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“Uh. Hey, Nursey?” Dex said, scanning over the menu. “What’s prosciutto? Is that, like, a cheese?”
“You don’t know what prosciutto is?” Nursey asked skeptically.
“Not all of us were born with silver spoons up our asses, Nurse.”
“But it’s prosciutto. You can buy it at, like, Costco—”
“Nursey.”
“Fine, fine,” Nursey sighed. “Prosciutto is uncooked Italian ham. It’s good—you’d like it.”
“O...kay,” Dex said. “I gotta say, uncooked ham doesn’t sound that appealing.”
Nursey shrugged, licking salt off the rim of whatever drink he’d ordered. “Your loss.”
They fell quiet, the hushed murmur of restaurant conversations around them making Dex a little uncomfortable. He felt weird talking in anything louder than a whisper. And was that smooth jazz? He fiddled with the napkin on his lap, which he was going to feel guilty about using later because it was so fucking white. How the hell did they get stains out of it? Did they just have new napkins every meal? Didn’t that sort of defeat the point of reusable napkins?
Trying to interpret the menu felt like reading a foreign language. He didn’t understand what half the words were. “What’s Roquefort?” he asked Nursey after a suitably long silence.
“Oh, it’s a blue cheese.”
“And chanterelles?”
“A kind of mushroom.”
“What about bear, beer—nope, I can’t even pronounce that.”
Nursey scooted forward. “Here, give me the menu and point to it.” Dex did. “Oh, you mean béarnaise?” he said, pronouncing the word with an obnoxious French accent.
“Gesundheit,” Dex said.
“I think it’s a sauce, maybe?” said Nursey. “I don’t really know that one.”
“Well aren’t you a big help.”
“Hey, I don’t know everything, man,” Nursey said as he tipped back on his chair a little, balancing on the back two legs. “This place is like, mad bougie.”
“No shit,” Dex said. He rolled his eyes. “Also, dude, stop leaning back like that. You’re gonna fucking fall.”
“‘M not.”
“You wanna bet on that?”
Nursey sighed and dropped the front legs of his chair back onto the ground. “You’re no fun.”
“I’m no fun? You’re the one who dragged us to this fancy-ass restaurant. This place is stuffy as hell.”
“I know, I know. But my moms are paying for it, so I figure we should probably at least try to go on a legit date.”
“I guess,” Dex conceded.
The waitress arrived to take their orders, and Dex ordered a fifty-dollar filet mignon, because it was the only entree on the menu that he actually recognized. Nursey had been about to order the lobster dish, but Dex convinced him against it. “I’ll get you lobster twice that good and a tenth of the price if you visit me in Maine,” he said. “Trust me.” In the end, Nursey got some kind of steak that Dex didn’t want to try to pronounce.
The salad that came next just looked like half a head of lettuce stuck on a plate with salad dressing. Dex at least tried to cut it with his knife. Nursey just straight up stabbed a section of it and started gnawing off it from the fork.
“You know, for someone raised in a brownstone, you don’t really have manners,” Dex said. Nursey shrugged.
“I used to know all of it, but I kinda forgot most of the etiquette stuff I learned by the time I went to Andover. Moms made me take classes but it never really stuck.”
“You took etiquette classes.”
“Ch’yeah. It sucked.”
“Man...” he shook his head. Nursey was starting to crunch the ice from his water glass, and Dex really couldn’t help but laugh. “You’re one of a kind, Nurse.”
Nursey winked. “Glad you think so.”
It took forever for their food to arrive, but when it did, Dex was a little disappointed by how little food they gave him. Nursey’s moms were paying fifty fucking dollars for this and he was probably still going to be hungry afterwards.
“How’s your steak thing?” he asked Nursey, who was actually cutting his food this time, thank god. “Is it better than normal steak?”
“Uh, I don’t know. Hold on a sec,” Nursey said. He popped a piece of the meat into his mouth and chewed slowly. “It’s pretty good,” he said with his mouth full. “Yeah, this is some pretty dope steak. You try it.”
Dex reached across the table and stabbed a piece of Nursey’s food onto his fork. The couple in the table next to them gave Dex a bit of a look but he ignored them. “Huh,” he said when he’d finished chewing. “It is pretty fucking good steak. You wanna try mine?”
“Sure,” Nursey said. They ended up pushing their plates to the middle of the table, splitting the two dishes between them. The food was gone way too quickly for something that expensive. Dex felt a little guilty for not savoring it more, but they were college hockey players, and they’d been waiting for what felt like forever. They were starving.
“I guess we could get cake or something...” Dex said, looking at the dessert menu halfheartedly.
“Are you kidding? Bitty would kill us if we bought baked goods at a restaurant.”
“So, what, should we order another two $50 meals?”
“Or...” Nursey said, resting his elbows on the table and leaning forward, “we could go back to my dorm and order Dominos? Do a little Netflix and chill?”
“Dude,” Dex grinned, “I sort of really love you right now.”
“Yeah?” Nursey said. He looked uncharacteristically soft and open. “Love you too, babe. Hashtag-boyfriends.”
“Oh my god, I take it back. I take it all back.”
“Aw, don’t be like that. I’m just trying to hashtag—”
“Just pay the fucking bill so we can get out of this place,” Dex said. “The sooner we leave, the better.”
Nursey waggled his eyebrows suggestively. “I didn’t know you were so desperate to be alone with me.”
“Shut up,” Dex said, smiling. “You’re such a fucking loser.”
“But I’m your loser.”
“Yeah,” Dex admitted fondly. “Yeah, you are.”
In Dex’s opinion, the pizza they ordered back at Nursey’s apartment was just as good as the fancy steak. He didn’t have the taste buds to appreciate the difference. Besides, the company was what mattered. As long as Nursey was there, Dex didn’t really give a shit.