Darius the Great Deserves Better - Adib Khorram Page 0,15

the top) silk-screened on the back, and little teapots on the sleeves. We also had to wear dark-wash jeans.

I liked the way that dark-wash jeans looked on me. Especially my butt, which, like I said, had seen some benefit from all the squats I’d been doing.

Landon liked how I looked in them too. (Again, especially my butt.)

I laced up my Sambas, checked my hair in the mirror, straightened out my magnetic name tag, and went to check in.

“Come on, Darius. We’ve got something special today,” Mr. Edwards said as he poured water into a set of gaiwans. Landon was already seated at the tasting table with his notebook open. I sat down next to him and got my own notebook out.

Landon pressed his knee against mine. I grabbed his left hand and rubbed circles into it with my thumb.

I must’ve had a goofy grin, because Mr. Edwards caught my eye and winked at me.

Mr. Edwards seemed super happy that I was dating his son, so happy it made me feel kind of weird.

I mean, Mom and Dad liked Landon, but they never winked at him.

And they weren’t Landon’s boss either.

It was weird.

Mr. Edwards cleared his throat. “This is Long Jing.” He grabbed the first gaiwan—a white porcelain bowl with a lid and saucer beneath it—tilted the lid a hair with his thumb, and poured the tea into the tasting cup, capturing the leaves in the gaiwan. “Also known as . . . ?”

My mind blanked.

I loved tastings, but they made me nervous too. I felt like I was in class, and Mr. Edwards was a teacher I really didn’t want to disappoint.

“Dragonwell,” Landon said.

“Right. This was harvested before the Qingming Festival.”

I made a note to look up what that was, because Mr. Edwards kept going. He talked about leaf shape, and pan roasting, and pricing, and biodynamic growing.

I wrote as fast as I could.

Finally, we got to the best part: We got to actually taste the tea.

It was buttery and sweet and just a tiny bit nutty.

“Oh, wow,” I said. I went for another spoonful.

Landon slurped next to me. “Hmm. Eggplant?”

Mr. Edwards nodded.

“Bok choi?”

He nodded again.

I slurped another taste. I didn’t get either of those. And as a Persian, I was keenly attuned to the taste of eggplant, which we called bademjoon in Farsi, and to which I was categorically opposed.

Mr. Edwards looked at me.

“Um. Chestnut?”

“Hm.” He slurped, swirled the tea on his palate, and swallowed. “Interesting.”

He poured out the next gaiwan.

I swallowed and kept making notes.

After we cleaned up the tasting room, Mr. Edwards said, “Mind manning the register? Landon can do some stocking.”

“Sure.”

Interns weren’t technically supposed to man the register, but sometimes we had to fill in if it got super busy. Usually we helped with stocking, and serving, and cleanup, and stuff like that.

The register was one of those tablet setups on an angled swivel mount, which felt very Starfleet to me, and almost made up for how boring it was.

Almost.

I rang up a Business Casual Couple buying a sampler of Chinese green teas and a gaiwan to steep them in; and a hipster with a beard and beanie making the transition from coffee to tea for “health reasons.” Mr. Edwards grabbed a tin of Second Flush Darjeeling from the shelf and had me mark it off inventory.

Every so often, Landon came out from the back with his little pushcart of tins to restock the shelves. He smiled when he came by, and brushed my arm, or gave me a kiss on the cheek.

One time, he even smacked me on the butt.

“Hey!” I said, but he just smirked and kept walking, like he hadn’t done anything.

“Excuse me,” a customer said. They wore a pink sweater with black galaxy-print leggings, which I thought was a pretty cool look. “Do you have any more Bai Hao?”

Bai Hao was one of our best-selling oolongs. It was grown in Taiwan, and every year these little bugs came and chewed on the leaves, until the leaves activated a natural chemical defense that drove them away. That chemical changed the flavor of the tea, made it fruity and floral and awesome.

I glanced at the shelf, but Landon still hadn’t gotten to it yet.

“We have some in the back. I can go grab it.”

I waved down Alexis, who was running the tasting bar, and asked her to keep an eye on the register for me.

“Sure thing,” she said.

* * *

I found a couple boxes of Bai Hao tins in the stock room, along