“It’s wonderful, isn’t it? I still make it now and then.”
“I don’t even know what it’s called.”
“Neither do I.” He’s chuckling like this is inevitable, all our similarities. But the wonderful, terrible thing is, there was only the most fleeting chance of this happening. And our similarities have to run out soon.
Still, I find myself caught up in his easy excitement, replying, “Favourite movie?”
“There are too many. Terminator?”
“Aliens?”
“Princess Bride?”
“All of it.”
“All of it. We could have the best movie night.”
“I doubt we’d ever argue about what to pick.”
“We could even make the zucchini thing.” When he says that, I know he must be joking—some flippant remark hinting at the ridiculousness of a situation like ours. But I want it. I want so badly one night of cooking, and sitting, and talking. It’s a weird mix of nostalgia and misery so palpable I can almost touch it.
People do that. There are people who just put on a movie together and enjoy simple comforts. People who aren’t like me. Who aren’t destined to be alone, for all eternity.
I hadn’t even realised I’d failed to form a reply until he clicks a finger and says, “Desperately Seeking Susan!”
“Sorry?”
“That’s it. That’s my favourite movie.”
Such odd words all strung together until some distant memory of a dull and deeply forgettable movie surfaces. Anawful movie. And there it is, our first major difference. And an appalling one too.
But not wanting the easy flow of conversation to ebb away, I ask, “Sycamore Street?”
“Yes!” he replies with a bright smile, and I’m glad I didn’t say anything horrible about his weird favourite movie. “I lived there until I was seven. Then it was McLaughlin Grove?”
My own smile pulls at the corners of my lips. “Then Shakespeare Crescent?”
“Then…” Both our smiles fade fast.
“Foster care.”
“Yep.” His head dips, and maybe it’s too soon, but he rips the tea bags out and throws them in the sink, eventually reflecting, “All those schools.”
“Yeah. There were a lot of them.”
The spoon clinks gently in the cup as he stirs. “Then why are we so different if we have all that in common?”
That’s the funny thing. He has no comprehension of how similar we are because, unlike me, he’s never met another one of us. But I can see that to him, we must be worlds apart. Even if I know he’s put milk and one teaspoon of sugar in my tea, just like I take it, without having to ask. “This is why I like you,” I tell him, with perfect honesty. “I’m the scientist, yet you’re the one doing the science. Asking all the right questions. See, you are clever.”
I also like you because I can make you blush like that.
He spills a bit of tea when his hand brushes mine, and I’m annoyed at the mess for interrupting the moment. It’s given him an excuse to turn away again, and he’s taken it, sinking his head low as he grabs a cloth. “I’d love to know how it happened. How we went in different directions after foster care. You know, I thought about enrolling in university. And then life just got in the way. And I wonder now, seeing you, if I had…”
I step back for him to clean up the few drops that splashed down on his linoleum. “It’s a good thing you didn’t.”
He pauses to look up at me. “You don’t know that.” A few seconds later, when he throws the cloth back in the sink, he does it with a sharp motion, like I’ve annoyed him. “You don’t know much about me. Not if you thought I was a quantum physicist like you.”
My laugh, when it tumbles out, is more bitter than I’d intended for it to be. “You know that I’m here, trapped in your reality, where I shouldn’t be. Not the other way around. So you know things didn’t pan out perfectly for me.”
