Momo and Sumire Interlude - A Pizza Date

A/N: You ask, I deliver. This takes place sometime between Book 2 and Book 3. If you enjoy, let me know, and I'll write some more, hehe. Have fun!

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“This…” Sumire drawled, her voice heavy with skepticism. “Is food?”

A runny glob of mozzarella was falling off her hand and onto the platter. She and Momo were sitting at a cramped mid-day table at It’s Called Pizza, Jarvirium’s first and only pizzaria. The restaurant’s name was in direct response to its customer’s most frequently asked question.

To answer Sumire, Momo pointed at the sign.

“I know that,” Sumire said, rolling her eyes. “But I just don’t get it. I understand bread, cheese, and tomato separately, but together? And why is there only one really large piece of dough? It’s like a sandwich that’s missing the top half, or a wrap they forgot to wrap. It makes me uncomfortable, Momo.”

“You haven’t even tried it yet,” Momo pouted, her mouth completely doused in tomato sauce. She had demolished three slices already; Sumire had barely nibbled at her first. “I promise you’ll like it. Where I’m from, pizza is basically a religion.”

Sumire eyed the soggy string of cheese. “People… worship this?”

“Okay, well not this pizza,” Momo frowned. “This pizza is a work in progress. It took me half a month to convince the chef to use mozzarella instead of boar milk, and then another four weeks until he was ordering tomato sauce instead of cabbage juice.” She shuddered. “Cabbage juice. Disgusting.”

“Now that sounds like food,” Sumire said, grinning.

“No,” Momo pointed her fork at her menacingly. “It does not. It sounds like deliberate food poisoning.”

“It sounds delicious. Pizza, on the other hand, sounds like what a toddler gurgles when it first learns to pronounce the letter z,” Sumire countered, lowering Momo’s fork and smirking. “Who even came up with the name for it? The chef?”

She hooked her thumb back at the skeleton manning the oven. He had a giant cowboy hat on, and a shirt that read Life Is What You Make it.

“Absolutely not,” Momo said, almost choking on her food. “Unless that skeleton is Italian.”

“Italian?”

“It’s the type of Earth person who created pizza.”

“Sounds like a lousy kind of person.”

“Rude,” Momo said, pointing her fork again. “Don’t discriminate.”

“I would never,” Sumire said, appalled. “Wait, are you Italian?”

“No,” Momo laughed. “I’m Korean. Well, Korean-American.”

“Is America the place you told me about? The one where they go crazy over men throwing a ball at each other?”

Momo grimaced. She had been trying to educate Sumire about Earth culture, but her instruction clearly left something to be desired.

“Uh, yes,” she muttered. “Home sweet home.”

Sumire smiled at her. She put her head in her hands, looking at Momo in that way that made Momo feel a lot like pudding.

“I’d like to go there someday,” she said quietly. “See your planet. Watch the men throw the ball back and forth.”

Sumire’s cheeks reddened, as if she was caught in a confession. Momo’s throat bobbed up and down. She looks so cute, she thought miserably. The feeling was almost overwhelming, like a hundred fireflies zipping around in her stomach.

“That’d be nice,” Momo said, her voice catching.

She watched Sumire lazily trace the rim of her coffee cup with her finger. She wanted so badly to reach out and take it, to hold her hand under the stiff complimentary napkin.

“What’s on your mind, my queen?” Sumire teased.

Momo blushed intensely, pushing her thoughts down. Shit. She had been staring.

“Nothing,” she said, then paused. “The fact that you haven’t tried your pizza yet. I feel kind of insulted.”

“Ugh, fine,” Sumire said, and gruesomely eyed the now-cold pizza slice. Sumire reached for her fork and knife, but Momo instinctively stopped her, wrapping her fingers around Sumire’s. The pirate froze, blinking quickly.

“You’re supposed to use your hands,” Momo instructed, not quite realizing what she had just done. She took the fork and knife out of her hands and placed them on the table. Then she guided Sumire’s hand to the crust. “You eat it like a sandwich, not like a salad.”

“Yeah?” Sumire said, biting her lip. “It’s kind of hard to eat it in any capacity when you’re holding onto me like this.”

That’s when Momo noticed.

“Oh, I s–sorry,” she said, frantically letting go. She buried her hands in her lap. “I didn’t mean to.”

“Don’t apologize,” Sumire said, and cupped the pizza slice in her hands like Momo had instructed. “I liked it. I like when you tell me what to do.”

Momo nearly fainted, her eyes going so big they almost spilled out of their sockets. Sumire laughed hard. When Momo was finally done blushing, and Sumire was finally done cackling, she tried the pizza, biting just the smallest bit off the end.

“Huh,” she said, chewing slowly, thoughtfully. “It’s…”

“Yeah?” Momo said, oddly hopeful. For whatever reason, she was overly-invested in Sumire enjoying the food of her people. Not that it was even her people, exactly. She was from San Francisco, not Naples.

“It’s weird,” she said, and Momo deflated. “But okay, I guess.”

Momo grinned.

Sumire ended up eating seven slices.

They ended up staying at the pizzeria for over two hours. A few residents recognized Momo and demanded autographs, the chef had her try a sampling of his newest recipes — all eight of which included cabbage juice — and Sumire laughed her heart out the entire time, her eyes pinned to Momo like she hung the sun in the sky.

“You’re kicking us out already?” Sumire protested, an eighth slice on its way to her mouth, as Chef Breadbones switched the open sign to closed. It was four o’clock, and all the other patrons had been shuffled out.

“It’s the new labor law,” Momo said. “I wanted to give the skeletons a break for some dinner.”

Sumire stared blankly at her.

“But they don’t eat, Momo.”

“Sure they do,” Momo said, watching as Breadbones stuck a pizza slice in his mouth and it promptly flopped onto the floor by his feet. “In spirit.”

Eventually, after Sumire was finally, finally full, they left. It was a hot summer afternoon, and the sun was still high in the sky. They took their favorite route back to Sumire’s apartment, the one where they had the best view of the blooms dotting the city’s horizon line. Momo stopped in front of Sumire’s apartment door as she always did, smiling stupidly, with her head bowed.

“So,” Sumire said, leaning against the doorframe. “Are you coming in?”

Momo froze, her heart stuttering.

“Coming in?”

“Yeah,” Sumire said. She looked almost shy. “You know, to hang out?”

“Oh,” Momo said. She had suddenly run out of vocabulary.

“Come on,” Sumire said, and she reached out, doing what Momo had been too scared and too smitten to do the entire time – she took Momo’s hand, and laced their fingers together. “No date’s complete without a little post-pizza pasta.”

“It makes no sense to me that you guys have pasta, but not pizza,” Momo complained as Sumire led her through the doorframe.  “They’re literally the same thing.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sumire laughed. “As if the Italians invented pasta.”

“Actually–”