Page 72 of Devil’s Disciples

I looked up from filling my bowl with the seafood stew. “I’ve been on one.”

“One?”

“One.”

“Oh. Wow. Why only one?”

I picked two of the coxinhas up and shrugged. “Superstitious, I guess.”

“You? Superstitious?”

“A little.”

I was more than a little superstitious, but didn’t want to be criticized for it. She dipped her bread in the stew, took a bite, and then cocked her head to the side. “What superstition keeps a guy from going on a date?”

“Shark teeth.”

She scrunched her face. “Sharks teeth? Like shark’s teeth, a newt’s brain, and the eye of a toad? Voodoo?”

I choked on the cheese dumpling. Hearing her say voodoo was too much. After a few drinks of water, I regained my composure. “The story is kind of gross, are you sure you want to hear it?”

She plucked a shrimp from her stew and held it over her plate. “I love gross stories.”

“My first actual date was with a girl I met at a record store. She was really pretty, but had really jacked up teeth. They went in every direction, like a shark’s teeth. I thought she was cool, so I asked her out.”

It was close to the truth. She was pretty, and had a disastrous set of teeth. Her incredible body, however, was what drew me to her.

“We went to a movie. About twenty minutes in, she offered to…” I gestured toward my lap. “You know.”

“I don’t know.”

“Blow me.”

“In the movie?” she whispered.

I nodded. “Mean Girls.”

“You took her to see Mean Girls?”

“I thought she’d enjoy it.”

She twirled her hand in a circle. “Continue.”

I didn’t think it would be appreciated if I told Andy all the details, so I condensed the story significantly, only hitting the highlights. “Let’s just say thirty seconds later that I had to make a trip to the bathroom to try and stop the bleeding. But, I couldn’t. I ended up in the emergency room.”

“Holy crap.” She stretched her lips thin, exposing her perfectly white teeth. After clacking them together a few times, she grinned. “From the teeth?”

“All three thousand of them.”

She draped her hair behind her ears and then gave me a funny look. “I guess I’m confused as to where the superstitious part comes in.”

“I’m a little more than a little superstitious.”

“I’m intrigued,” she said with a smile. “Tell me more.”

“I decided if that date went so poorly that I had to go to the emergency room, that dates weren’t meant for me, and that they were cursed. So. I haven’t been on one since.”

She stirred her soup with her spoon slowly, seemingly less interested in eating. After a moment, she looked up. “Interesting.”