“Oh. Good to know,” I say because I don’t know what else to say.
I uncork the wine and find a wine glass in one of the overhead cabinets. He has a selection to choose from. All different colors and heights. Mismatching but cohesive in that they’re all cut crystal and art deco in style. I chose a deep, transparent plum-colored glass.
Coincidentally, it’s the biggest one he owns.
I pour heavily and carry my plate over to the table. He’s seated already, napkin on his lap. A little pottery oil lamp I hadn’t noticed until now has been lit. The flame flickers warmly. Like the hanging lamp in the living area, it feels overly personal.
I consider telling him this is not how students live, but think better of it, in case he starts talking about antiques again. Or worse yet, he remembers he’s under instruction from Anna to take me thrifting tomorrow.
My eyes roam around the room, landing on a photograph on the shelf behind him. He’s with a group of friends on a football field. I recognize the jock to his right, with Connor’s arm around him. They’re with a bunch of other guys I’ve never seen before. Connor is dressed in full football regalia, or whatever you’d call it—those big shoulder pads, tight pants, and all that. He’s at least fifteen or twenty pounds heavier than he is now. He has his helmet in his hand, and his hair is damp and plastered to hisforehead. He’s smiling as big as it is possible for a human being to smile.
I look away quickly and try to think of something to say.
“Thanks for the food,” I say stiffly. “I like Italian.”
“I know. You told me it was your favorite food when we met. I made this for you.”
I feel several things at once on hearing that and find myself unable to decipher the overarching emotion, so I take a big bite of pasta to sidestep the issue.
It’s awful.
Absolutely awful.
The pasta is overcooked to the point of porridge, and the sauce is heavily over-seasoned. A faint, acrid taste of burned garlic permeates the entire concoction.
“Ooh,” he says, reaching for his glass of water. “That’s not what my mom’s tastes like at all.”
“It’s fine,” I lie.
We both manage a few more bites before accepting defeat and resorting to grating some cheese over the leftover pasta and eating that instead.
“How did I fuck up spaghetti?” he mutters to himself. “I followed the recipe to the letter.”
I assume it’s a rhetorical question, not something that demands an answer like,well, you added an insane amount of salt and cooked the living shit out of the garlic and onion, so I arrange my face into an expression I hope conveys mystification.
Unfortunately, the spaghetti debacle lends itself to a conversation about food and whether we’re going to buy food and cook together, or separately. Naturally, my extreme preference would be to go it alone, but before I’m able to say so, Connor suggests we share.
“It makes so much more sense,” he says. “Less waste, more savings if we buy things in bulk. Plus, I’m serious about learningto cook, and as you can see, I need the practice. We can go grocery shopping together, so we get things we both like.”
I have no idea how he thinks going grocery shopping together is a selling point, but my phone is buzzing on the table, causing a loud, hard-to-ignore clatter of aluminum on timber that distracts me. I just know it’s Anna.
“I bet that’s Anna,” he says before I have time to check.
I turn my phone over and tilt the screen toward him to show him that it is indeed Anna.
“Sweet Jesus,” I mutter as I read the message. “She says I have to go to the container store. She says I need storage baskets urgently.”
To be clear, I’ve made it to twenty-four years of age without ever once setting foot into a store that specializes in containers. And I’d very much like to keep it that way.
“What else did she say you needed?”
“More books, a plant, and”—I use both hands to air quote—“‘something unique.’”
“Got it,” says Connor, not in the slightest bit confused about anything on the list. “We can start working on it tomorrow. We’re going thrifting anyway.”
Yup.
The theory that I’m in my own personalized version of hell definitely holds water.
