Service with a Smirk

by Ariel Tachna

  “That will depend on my schedule,” Pascal equivocated. “I don’t want to make promises I might not be able to keep.”

  Mathias frowned, clearly not happy with that answer. “Give me your phone.”

  Frowning in confusion, Pascal pulled out his phone and handed it to Mathias. Mathias typed in a number and waited for a minute. “There. Now you have my number and I have yours. So we can make plans for Saturday.”

  Chapter 4

  “HAVE YOU seen your dreamboat again?” Louis asked Mathias when they had the same lunch break the following Tuesday.

  “Not just saw him,” Mathias said with a grin. “Talked to him and got his number and a lunch date on Saturday.”

  “Nice.” Louis grinned back. “So tell me about him.”

  “His name’s Pascal. He works at la Colombe d’Or. He lives on the fourth floor of my building.”

  “I’m supposed to have lunch with Mr. Belanger next week. He usually wants to go to la Colombe d’Or. Maybe I’ll see him.”

  “He’s in his forties, dark hair with a bit of gray at the temples, but absolutely gorgeous. You can’t miss him.”

  “I’ll look for him,” Louis said. “I want a face to go with the name. Have you considered how you’re going to make this work if both of you have restaurant schedules? He’s not going to have a lot of nights off.”

  “That’s why we have a lunch date,” Mathias said. “It’s the one day and time neither of us has other commitments, at least not this week. Let’s see how that goes before you try to marry me off.”

  Louis laughed. “Is that what I was doing? I thought I was just giving you the benefit of my vast experience?”

  “Vast experience?” Mathias teased. “Careful there or I’m going to end up thinking the wrong thing.”

  Louis kicked him under the table. “That’s not what I meant. You’re burning the candle at both ends. I just don’t want to see you light a fire in the middle as well, or there’ll be nothing left.”

  “It’s just temporary,” Mathias said. “Once the training period is over, I’ll get a salary increase, and that should be enough to let me cut back on the hours I work at the bar. That’ll give me more time for myself and for Pascal, if things work out.”

  “Any particular reason why they wouldn’t?”

  “He’s so far out of my league,” Mathias said. “I’m a green kid, and he’s….”

  “He’s probably sitting at home thinking he’s too old for you,” Louis said when Mathias didn’t finish his sentence. “I’m not saying there isn’t an age difference or a difference in experience or anything else. I’m just saying don’t write yourself off. Whose idea was lunch?”

  Mathias had to stop and think for a minute. “His, I guess. I helped him carry his groceries up last Thursday. His hands were full. He offered me a beer, but I didn’t have time. I was going to be late for my shift at the bar, so he suggested we do it some other time. The decision to have lunch was a bit of a negotiation of schedules, but the initial idea was his.”

  “Then he’s got that much interest in you,” Louis said. “You’ll have to hold his interest, but you’ve managed to catch it. That’s a good start.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Mathias replied slowly. “Thanks, Louis. It’s easy to lose perspective.”

  “That’s what I’m here for,” Louis said. “Lunchtime’s over. Back to work.”

  PASCAL MET Benjamin for lunch on Wednesday when he had the day off. He tried to meet one or both of his friends on his day off when he could, and since he hadn’t seen them on his last day off, he’d been determined not to miss them again.

  “Bonjour,” Benjamin said as he joined Pascal at the table.

  “Bonjour,” Pascal replied. “How are you today?”

  “Very well. How are you?”

  Pascal debated how to answer that. Benjamin didn’t tease him as badly as René did, but anything he told Benjamin, René would know before long.

  “Pascal?” Benjamin prompted.

  Pascal bit back a curse. He’d obviously waited too long to answer. “I’m well,” he said. “I… I might have a date on Saturday.”

  “I thought you were working on Saturday,” Benjamin said.

  “For lunch,” Pascal clarified. “His schedule is as crazy as mine. That was the only time we were both free for the next two weeks.”

  Benjamin cocked his eyebrow at Pascal. “If he’s that busy—and I know how busy you are—is this a good idea?”

  “I already know it’s a bad idea,” Pascal said. “That hasn’t seemed to stop me.”

  The waiter arrived to take their order, forestalling the questions Pascal could see in Benjamin’s eyes. When they were alone again, Benjamin fixed him with a pointed stare. “So why is it a bad idea?”

  “He’s practically a kid,” Pascal said. “He works at the BMO during the day and at Le Salon in the evenings because he wants to live on rue Sainte-Catherine and can’t afford it on his bank salary alone. He doesn’t have time for a relationship, I don’t want a random hookup, but I don’t see how anything lasting can come from it.”

  “Then why are you having lunch with him, then?” Benjamin asked.

  “Because I’m only human,” Pascal said, “and he’s young and gorgeous and for whatever reason he’s interested in me right now. It’s one hell of an ego boost, even if it doesn’t last.”

  “Don’t doom yourself to failure because you don’t believe you can succeed,” Benjamin advised. “You may be right and it might not last, but you could be wrong. If he’s willing to give it a chance, do yourself a favor and give it everything you have too. Don’t ruin it by holding back.”

  “So instead I’ll scare him away by being too eager,” Pascal countered.

  “Just be yourself,” Benjamin said with a huff. “You’re being deliberately dense.”

  “He’s half my age,” Pascal replied. “I’d say I passed dense and entered the realm of insane some time ago.”

  Benjamin rolled his eyes. “You said he works at Le Salon. Which one is he?”

  “The brunet with the spiky blond tips and tight jeans.”

  “They all wear tight jeans,” Benjamin retorted. “It’s part of their charm.”

  Pascal laughed. “The one with the really tight jeans.”

  Benjamin grinned. “Oh, that one. Good taste, old man.”

  “You’re three months younger than I am. Who are you calling old?”

  “Which means you’ll always be older than I am,” Benjamin replied. Pascal shook his head as he bit back a laugh. “There’s more to life than your age,” Benjamin continued more seriously, “and more to age than a number. I’ve known men our age with all the maturity of a two-year-old and kids barely out of their teens with old souls. You’re a very young forty-eight. If he’s mature for his age, there might not be as much difference as you think.”

  Pascal wasn’t convinced, but he could see the logic in Benjamin’s words. He wasn’t ready to jump in with both feet, but he could test the waters and see what developed.

  DESPITE HIS better judgment, Pascal let Benjamin and René talk him into going to Le Salon on Thursday. He’d worked the lunch shift but had the evening off, so he didn’t have an excuse, and honestly, he wanted to see Mathias again, to see if the chemistry continued. Meeting at the bar when Mathias was working wouldn’t give them a lot of chance to interact because Mathias had to work, and Pascal didn’t want to give Adrien a reason to speak with him again. He’d be able to see Mathias, though, and that outweighed the rest of his concerns. They would sit at a table with another server so he could just watch Mathias across the room, even if that made him feel somewhere between a stalker and a high school kid hanging out near his crush’s next class just to catch a glimpse of him in the halls. Hopefully Mathias would either err on the side of sweet or simply chalk it up to Pascal and his friends being regulars at the bar.

  He made sure to arrive early enough that he’d get to pick the table, deliberately choosing one
in a section where a different waiter was taking orders. He didn’t see Mathias, but that worked in his favor, actually. If Mathias asked why Pascal wasn’t at one of Mathias’s tables, Pascal could honestly say he hadn’t known which tables were Mathias’s when he came in.

  René arrived before Benjamin, greeting Pascal without any unusual teasing, making Pascal wonder if Benjamin hadn’t said anything about their lunch conversation after all. It would be surprising, but maybe Benjamin had developed some discretion since the last time Pascal had confided in him.

  They chatted idly until the waiter came up to take their order. René flirted as he always did, bantering back and forth with the waiter as he decided on a drink. Pascal ordered a vodka martini. He’d save trying new drinks for Mathias.

  “Not feeling adventurous tonight?” René asked when the server left.

  “No one to be adventurous for,” Pascal replied without thinking.

  “Oh, I was right!” René said. “Benjamin owes me ten bucks. You are interested in the new kid.”

  That explained Benjamin’s reticence. So much for discretion. “That remains to be seen,” Pascal replied. “It doesn’t do much good if he’s not interested in return.”

  “He was all over you last time.”

  “He’s all over all his customers,” Pascal said. He didn’t need to look in Mathias’s direction to know he was flirting with the table of twentysomethings that had come in while they were giving their order. He could hear the laughter from across the bar. “Ask me on Sunday, and we’ll see where things stand.”

  René stared at him for a minute before grinning widely. “You dog. You have a date.”

  “For lunch,” Pascal verified. “And no, you can’t come over Saturday afternoon to see how it went, and furthermore, you can’t come to the restaurant Saturday night. You can call Sunday afternoon after I get home from Maman’s.”

  “I thought you were at your mother’s last weekend.”

  “I was. Sylvie and I switched weeks, so now I have two weekends in a row.”

  “Fine, so I’ll call you between three and five on Sunday. Or do you have to go in early this weekend?”

  “No, it’s my weekend to close. Someone else gets to open,” Pascal replied.

  Benjamin joined them then.

  “Pay up,” René said by way of greeting. “He’s got a date. That counts as being interested.”

  Benjamin flushed and handed René the money. “For the record,” Benjamin said to René, “I didn’t discourage him, even if it meant losing the bet.” He turned toward Pascal. “I didn’t think you’d be interested, but now that you are, I want you to be happy.”

  “We’ll see,” Pascal said. “It’s way too soon to be talking like that.”

  “Why are we sitting all the way over here when he’s over there?” Benjamin asked.

  “Because the last time I was here, he got in trouble with Adrien for paying too much attention to me and not enough to his other customers,” Pascal said. “I didn’t want to do that to him again.”

  “We could have gone somewhere else,” René offered.

  “Yeah, but then I wouldn’t even get to see him.”

  “Man, you’ve got it bad,” René teased. Pascal flushed. “I’m glad. You’ve been alone long enough. Robert wouldn’t want you to mourn forever.”

  “It’s not just that,” Pascal said. “I’ve had it all, you know. It’s hard to imagine getting a second chance at that kind of love and harder still to imagine settling for anything less.”

  “That’s fine,” Benjamin said, “but remember this too: you’re not the man you were then. Don’t expect a new partner or a new relationship to be like the old one. Find a partner who gives you what you need now, not who can give you what Robert gave you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Pascal demanded.

  Benjamin sighed. “You met him when you were in your twenties. You had a few good years together before he got sick, and then you spent the rest of his life taking care of him as cancer stole his health and eventually his life. You’re a different man than you were then. I’m not saying you didn’t love him, and I’m certainly not saying he didn’t love you, but you don’t need another Robert. You need someone for the man you are now, not the man you were then.”

  “And you think Mathias is that man?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea,” Benjamin said with a bright smile, “but you seem to be entertaining the idea, and I know you too well. You’ll do your best to talk yourself out of it if René and I don’t knock some sense into you, so consider yourself knocked.”

  Mathias came up behind Pascal before he could reply and set Pascal’s and René’s drinks on the table. “Hi, guys,” he said with a smile. “Your server went on break, so I said I’d drop these off and take any additional orders.”

  Benjamin ordered a beer while looking pointedly at Pascal. Pascal smiled up at Mathias, who smiled back. “I’m glad I got a chance to say hi,” Mathias added. “I can’t stay over here long. I’ve got customers to take care of, but I’m looking forward to Saturday.”

  “Me too,” Pascal said, not sure whether to be impressed that Mathias seemed to be taking his job much more seriously or discouraged that Mathias found him much easier to resist than he had the last time Pascal came into the bar. The brush of Mathias’s fingers across the back of his neck settled his doubts and left Pascal wishing it was Saturday right now.

  Ignoring the smirks of his friends, Pascal caught Mathias’s fingers and squeezed lightly. “You want to bring me a new drink?” he asked. “Something… different?”

  Mathias’s smile lit up the whole bar. “I’ll get right on it.”

  Chapter 5

  PASCAL WOKE up far earlier on Saturday than he would usually be awake. La Colombe d’Or stayed open until midnight on Friday, and then they had to prepare everything for Saturday, so Pascal rarely got home before 2:00 a.m. What had possessed him to invite Mathias to his place for lunch instead of meeting him somewhere, Pascal couldn’t say, but he regretted it now. He hadn’t had time to go shopping, and he hadn’t wanted to come across as pretentious by bringing something home from work and reheating it. He ate more meals at la Colombe d’Or than he did at home since he didn’t want to put the time and effort into cooking for himself, but this wasn’t a meal for himself. This was a date with Mathias, and since he’d invited the man over, he needed to make an effort to actually feed him. Fortunately, at the height of summer, he could find plenty of fresh vegetables at the market at Place Pasteur. With a little bit of effort, he could whip up a dressing for a pasta salad. He had a nice rosé wine he could stick in the fridge to chill and plenty of beer if Mathias preferred that to wine.

  He tugged on a reasonably clean T-shirt and a pair of shorts for the trip to the market. He could take a shower and change into something nicer after he was done cooking. As long as he didn’t run into Mathias in the halls this morning, he’d be fine.

  The sky was so blue it hurt to look at it when he walked outside. He winced and pulled on his sunglasses. He loved the sky like that, but not when he was running on too little sleep and not enough caffeine. He’d have to remedy that before Mathias came over or he wouldn’t be pleasant company. He wasn’t convinced Benjamin was right and that things could work between Mathias and him, but he wasn’t going to shoot himself in the foot either.

  The street was quiet this early almost until he reached the market. Saturday mornings along rue Sainte-Catherine were dead except for people who wanted what the market had to offer. Everyone else was still in bed, sleeping off the partying from the night before. It made for an incredibly vibrant nightlife, something Pascal didn’t get to take advantage of as much as he wanted since he was at the restaurant more nights than not, but it also meant he never had to worry about coming home late, because everyone else was up just as late. On Saturday, though, most people didn’t stir before noon. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been awake this early on a Saturday.

&nb
sp; When he arrived at the market, he decided on a quick tour through the stalls to see what his choices were before he bought. He was a decent cook with enough time and the right ingredients, even if he didn’t usually bother with it. Today, though, he was determined to find the right ingredients.

  Having finished his rounds, he decided on a mixture of squashes and peppers that could be sliced thinly and eaten raw along with some beautiful ripe tomatoes. Armed with his provisions, he headed back toward home.

  “This is getting to be a habit.” Mathias’s voice started Pascal as he neared the door to their building.

  “Mathias. I didn’t expect to see you so early this morning.”

  “I usually go for a run when I get up on Saturdays,” Mathias explained. “It’s pretty much the only time I get any exercise with my schedule the way it is. Of course I usually get up a lot later on Saturdays, but I have plans for today.” The wink that accompanied his words went straight to Pascal’s head, his whole body tingling with it.

  “What a coincidence,” Pascal said, determined to keep his wits about him in the face of Mathias’s flirting. He wasn’t a teenager to lose his head at the first sign of interest from a pretty face. A very attractively flushed and sweaty face right at the moment, to go with a very attractively buff and sweaty body. He took in the loose, sweat-damp T-shirt and clingy running shorts with a swift glance. He could linger over the memory later, when he was alone and less likely to embarrass himself. “I was just doing some shopping to facilitate my plans as well.”

  Mathias peeked into the bag Pascal carried. “Looks like quite a feast. Someone’s trying to make a good impression.”

  Pascal flushed despite himself. “Nothing wrong with taking pride in a well-prepared meal,” he said defensively as they walked inside the building.

  “Nothing at all,” Mathias agreed. “Good luck with your plans.”