A Recipe for Disaster

Like nearly every dark chapter in human history, the end of my never-quite-romance with Kay began with the mistaken notion that rice and soup go together.

Okay. That’s not entirely true. One could probably make a strong argument that any relationship is doomed before it even begins when both parties make a policy of being almost exclusively dishonest with one another. Especially in regards to a lack of feelings for the other, pre-existing boyfriends, etc.

That part about rice in soup causing most disasters throughout history is true, though. Look it up.

“I need you to come over,” Kay said over the phone. I wasn’t normally awake at 5:30am most Saturdays, let alone answering phone calls. Still, I’d assumed that for anyone to call at such a horrid hour, they must have had a good reason for waking me – very likely one that involved one or more of my family members dying.

I rubbed my eyes for effect, hoping the sound was loud enough for the receiver to pick up. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“I really need your help and…are you rubbing your eyes?”

Score.

“Help with what?” I asked grumpily.

“Do you know how to make soup?” she asked, in a frantic tone very often reserved for discussing recently deceased family members and only rarely for the logistics of soup-making.

“I…guess so,” I ventured hesitantly. In reality, “knew” may have been a strong word for it. But as most soup was some combination of cooking stock, vegetables and noodles, I didn’t think it could be too hard to fake my way through it. Still confused, I asked, “Are you making soup for…a funeral or something?”

“What? No.”

“Fair enough,” I conceded. It seemed fairly obvious at this point that the entire purpose of the early morning call really was to discuss soup rather than the recently deceased. “What do you need to know?”

She fumbled through a few attempts at words before giving up. “I don’t know. Lots of things. Everything? Just come here!”

“Okay, okay. Calm down,” I soothed. I considered how best to explain before settling on blunt honesty. “Step one: Go back to sleep. Then wake up in five hours and start boiling chicken stock.”

Kay gave me a mocking laugh. “I’m serious. I woke up and I really want soup and I won’t be able to sleep until I make it. Will you just come over here?”

I sighed. “I’ll be there in half an hour. What kind of soup are we making?”

“Chicken and rice.”

“An hour and a half,” I amended with a groan. I needed more rest if I was going to be dealing with the tapioca pudding of all soup recipes. I instructed her to buy the necessary ingredients before I arrived, to save time.

“Well…okay. What do I need?”

“Chicken, rice, some sort of broth and…” I hesitated, already out of ideas. I stared longingly at my destroyed computer, realizing it wouldn’t be much use in quickly looking up a recipe. I hedged my bets. “Everybody likes different veggies. So probably carrots or celery or…” I acted like I was trailing off meaningful there to let her fill in the blanks. In reality, my mind had gone totally blank when it came to soup-worthy ingredients.

Luckily, she didn’t seem to catch on. We exchanged our goodbyes and I set my alarm for an hour later. I was asleep again halfway through unplugging my phone.

Two hours, a short nap and a long walk later, I was at Kay’s off-campus apartment, mentally preparing myself to make a soup that should have never been.

Technically, this was against school rules. Freshman were required to live on campus their first semester for reasons I’ve already forgotten. But a number of fairly wealthy individuals had bypassed this rule by simply paying for off-campus housing and their dorm room. And overall, it’s not important to the story except in explaining how we were able to cook when dorm rooms offered very few options beyond a small, dirty microwave attached to our mini refrigerator.

Kay greeted me with an enthusiastic hug and gave me a quick tour. It was the first time I’d set foot in her apartment, though it was at least the fourth time she’d invited me in the course of our week of knowing one another. In hindsight, that probably should have told me something. Though, in case you’ve forgotten, I should point out that I’m incredibly, stunningly oblivious.

“So…want to make the soup?” she asked. “Or…did you want to do something else?”

“Soup, I guess. What else would we do?” I’m going to save you some trouble. I don’t get any less oblivious to the fact that someone is throwing themselves at me. You may as well stop expecting it.

For her part she didn’t seem upset. She just took me into the kitchen and showed me the supplies she’d gathered. “Okay. We start with the rice…right?”

I considered voicing my objections to the ingredient but gave in. She seemed fairly set on it. And it was her soup, after all. “Right.” I summoned the woeful amount of knowledge I possessed on rice. “It takes longer to cook than the rest. So you start boiling that first.” I didn’t add the “probably” that belonged in that statement.

“How much water do we need?” Kay asked.

“It probably says on the…” I trailed off, seeing the plain, unmarked bag that looked to have come from a farmer’s market. “Maybe…two cups for every cup of rice?”

“Maybe? I thought you knew how to make soup.”

“I know how to make soup without rice, yes.” I then said something incredibly smart. “If there’s too much water, we can just drain the excess.”

“Oh. Good idea.” It wasn’t. For those who don’t know, rice is small enough to fit through the holes in most colanders. Ten minutes later, we had no choice but to throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater and start from scratch.

As amusing as this cooking adventure was in its own right, I’ll skip to the end, though. It’s a cute little backdrop to a much bigger story. But the truth is that it also has nothing to do with that story, aside from being that backdrop. So for the sake of not stretching this out any longer, let’s just cut to two hours and a halfways decent pot of homemade soup later.

“Do you want some?” Kay asked.

“I’m actually pretty full from tasting the ingredients.” And this was entirely true. Of the two pounds of chicken we’d cooked, I think only a pound of it made it in the final product. “It’s all yours.”

She shook her head. “Nah. I ate breakfast before you came.”

This struck me as odd. “I…thought this was the craving that woke you up. And then woke me up.”

Kay gave me a long look that went from gentle amusement to sadness to acceptance. “I was…” She smiled. “Nevermind. Doesn’t matter.”

Silence dragged on, begging either of us to blurt something out.

And then, as if I’d understood the past week a lot better than I really had, I said, “You like me, right? I mean, like…not just like a friend.”

“Of course I do,” she said, sounding almost annoyed. “I’ve been throwing myself at you for the past week and today…” She made an inarticulate gesture with her hands before letting her arms fall to her sides.

A great deal seemed to dawn on me at once. “Oh. Oooooooh.” I nodded, probably being the last human being on the planet to understand the situation.

She almost growled. “And now it’s too late. Hatey is coming over at ten. I thought we’d have all morning to…make soup.” She sighed. “Instead, we actually made soup.” The fact that she finally seemed as upset about rice soup as I was was small consolation.

I glanced at the clock to see it was after 9:45am. Depending on Hatey’s particular viewpoints on punctuality, he could be there at literally any moment. It was then that I blurted out something else that turned out to be surprisingly insightful. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised he’d be showing up. He always does.”

“Well…yeah,” Kay said. “He is my boyfriend.”

I gaped.

“What?” she asked, noting my surprise. “You knew we were going out. I must’ve told you…” She hesitated here, going through the past few days of conversations. Then, a less profound look of surprise appeared on her face. “Oh…wow. I never actually told you that, did I?”

“Not so much, no.” The picture suddenly become clearer, and far less pretty. “And you had me come over today to…cheat on him. Huh.”

“Well, I wouldn’t use those exact (accurate) words, but…I take it you’re…not okay with that?” she asked, apparently not expecting this outcome.

It was strange. Because with as little experience as I had with dating and relationships, it’s odd to think I’d have actually formed an opinion on the matter or have standards of any kind. And yet, here we were. I shook my head. “No. I guess I’m not.” The answer seemed to surprise us both. As did my subsequent apology for…I’m not even sure what. I apologize a lot.

“Oh…” Kay looked embarrassed. “If it made you more comfortable, I could…break it off with him…I guess?”

I held up a hand. “If you don’t want to be with him, that’s fine. But…” I gave her the closest thing to honesty I could muster. “I’m really not the person you think I am. I’m…pretty sure what you’d have with me isn’t worth throwing something real away for.”

I stopped short of admitting I’d never really developed any actual feelings for her. Or that my interest in her at all was largely due to the broken part in my head that equated someone treating me decently with romantic compatibility. In that regard, I guess it wasn’t really that honest.

I started to leave before things somehow got even worse, but she grabbed my arm. “Stop. I don’t want things to be awkward. This feels like it went…really badly.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m sure this isn’t even in my top ten most awkward moments with a girl,” I said, trying to make her feel better with a little self-deprecation. Despite how the morning had turned out, I still felt I had some sort of obligation to not make her feel terrible if I could manage. As to why, I’ll refer you back to my previous mention of things being broken in my head.

Kay smiled but seemed uncertain. “We’re…still friends, right?”

I almost said something very honest before smiling weakly back. “I’d like it if we could be friends,” I said instead.

And I meant it. I would have liked if we could have been.

The Unforgettable Tale of What’s-Her-Face

I’ve heard from older, wiser friends and relatives that you never forget your first crush. I assume they meant that in a very general way, rather than your crush’s name. Or eye color. Or skin tone. Or height. Or length or color of hair. Because I’ve forgotten literally every one of those things about mine.

Though I’m at least certain enough that she had a face and was a girl to make the title honest.

I want to be very clear here. I’m not trying to play it cool or anything. This isn’t a case of someone getting shot down and then acting like it was no big deal later to save face. This is the unusual case of someone who distinctly remembers the first time he ate sushi, the first time he made lasagna and the first time he owned a pale blue shirt that fit him just right across the shoulders…but not his first crush.

Obviously, I won’t be playing it up as a particularly noteworthy event for drama either. I certainly won’t claim it still keeps me up at night wondering about…what’s-her-face. I mean, yes, I am up very late most nights, though that’s for reasons entirely unrelated to…you know…whosits.

It was, however, an event in my college life. It was an event I think many people also shared in their respective college lives. And, if I’m being entirely fair, after some of the horribly insignificant stuff I’ve included it makes sense to include even a few weeks of not remotely romance with…that girl from the thing.

At which point, it occurs to me I’m going to need something to call her sooner rather than later. So let’s go with “Kay.”

I probably interacted with Kay for a few weeks on an absent-minded basis before we officially met, mostly because she was in my Philosophy class. We may have even sat next to one another once or twice. But for someone who was trying to find new friends in college, I was strangely convinced that the point of going to class was to hear a lecture and not notice any of the dozen or so other people there who clearly shared similar interests and potential majors.

We officially met somewhere between week three and four of summer semester. It was during a pleasant walk to class that I heard someone yelling behind me. As time went on, the yelling continued and the walk became less and less pleasant. Still, not wanting to get involved in whatever mess was going on back there, I kept moving.

Or at least, I did, until someone nearly tackled me from behind.

“Geez. Are you ignoring me or something?” a girl who had some sort of appearance asked as I turned and took a step away. I seem to recall she had some sort of face.

“Well, not now,” I answered, readjusting the straps of my bag on my shoulders. It was my policy, and continues to be even today, that anyone who attempts to tackle you from behind should be given your full and undivided attention. “May…I help you with something?” I ventured, ready to retreat if I got the wrong answer.

“Yes!” she said, more amused than annoyed. “I’ve been calling your name for two blocks now. I thought you had your headphones in or something but you’re just…really, really oblivious.”

In my defense, this was only a half-truth. In reality, I was more selectively oblivious. Between my first and last name, 90% of English words sound very much like someone saying my name when they were actually referring to hats, cats, gnats, floors, sores and bores. At a certain point in my life, it only made sense to stop turning around and wasting my time. People very rarely wanted my attention.

I explained this to her. “That’s funny,” she said with a giggle.

“It is,” I agreed. I hadn’t been joking, but I didn’t want to ruin her fun.

“Do you want to walk to class together?”

“Sure,” I said, less because I really wanted to and more because now that we were already standing together going to the same place, the alternative would have been a great deal more effort.

“So I’ve been trying to walk with you for two weeks now. But I can never catch you. You always leave at random times, like you just wake up, throw on clothes and walk straight out the door,” she said.

I coughed into my fist at the surprisingly dead-on explanation of how I got ready to go to classes. “Um…why?” I asked.

“Why what?”

“Why have you been trying to walk with me?” I wondered. I walked with myself every day. Trust me. It wasn’t a life-changing experience. Hell, if I wasn’t literally attached to myself, I’d have probably avoided it.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. You seem cool. I wanted to get to know you.”

“I feel like getting to know me would almost immediately end that fantasy.”

This elicited more giggling. “Oh, my God. You are funny.”

I still wasn’t joking. But I decided to keep not ruining her fun.

We walked to class together. We talked about this and that. I’m even fairly sure she told me her name at some point. Then again, her not telling me would actually go a long way toward explaining why I don’t remember it now.

With midterms on my mind, I honestly didn’t think about the encounter much at first. Nor did I think twice about her suggesting we study for them together despite the teacher explaining there was essentially no way to give a wrong answer. It was only when she wrote her phone number on my palm in pen that something stirred in the back of my mind. While I had very little self-awareness, I seemed to recall seeing something very much like that happen in any number of teen romance movies.

“Does she like me or something?” I mused.

“I…don’t know,” the cashier at Panda Express answered.

“Oh, sorry,” I said, not realizing where I was. Or that I wasn’t doing an inner monologue. I pondered how unfortunate this would look if my future self decided to edit the event together in a misleading way in a story. “Well, anyway, I’ll take the two-entree plate to go. Orange and Kung Pao Chicken. With fried rice.”

While the cashier was as unhelpful as always with my love life, I was able to talk to my friend Matt for a bit more perspective.

“You know, I may have been wrong before,” he said sagely. “The more I think about it, the more I wonder if someone reading this later in story form would still think you were just talking about yourself if you mentioned me.”

I’d had similar concerns. “Yeah. I really wish you’d had a different name.”

Matt – who, I might again note, is a separate person from me who just happened to have the same name and be my first college friend – shrugged. “Well, I didn’t pick it.” Getting back on track, he asked, “So what makes you think this girl likes you?”

I wasn’t entirely sure she did. Being liked by a girl was new to me. “She wanted to walk to class with me. She gave me her number. She wants to study for a test that a toddler could pass. And she laughs really hard at almost everything I say, even when I’m not really making funny jokes.”

“She might like you.” Matt rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Did she try to find an excuse to touch you? Maybe when she laughed or something?”

“She tried to tackle me.”

“Wow. You’re quite the lady killer,” he said, nodding in appreciation for what he likely saw as an intentional skill on my part. “And you’ve got your stalker on top of all that, too.”

I blinked at this. “My stalker? I have a stalker? Since when?”

“I thought you…huh. How have you not met her by now?” he asked, baffled. He described her in terms that I would apparently forget entirely within the next decade. At the time, however, they sounded very, very familiar. “She practically chases after you every day when you’re headed to Philosophy, yelling your name.”

I continued blinking. “Actually…I’m pretty sure that’s the same girl.” Though, I made a mental note to look behind myself more often, fearful I was being followed by a horde of women calling my name without my realizing it.

“Oh. It is? Then, yes. That girl is completely in love with you.”