied. Joy and David had dressed similar to my parents: the dad's wearing buttoned-up shirts and denim blue jeans, and the mother's wearing pencil skirts and nice tops that matched. They all stood when they spotted us, and it was when my eyes landed on Calum that I felt my heartbeat suddenly increase.