FOURTEEN

"Want to get hotdogs?'

Lila raised her head and looked in the direction of the hotdog stand; she had never thought that one day she would be walking down the street with a heavy disguise and thick-rimmed dark glasses to hide her identity from the press and Levi would be by her side as they walked down the busy street. She knew that they were not supposed to be doing this because if anyone caught a whiff that they were still in the country and not on their honeymoon as they claimed, then it was going to be big trouble for both families. As much as she knew how wrong this was, she could not help but feel relieved. Since her father dropped the news on her about her marriage to Levi, she had been feeling so overwhelmed by everything.

Standing outside and allowing the warm breeze and the indistinct chatter around made her for a moment forget all she had been going through in recent times. "Do you want some?" he asked again and she looked at him as he stood there with a baseball cap covering half of his face and a nose mask covering the remaining half, his eyes that were supposed to be left exposed covered by dark-shaded glasses.

"I have never had one," she confessed and he gasped as if she had confessed to an extremely unforgivable sin.

"You have never had a hotdog? The woman who runs one of the most successful food businesses in the city hasn't had a hotdog before. "I am sure the press would have a field day with information like this," he asked, making a weird face at her. "How is that even possible? How can a person live life without tasting what a hotdog tastes like?" he mumbled as he moved sideways. "We have to change that now and get you a good one," he said.

She wanted to protest and tell him how terrible all of the arbs were for her body but she did not find enough will to do it. What would one hotdog do to her system? It certainly could not kill her; she has dressed the part, and it would feel cowardly of her to back down because of a simple meal and she was not a coward. She closed the distance between herself and Levi as he spoke with the vendor.

As usual, he was being as chatty as he could be with her; the woman would probably faint if she knew that he was the one behind the mask. "Keep the change," he said sweetly to her and she smiled at him.

"Thank you; you are being very nice," the woman replied and her eyes landed on Lila, who stood behind Levi awkwardly. "Are you a tourist? A visitor perhaps?" she asked, eyeing the way both of them were dressed.

The woman was right to ask a question like that; it was hot out yet they were dressed like they were in Antarctica. "Yes," Levi replied, nodding.

"And she is your wife?" The woman continued. If Lila was alone, she would have walked away; she hated gossip, and this woman had no right to know, but Levi leaned in and nodded as if he were proud of himself. Was he really proud to call her his wife? If she did not know better, she would have been fooled in that moment. She tugged on the sleeve of his shirt and he turned to her; she did not need to say a word for him to understand what she meant.

"Thank you so much for the hotdogs," Levi said to the woman and stepped down from the podium her stall was on.

"Are you always this chatty?' Lila could not help but ask. As the questions left her mouth, she realised to herself that this was the first time they were going to ever have a conversation that did not revolve around work or how much they hated each other. She felt so weird being the one to initiate a conversation like that so she changed the topic immediately. "Ice cream? I will get us that since you got the hotdog," she said and walked away from him swiftly.

"I will take mint chocolate," he said from behind her. Stunned, she turned to look at him. "Mint choco," he echoes again, as if she could not hear him the first time.

She turned to the cashier without a word and ordered the ice cream. She handed the cone to him and he peeked into her cone. "Huh! Plain old vanilla?"

"I like to play safe; it is not entirely safe to get food on the street and I think that getting vanlla might be the safest." She stopped and pointed to one of the empty benches around. They had parked a long distance and had been walking for at least ten minutes; it was a bit tiring. As she sat down, she noticed him staring at her. He took off his mask and took a bite of the hotdog. She glanced down at the hotdog in front of her, still waiting to be tasted. She was not looking up, but she could feel his gaze on her.

"Do I have something on me?" she asked, touching her face and the corners of her lips.

"Hold on," he said, reaching in. His hands gently grazed the corners of her lips and if she was bing, he was being gentler than she thought. His hand on her lips was not part of her bargain for the evening so she sat there with her entire body frozen and her eyes not leaving him as he stared back at her, wondering what he had just done.