Hey all! I'm back! This is part 2 of Chapter 10!
MI2: Mission Impossible 2
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The ride to Santucci's was great; we never should have left the car. Trouble sparked up the second we walked in there. At first, the woman who stood with the reservations book cast us the evil eye. She obviously didn't like young people, seeing as she was probably in her forties and was already a friend of Botox.
When we walked up to ask about our reservation, she looked through the list and said, flatly, "No, you're not in here. Sorry."
"What do you mean we're not in there? I called last night! Jesse Lindberg, for 8:30! It has to be there!"
She stared at me for a moment and looked back at the book like I was a moron. "I'm sorry, Mr. Lindberg, but we just don't have your name here. Would you like me to check if there's an extra table for two available?"
I sighed and nodded, looking over to Kat who was waiting patiently, a smile playing on her lips.
Soon, the lady came back quite triumphantly and said, "It's your lucky night! There's an extra table right by the window!" She pointed happily to a small table by a window, lit up by a candle. It was about three feet away from a large table filled with a loud family. Great. Just great. I shrugged, taking Kat by the hand and walked over to our little table, pulling the seat out for her as she sat down. 'Be a gentleman,' Leon's words echoed in my head.
After looking at out menus, I waved the waiter over and started to order. "Okay, we'll start off with calamari, then she'll have a galad with streens…I mean, a salad with greens." Shit, I was acting up again. "Right, and I'll have the lasagna. And we'll have wed rine to drink." I blushed a deep crimson at my mistakes. "Red wine. We'll have red wine to drink."
The waiter just rolled his eyes as he took our menus and walked away. Kat giggled a little bit and waited for me to calm down before we started to talk.
I apologized firsthand for that latest incident. "Sorry about that, Kat…it's just…I got a little nervous, and…"
She smiled warmly and squeezed my hand. "Don't worry about it. It was actually sort of cute. Just forget it happened okay? It's nothing major."
I grinned and began a conversation with my girl, I mean, my date.
"So, you're from Miami?" I asked.
"Yeah, basically. Um, I sort of ran into problems there, so I just decided to move out here. My brother came with me."
"You ran into problems so big that you had to move across the country?"
Pain sort of shot across her face and she bowed her head. "Yeah. Things got really screwed up." She paused for a second. "So, what did you talk about with my brother?"
"Oh, you know, the usual. Who I was, what I did for a living... you know, regular interrogation process," I smiled at her; making light of the weird situation I'd just been in.
"Oh my God, really? He asked you all of that stuff? I'm so sorry, Jess, Pax still sees me as a little girl. He just wants to protect me. I'll talk to him when I get home, though, I promise."
"Oh, it's cool. You don't think I've seen the same thing happen with Dominic and Mia? Hell, he's chased away more guys than he's dated girls! Brian's probably the only guy who's slipped through!"
We laughed and talked some more while we waited for our meal to arrive. I wasn't that nervous anymore until the food came. As the waiter placed my plate of lasagna down, I thought of what might happen if some of the cheese got stuck in my teeth. Or what would happen if my breath were bad. Did I have mints?
All of a sudden, I was freaked out again. She wouldn't kiss me if there were cheese stuck in my teeth, or if my breath were bad.
Apprehensively, I picked up my fork, glancing at Kat who had already started on her salad. Of course, with all of my worries about bad breath and kissing, my hands had gotten sweaty, and the fork tumbled out of my hand down to the dark blue carpet below. It kind of reminded me of a man falling off of a cliff as it went. Still, the man's fate wasn't as bad as mine. He wasn't doomed to spend an entire evening making a fool out of himself in front of a beautiful girl.
My cheeks burned as I bent to pick up the glinting silver fork. The second my hand touched the object, I heard a groan coming from my chair and I felt it crash down beside me as I toppled to the ground. So much for a bad date, this was the night from hell.
Gasps escaped the mouths of the people around me, and a waiter moved to help me up. I brushed him aside and picked the chair-traitor- up and sat down, causing the damn thing to emit one more creak, and buried my head in my hands, avoiding Kat's gaze as well as everyone else's. Not only had I embarrassed myself by dropping the fork, I had actually fallen out of my chair!! Damn. To make matters worse, that big family that was sitting near us erupted into laughter.
Sighing, I reached for the damn fork that had been the cause of everything and caught air. I looked down to see a mockingly shiny eating utensil blinking up at me from the ground. Double damn. Cursing it with every word in every language I could think of, I stood, bent over, and picked it up, only to be bumped into by a passing waitress.
I sat back down.
I took a bite of my dinner, which had remained hot during the whole fiasco, causing my mouth to burn.
And I let out an angry breath. We wouldn't be ordering desert here.
I peered at Kat sheepishly and saw that she was laughing out loud. She thought it was funny.
"What?" I asked.
"You…" she choked on her laughter, "You just fell over!!! And all you wanted was a fork, and it wasn't there when you sat down again!! You look so upset; it's priceless!! Honey, you're bright red! This is the best date I've ever been on!!"
"This is the best date you've ever been on?!" I was shocked.
"Yeah!" She grinned, "You're just so cute!"
All I could do was shake my head.
***Kat's POV***
After dinner, Jesse and I walked to the movie theater, which was pretty close to Santucci's. I smiled inwardly as he reached over cautiously and took my hand. He was agitated, I could tell, by what had happened at dinner. I moved closer to him as we got into line for tickets and gave him a quick squeeze. He beamed as he handed over the money for the tickets, popcorn, and soda. He was about to buy the whole concession stand for us before I pulled him away. "Come on sweetie, the movie's about to start…" I giggled. He was so thoughtful.
***
About halfway through the movie, Jesse had gotten his arm around my shoulders and I had my head resting on his shoulder. Frankly, 2Fast 2Furious wasn't worth much except for the car scenes, so during the dialogue, Jesse turned his head and bent over to kiss me. I was kind of surprised; actually- he was a really good kisser. I wanted to go further, but full making out during a date seemed a little too slutty for my tastes. He tried to kiss harder, but I pushed him back and shook my head. He shrugged and went back to watching the movie, and I'd have tackled him with a hug right there if we hadn't been in a theater. This was the first guy who hadn't pushed me to doing something I had no intention of doing. Jesse was so sweet, not like Damian. I shuddered at the thought of his name and snuggled into Jesse's chest. Things would be better here in LA, now that I had Jesse to watch over me…
***Jesse's POV***
On the way home, I kept peeking over to look at Kat. The ride home was silent except for a few comments about the movie. It's not that we didn't have anything to say to each other, we were both simply tired and enjoying the peaceful quiet that had taken over.
When we reached her creepy old house, I noticed that the lights were on and there was the glow of a television screen coming from one of the windows. I walked Kat up to the porch and gave her a hug goodbye.
"Kat, look, I know tonight was a total fluke, but, do you think we could maybe go out again sometime? I promise I'll bring my own fork, that way, if the first one falls I can just grab another out of my pocket!"
She giggled and nodded her head. "Yeah Jess, that sounds fine to me. I had a really great time with you tonight; it was definitely exciting. I can't wait to see you again!"
She kissed my cheek and went inside, leaving me alone to do a little 'Oh, yeah, I got some' dance in front of the door.
All the way home, I thought about where we would go the next time. I made a dash past all the curious faces in the living room and shut the door to my room, exhausted by the night's events.
I started to think of all of the things that could have happened if only I hadn't been so clumsy. Then, as I drifted off to sleep, I figured, what the hell, she had a great time. Maybe I'm not as useless as I think. Kat was the girl of my dreams that night.
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Heehee, enter Jesse's girlfriend! Just so that you know, Melanie and Dominic's problems will be coming back; I just wanted to throw in some time for Jesse, since I haven't really focused on him lately. Hope you liked it! ;-)
~*Mel*~
P.S. I just bought that 'Tricked Out' edition of TFATF. Where are the deleted scenes?!?!? I can't find them in the bonus features *sob* Please help, if anyone else has the DVD- thanks!