"I was wondering if you have plans tonight after work?" I had to make myself ask before I lost courage. It was the week after Yuya had joined our school and I needed to act on an idea I had before he sunk his teeth deeper into her.

Gabbie gave me a glance-over. "Not really, why?"

"I found something you might be interested in."

She sent me a searching smile.

"I'll see you at the end of the day?" I backed up a step, leaving the question open-ended as students flooded past me.

I met her outside her classroom after six.

"Shall we?" I gestured with my messenger bag toward the stairs.

"Where are we going?" Gabbie asked with a hesitant grin.

"Not far. Let me surprise you, please?" I tried not to sound petulant.

Gabbie glanced left and right before answering me. "Fine. Let's go."

We trotted down the stairs together and changed into our outdoor footwear.

"This way," I said, turning away from the school and toward the direction of the train station. The sun had started to lower in the sky.

"Where are we going?" she prompted again.

"It's not far," I assured her.

"Are you kidnapping me?"

"Nah, I'd be an obvious suspect. I'd never get away with it." I grinned. 

She guffawed and relaxed into a pace matched with mine. 

"Can I ask you a question?" I asked after a moment of relaxed quiet. "You seem connected to your culture, and it's important to you, yet you're not close with your family, the people who gave you that." 

"I guess I haven't thought that much about it. At least in that way." She looked at the ground in thought. "I find comfort and beauty in learning about our history and traditions through a wide lens. But from my parents, it comes with their prejudices and their... aggressive way of speaking that I simply don't like. If you were born in another country, maybe you'd be more interested in learning about your background by going there instead of just getting it secondhand from your parents."

"Huh.” I chewed on that. "But you didn't move to Mexico, you came here."

"True, I think it's all connected though. Didn't living in Canada make you realize some things about Japan?"

I nodded. "Pretty much every day until I got used to it there."

"I get the impression that introverts are very accepted here. Everyone has to be quiet on ‌trains and elevators. It’s good to blend in here, but it doesn’t always feel that way in the States. My parents aren't ones to blend in. They're extroverted, especially my mom and aunt together. We don't get each other, and it's hard."

"You want your mom to accept you more for who you are?"

"Yes," she answered quietly. "Are we leaving Takaishi?" she asked, seeing I had stopped in front of the station.

"Only a few stops over, won't take long," I reassured her and bounced up the steps. I walked briskly to the ticket machine to buy hers. "Here you go." I handed her the little white rectangle.

"You didn't have to do that," she said. "I have a transit card."

"I know, but it's only right, since I invited you out." 

Our conversation was cut off for a moment when we passed through the gate, and the train pulled in immediately, as if I had called it. The car was still crowded from rush hour. 

After a few stops, as I'd promised, I said, "This way," and we disembarked at Sakai Station. "I have to check the way on my phone, sorry, not trying to be rude." I pulled up the place on Google Maps, angling my phone so she couldn't see the screen. 

"My surprise is somewhere you've never been?" she demanded. 

Her perceptiveness startled me into a stutter. "I—no one said that. Follow me."

I resisted the urge to grab her hand and drag her after me, the tension building to see her reaction.

We crossed the street in front of the station and turned down an admittedly sketchy alley. Onto another street, we passed ramen restaurants and bars until my phone vibrated.

"Here we are," I opened my arms in front of La Villa Latina grocery store, a beige front with a blue and white sign and a Mexican flag stretched across the inside of the barred window. 

 Gabbie stepped back to take in the whole storefront. "Oh, Tobi," she said breathlessly, her hand briefly landing on my forearm before she stepped forward into the shop.

A young guy greeted us in two languages, he looked half-Japanese and half-Mexican.

I grabbed a basket from the entryway and followed Gabbie, who seemed to be in a daze. She drifted down the first aisle, stacked with handmade tortillas, specialty cheeses, hot sauces, and foreign, prepackaged snacks I’d never seen before. She began to drop items into the basket as if she hardly noticed I was holding it: corn flour, dried chiles, plastic bottles of seasonings.

The place was too small for carts, I lamented, as the basket grew heavier until finally she declared she was ready to check out. 

She and the clerk exchanged a quick conversation in Spanish, and he prepared a cardboard takeout container of varied hot foods from a glass-covered display.

Gabbie paid and I grabbed the plastic bags. 

We headed down the street for a minute until we came across a tiny park.

"Can we stop here? I want to eat now, while it's still hot." She held up the cardboard container growing grease spots on its side.

We parked the heavy bags under a bench and I eagerly watched Gabbie open the box, realizing then how hungry I was. 

"Try this, it's an empanada." She held up the pastry in a napkin a few inches from my chin. 

I leaned forward with a blush to take a bite. 

"Wow," I muttered around the melting hot morsel of deliciousness. "That is amazing."

I grabbed something else from the box without waiting for her to feed it to me. "This is some of the best food I've ever had, I'm serious."

She popped an empanada in her own mouth and chewed. "Thank you for doing this for me," she said once her mouth was no longer full.

"I know food is one of the things that can make you feel the most homesick."

“How did you find out about this place?”

“I saw their flyer at the grocery store in Takaishi. You didn’t see it?”

"I don’t know how I missed it. Tobi … is this a date?"

My heart halted in my chest. I glanced at her to find she was brazenly examining my face. And neck. Hair. Shoulders.

"Uh, if you want it to be," I answered slowly, my face warming further. My heart fluttered. Did Gabbie like me back? She wasn't already dating Yuya like I'd feared?

"Are teachers allowed to date each other at Motto?"

"I don't know." That hadn't occurred to me. Would our jobs be on the line if this was a real date? "Victor seems cool, right? It's probably fine."

Gabbie nodded thoughtfully. "Well, thank you for this. My lunches for work will be a lot more exciting."

"I hope I can steal a bite." 

I carried the bags back to the station and savoured the moments we had to wait on the platform for the train to arrive. 

“I’m walking you home. Don’t argue,” I said as soon as we exited Takaishi Station. Darkness had fallen over the city by then. Gabbie stuck close to me as we strolled away from the downtown core toward her apartment building. 

“So, the new guy in your class. How is it going?” I asked about Yuya, trying and failing again to be subtle.

“Fine, I think,” she answered, guarded. 

“Just fine?” 

She shook her head briefly. “I’m questioning his motivations for learning English, or even for joining my class. But I guess it’s not my business. If he’s my student, I need to help him learn, no matter what.”

“Nah, it makes sense. Knowing their motivations will help you customize your teaching approach, right? That means you’re good at your job,” I said.

Gabbie sent me a small smile then glanced away again. 

“But,” I went on, trying to pick up on her meaning. “If he doesn’t actually want to learn, that makes your job so much harder.”

“Right.”

The following silence allowed my nerves to get to me. “Is that why you asked if tonight was a date?”

“Honestly, yes. The both of you feel rather nebulous to me,” she admitted, and her abrupt honesty stunned me into silence. “I wanted to know where we stand.”

“Let’s take it one day at a time,” I said, trying to imbue my words with a friendly, inviting tone then immediately regretting them. “I mean, I do like you,” I blurted out.

Gabbie laughed softly. “I like you, too.”

We had arrived at her building door. She stopped and turned to look me in the eye. This would have been a perfect moment to lean down and kiss her, but kissing on the first date was corny and way too bold. I needed to rein in my feelings and take it one day at a time, like I’d said. And we still didn’t know if our workplace would be okay with any of this.

“Thank you for the date. If it was a date.” Gabbie took the grocery bags from my hand, brushing fingertips against my skin. She turned and left me once again speechless at the door.

***

The next day at work, I was thrumming with both nerves and excitement to see Gabbie, but I ended up running into Victor first.

“Is there a workplace policy handbook for Motto?” I asked after we’d exchanged morning greetings. 

“I didn’t send that to you guys?” Victor shook his head at his forgetfulness. “It’s probably outdated but I’ll find the file somewhere…” he grumbled as he began swiping through his phone. “Any particular reason you're asking?”

I couldn’t very well say I was wondering if employees were allowed to date each other. “Just wondering if there’s a dress code for the summer coming up,” I finally managed. “I could have asked that, I guess.”

“Oh, it’s cool biz here,” Victor said, using the Japanese slang for exceptions to usual suit jackets and long sleeves in the sweltering, humid summer months. “No worries about short sleeves.”

“Good to know, it’s going to be warm tomorrow,” I said offhand and made to leave like I had to get to my class.

I ate lunch alone later, and checked my mail on my phone. Victor indeed had sent me a document on workplace guidelines. The introduction to Motto School and its principles read in Victor’s voice, but the rest, a generic guide on dress code and attendance, seemed like something he had copied and pasted from the internet. I scanned the document ‌a second time to confirm there was nothing there about workplace romance. I couldn’t wait to tell Gabbie later and ask her out on an official date.

At the end of my workday, I saw the last of my students out of the room and headed into the hallway myself. I spotted Gabbie right away, gazing up at a tall guy, a pained look on her face. The guy, I should have known immediately, was Yuya. Seeing her expression, I wanted to run to her and elbow him out of the way. Instead, I approached slowly, and her face changed from pained to a sort of sad smile. Yuya nodded to her and left before he registered my presence. 

“Everything all right?” I asked her.

“It’s fine,” she said, her face still slightly cloudy. 

“You know, if a student is acting inappropriately, you don’t have to put up with it,” I said hastily. 

“No, no. Nothing like that.” She glanced around. “I‘ll tell you later.”

“I have something to tell you, too,” I said, my interest piqued. 

“Will you walk me home?” 

I had to once again rein in my over-enthusiastic response that would come with a knight in shining armour whipping his cape over his shoulder. “Sure thing,” I replied like a perfectly normal person. 

I waited a moment while she grabbed the rest of her things and the last of the students filed out. We headed downstairs and changed footwear in silence while I tried to decide on the perfect place to take her for our next date. 

“Good news,” I said once the door had swung shut behind us. “There’s absolutely no rule forbidding our date last night.” 

“About that,” she said with far less enthusiasm than I wanted or expected. “I guess Yuya is upset with me now.”

I caught myself from stumbling. “Why?”

“I need to confess that I met up with Yuya outside of school but I didn’t know he meant it as a date,” she said in a rush.

 “How do you not know these things?” I said in an asshole way and almost regretted it, but I was annoyed now. I thought I had gotten ahead of him, but Yuya was screwing up my life again.

“I don’t know. I’m an idiot,” she said, then seemed to catch herself. She looked at me accusingly. “But you didn’t say last night was a date until I did. This is why I said I had to clarify where I stood with you. Because I went out with him and I didn’t know, but I suspected he was hitting on me, or heading in that direction.”

I sighed and looked toward the setting sun as we climbed the gentle hill toward her place. “I’m sorry. I have no right to talk to you like that.” 

We walked a little further without speaking.

 “Now what?” I finally said. I wanted to ask which one of us do you like more but that would sound childish. 

“I have to talk to Yuya again.”

Great. 

We reached her building entrance and she turned to say goodbye to me. “Don't let me take all the blame for this, please,” she pleaded.

“I don’t want to do that, I’m sorry.” I trapped a sigh in my chest. If this was a more romantic moment, I thought again about leaning in to kiss her, if she let me. At least it seemed Yuya hadn’t done that, or else his intentions would have been more clear to her. 

“Thanks for walking me.” She offered me a small smile that made my belly warm. 

“Anytime,” I answered. “See you tomorrow.”

I turned away, once again thinking about Yuya and our past, and that I was in too deep now to reveal the truth to Gabbie. If I did, she would surely hate ‌both of us. And I was ashamed.