Work In Progress by Olivia Lucas

Author:Olivia Lucas [Lucas, Olivia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-07-18T05:00:00+00:00

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There isn’t much chatter in the car. My eyeballs are still aflame, and I’m just trying to focus on the road. I’m also trying not to run through stop signs or collide with another animal.

Thankfully, it’s only a few minutes until we reach Renzo’s, a quaint pizza parlor on the edge of town. Harmon Valley is hardly a hotbed of ethnic cuisine, so it’s either Chinese or pizza, and Reagan opted for the latter.

Renzo’s is tucked between a bank and a butcher, and if it wasn’t for the flashing neon sign in the window, you’d probably miss it.

As soon as we open the door, a little bell tinkles above us, announcing our arrival, and we are hit with the gorgeous scent of garlic and wine.

It’s a cozy, dimly lit spot with terracotta-painted walls, Tuscan prints, and far too many wooden tables with mismatching chairs.

“Hey, Rich!” I call out to Richard who is chatting to a waitress. He turns and smiles back, pointing to a table by the fire.

“That’s the electrician that zapped himself?”

“Uh-huh. He works here on weekends. Has two small children, so he needs the extra money.”

“His eyebrows grew back pretty fast.”

I laugh. “Yeah. Thank God for that. His wife, Trish, was threatening to draw them on with a sharpie.”

Reagan just laughs.

The place is humming, but the gingham-clad tables are so tightly packed, we have to walk sideways like a pair of crabs to weave through the narrow gaps between them.

“Sorry, just need to get through, Mrs Bingham,” I say, and she pulls her pizza tray in from the edge of a table.

“Do not sit on my Margherita, Naomi,” she warns.

I smile and hear Reagan shuffling behind me. “Excuse me. Whoops, sorry. Thanks.”

“Right,” I puff, placing my clutch down beside me. “We made it.”

Reagan’s coat slithers from her shoulders, and we take a seat. Of course, the table is so small that our knees immediately touch. I try to edge away, but I can’t stop the warmth of her body pressing into mine.

I’m not going to lie. It’s mildly off-putting.

A young waitress with a scraped-back bun suddenly appears by my side. She must be an out-of-towner because, funnily enough, I don’t recognize her. She lights a waxy candle stuffed into an old wine bottle, and hands us each a leather-bound menu.

Reagan recants a story about spending a summer in Sienna, Tuscany, in her gap year, but I can’t seem to focus with my whole body pulsating like this, so I just sit there and smile awkwardly.

I know the onus isn’t on me to continue the conversation, but as I said, I am panicking, so when she finishes, I blurt out the only sensible thing I can think of, “Should we order some drinks?”

It’s also like five hundred degrees in here, and it doesn’t help that we are practically sitting on top of the fire. I feel beads of sweat prick on my forehead, almost immediately, and start tugging at my sweater to pull it off. It gets a little caught around my head, but I give a final tug, hear a bit of a tear, and it comes free.

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