Jasmine Guillory - The Proposal

He sighed in relief.

“Chicken breast could potentially be inside of a taco, but don’t worry, I would never order it here. And I promise, this place does not have any Jell-O or carrot cake tacos.”

When they got up to the front of the line, Carlos ordered in Spanish without consulting her. She regretted her inability to speak the language. Sure, she spoke a little Spanish, just from living in California, and the bits that she’d learned from listening hard when she did interviews of Spanish-speaking sources with the assistance of interpreters. She’d taken French in high school and college, a decision she’d lamented for years once she realized how useful even semi-fluency in Spanish would have been to her life.

“What do you want to drink?” he asked her.

“Pineapple agua fresca, por favor,” she said to him, in her not terrible but also not good accent, which Carlos and the counter guy both laughed at.

He paid, and they slid into an empty booth with their drinks and their order number on a stick.

“Did you grow up speaking Spanish?” she asked him.

He shook his head.

“No. My parents emigrated when they were both young—my mom was three; my dad was eight. They both grew up only speaking Spanish at home and English at school, and they got teased a lot for their accents and not speaking English well enough. They didn’t speak Spanish to me or Angela when we were kids because they didn’t want the same things to happen to us. I wish . . .” He sighed, and she resisted the impulse to grab his hand. “That’s a long way of saying that no, I didn’t, and I wish I had. Especially growing up in L.A., everyone would look at me and hear my name and speak to me in Spanish, and I couldn’t respond. I didn’t really learn until college. I took it in high school, but I always felt self-conscious about it there, I guess.”

She took a sip of her agua fresca. She’d had other friends who grew up with Spanish-speaking parents who had the same thing happen, and they’d both hated and understood the choice that their parents had made.

“Sixty-three?” A man picked up their number and put two huge trays of food in their place.

“Oh my God.”

There were so many tacos in front of her. Thank God she was hungry. She counted at least six different kinds, but there were at least two of each kind. And there were chips, and guacamole, and a big dish of refried beans and rice. It was a good thing her jeans were stretchy.

He laughed at the look on her face.

“I can’t decide if you’re excited or horrified.”

She shook her head and kept her eyes on the food.

“I can’t, either.”

He picked up the squirt bottles of salsa at the corner of the booth. She reached for another, but he took it out of her hand.

“Wait. Only certain salsas go with certain tacos.” She started to object, to say that she could select her own salsa, thank you very much, but she reconsidered.

“Okay, food guru, tell me what to do here.”

He touched her hand and flashed a smile at her. She’d last seen that smile on Wednesday night, right before he pulled off her underwear. She was not in the habit of asking men to tell her what to do, but apparently, they liked it.

She wasn’t planning to get in that habit, but it was always good to know these things.

“Well, when you put it that way . . .” He lined up the plates of tacos in front of her and added the salsa of his choosing to each one. “Now. Rank them. I’ll tell you what everything is afterward.”

She rubbed her hands together and took off her leather jacket. This date was already more fun than her usual “drinks at a hipster bar, dinner at the upscale pizza place next door afterward” L.A.-style dates.

She took bites of each taco in succession, and then second bites of all six.

“Okay.” She looked down at all of her tacos, and then across the table at his; while she’d been tasting each one carefully, he’d decimated his.

“First, I have to say, ranking these from number six to number one doesn’t give number six enough credit. I would eat this taco every day if I could, let’s be clear.” He motioned for her to get on with it. She picked up a plate and set it at the far end of the table against the window. “Six.”

“Carne asada, but I’m sure you already knew that.” She nodded and tried not to smile like her favorite teacher had just complimented her in front of the whole class. She put another plate next to the first one.

“That’s tripas. Are you sure that wasn’t too weird for you?”

Tripe. Huh. Okay, that was a little weird. She hadn’t really expected tripe to be one of the things she’d eat tonight. Or that she’d rank it over steak.

“If it had been too weird, would I have kept eating it?” She hoped he didn’t notice that she didn’t quite answer the question.

She hesitated for a few seconds with the next selection, then moved a third plate over.

“Carnitas!” He pulled the basket of chips toward him and squirted salsa on one of his empty plates. “Only fourth place for carnitas, wow.”

She couldn’t tell if that was a good wow or bad wow.

“I loved the carnitas! I’ve always thought carnitas was my favorite before, and it hurt me to put it in fourth place, but . . .”

He dipped a chip into his salsa with a huge grin on his face.

“This is fun. Keep going.”

None of the guys she’d dated in the past five years would have even imagined ordering this much food for two people. Not even for four people. Thank God she wasn’t here with any of them.

She moved a fourth plate into line.

“Cabeza in third place!” Carlos said.

And she’d never dated anyone who would have ordered her a cow head taco. A delicious cow head taco, to be clear.

He rolled his sleeves up to his elbows, and she couldn’t hold back a sigh at the sight of his forearms. Did men have any idea how sexy it was when they did that?

She moved the next plate in line.

“Lengua.” He dug into the bowl of guacamole with a chip. “Well, you should have ranked that one the first, but you can’t get everything right.”

Why was she not surprised that his favorite was the tongue?

“As much as I love that one . . .”

“Mmmm, you sure do. I know that now.” He smirked at her, and she tried hard not to laugh.

“As I was saying, as much as I love that one . . .” She pushed the last plate into line. “This is my favorite.”

He held out his hand, and she slapped it.

“Respect. Al pastor is an excellent taco favorite to have, especially here.”

She finished the al pastor taco and raised an eyebrow at him.

“So did I pass?”

He stopped, a guacamole-laden chip halfway to his mouth.

“What do you mean pass?”

She rolled her eyes at him.

“This test. I know it was a test, don’t even try to pretend it wasn’t.”

At first he shrugged and didn’t meet her eyes. Then he gave her a puppy dog smile.

“Okay, yes, you definitely passed, but I didn’t really intend it to be a test. It was just that . . .”

Nik spooned some rice and beans onto a plate. She was already so full that putting more food on her plate seemed ridiculous, but she couldn’t not try the rice and beans, could she? When she had a little bit of both on her plate, she sat up straight and looked Carlos in the eye.

“It was just that what? I’m going to make you finish that sentence now.”

• • •

Carlos sighed and put his fork down.

“It was just that you kind of seemed like a girl who stayed in the safe parts of L.A. and who moved in bougie kinds of circles, and who . . . who . . . I wasn’t sure how you would react to a place like this and food like that.”