Darkroom: A Moo U Hockey Romance Kate Willoughby (read full novel .TXT) 📖

“Good plan. Because if they aren’t okay with your birthmark, they don’t deserve the glory of your goddess body. Now,” she said, getting to her feet and pulling me out of bed, “unless you want him to see that birthmark this morning, we’d better get ready. They’re coming to pick us up in forty minutes.”

“You’re looking sharp this morning,” I said to Hudson after Ruby and I got in the back seat.

He was wearing jeans, a sweater, and his Indiana Jones fedora.

He tipped his hat at me and grinned. “Why thank you. I wore this just for you.”

“I thought you wore it because you thought it was Halloween,” AJ said.

Hudson congenially flipped AJ the bird before starting the Jeep.

“Where are we going?” Ruby asked.

“It’s a place on Church Street called Wang’s,” AJ said. “It hasn’t been there very long, but the word has spread and it’s gotten pretty popular.”

There were people waiting outside when we got there, which wasn’t surprising, since the place was small. But people waiting meant they were doing something right—food or service or both.

Five minutes later, we were weaving our way through the restaurant. I was surprised to see quite a number of Asian diners. Back home in Brattleboro, I could go a year without seeing another Asian. People wearing aprons were pushing aluminum carts full of stacked metal cylinders. As I passed one, the attendant lifted the lid off one of them to reveal white buns with a little daub of pink on them. Another held flat white noodles folded like blankets with tiny shrimp in the folds. It all looked very different from the food I was used to.

As soon as we sat down, a pot of tea appeared on the table while someone parked their cart next to our table. Ruby and, surprisingly, Hudson indicated what they wanted and the server picked up the small plates and containers with tongs and put them on the table, then stamped our check, one stamp per plate. Before we could even start eating, another cart came by and more goodies where chosen. We hadn’t even been seated for five minutes and we already had a table full of food.

“Okay,” Ruby said, “let me give you the rundown of what we got. That’s siu mai, which is pork, shrimp and shitake mushroom wrapped in a noodle. That’s my favorite. That’s ha gow, rice noodle filled with shrimp. This thing that looks like a deep-fried football is haam siu gok.”

“What’s inside of that?”

“Pork and vegetables.”

“I dip everything in the soy sauce mixed with the chili oil,” Hudson said.

I noticed a little pot of orange-colored oil with what looked like flecks of hot peppers in the center of the table.

“It looks hot,” he said, “but it’s not that bad. The mustard is good too, but it’ll clean out your sinuses if you’re not careful.”

“How is it you know so much about dim sum?” I asked him. I scanned the tabletop. Not a fork in sight. I sighed inwardly.

He shrugged. “My family lives in Brooklyn and we eat out a lot. Honestly, I think one out of every ten restaurants in New York is Chinese.”

“Okay, I’m going to try one of those footballs first. It’s deep fried and anything deep fried has to be good.” I flagged down one of the staff. “Can I have a fork please?”

“I’m sorry,” AJ said. “Did you just ask for a fork?”

I bristled. “Something wrong with that? Just because I look like I do doesn’t mean I automatically know how to use chopsticks.”

AJ gaped at me in surprise and frankly, I was pretty shocked by my outburst too. It was uncalled for and I was immediately swamped by remorse.

“Sorry, Indi,” AJ sputtered. “I didn’t mean anything by it. Honest.”

“No, I’m the one who’s sorry, AJ. You’re fine. I overreacted. I don’t know what came over me. I’m really sorry. It’s just…I’m touchy about people making assumptions about me based on how I look. My mom and dad brought me home from China when I was a baby, so I’m as American as you guys. I just don’t look it.”

“It’s cool. I understand,” AJ said. “Won’t happen again.”

“You know, you wouldn’t have a problem if you just learned how to use these,” Ruby said, sliding an unopened pair of chopsticks toward me.

It bugged me that she was right, of course, but I tore the wrapper off them anyway.

You can do this, Indi, I told myself. How can you expect to wield a scalpel if you can’t even use chopsticks?

“Okay, here goes,” I said.

Concentrating on my grip, I reached for the football. It actually looked like the most difficult thing to get a hold of because of its shape, but I’m nothing if not stubborn. As my chopsticks slipped off the rounded surface over and over, I felt like everyone was watching and judging me. It was obvious I was a poser and didn’t know a fortune cookie from a pagoda. Heat rose in my cheeks and I almost grabbed it with my fingers when Hudson bumped my arm.

“This is how I do it.” He showed me how to spear the football with one of the chopsticks. “Now just pinch, like this. See? It’s cheating a little bit, but it gets the job done.”

It totally worked. I got the football to my plate feeling triumphant. After dipping it into the soy sauce, I bit into the crunchy dumpling and oh my gosh, it was really strange, but so good. The outside shell was delightfully crispy while just under that was a chewy, slightly sweet layer and in the middle of the mostly hollow football was a bit of seasoned ground pork. The soy sauce brought out all the perfectly balanced flavors and textures.

Ruby and Hudson were watching me intently and I nodded slowly. “Amazing,” I said around the mouthful. Using Hudson’s spear-and-pinch method, I took a sui mai and it was just as