Jesus, I am in deep.
When the waiter leaves, Ansel leans across the table, pointing at the different items with his long, graceful hands, and I have to blink several times and remind myself to pay attention.
Menus have always been the most difficult for me to navigate. There are a few helpful things: boeuf/beef, poulet/chicken, veau/veal, canard/duck, and poisson is fish (I’m completely unashamed to say I knew that one from countless viewings of The Little Mermaid), but how things are prepared or the names for various sauces or vegetables are still things I need help with at most restaurants.
“The special is langoustine bisque, which is . . .” He pauses, furrows his brow, and looks up to the ceiling. “Uhh . . . it’s a shellfish?”
I grin. Lord only knows why I find his confused face so endearing. “Lobster?”
“Yes. Lobster,” he says with a satisfied nod. “Lobster bisque with mint, served with a small pizza on the side. Very crunchy with lobster and sundried tomatoes. Also there is le boeuf—”
“The bisque,” I decide.
“You don’t want to hear the others?”
“You think there’s something better there than soup and pizza with lobster?” I stop, realization dawning. “Unless it means you can’t kiss me?”
“It’s fine,” he says, waving his hand. “I can still kiss you senseless.”
“Then that’s it. Bisque.”
“Perfect. I think I’ll get the fish,” he says.
The waiter returns and both he and Ansel listen patiently while I insist on ordering my own dinner, along with a simple plate of greens tossed in vinaigrette. With a smile he can’t manage to hide, Ansel orders his food and each of us a glass of wine and sits back, draping an arm over the back of the empty chair beside him.
“Look, you don’t even need me,” he says.
“As if. How else would I know how to ask for the large dildo? I mean, that’s a really important distinction.”
Ansel barks out a laugh, his eyes wide in surprise, his hands flying to his mouth to stifle the sound. A few of the other diners turn in our direction, but nobody seems to have minded his outburst.
“You’re a bad influence,” he says once composed, and reaches for his wine.
“Me? I’m not the one who left the translation for dildo on a note one morning, so . . . glass houses, Dimples.”
“But you did find the costume shop,” he says to me over his glass. “And I must say I owe you endlessly for that.”
I feel my face warm under his gaze, under the implied meaning of his words. “True,” I admit in a whisper.
Our food comes and beyond the occasional satisfied groan or voicing my intent to bear the chef’s children, we’re mostly silent while we eat.
The empty plates are cleared away and Ansel orders dessert for us to share: fondant au chocolat—which looks a lot like a fancy version of the chocolate lava cake we have at home—served warm with a pepper-vanilla ice cream. Ansel moans around his spoon.
“It’s a little obscene watching you eat that,” I say. Across the table he’s closed his eyes, humming around the spoon in his mouth.
“It’s my favorite,” he says. “Though not as good as the one my mother makes for me when I visit.”
“I always forget you said she went to culinary school. I can’t actually think of a dessert my mom didn’t buy from the store. She’s what I like to refer to as domestic-lite.”
“One day when I’m visiting you in Boston we’ll drive to her bakery in Bridgeport and she’ll make you anything you want.”
I can practically hear the proverbial brake noises squealing in both of our thoughts. A distinct roadblock has just risen in the conversation, and it sits there, flashing obnoxiously and unable to be ignored.
“You have two more weeks here?” he asks. “Three?”
The phrase you could ask me to stay pops into my head before I can stop it because no, that’s—no—really the worst idea, ever.
I keep my head down, eyes on the plate between us, swirling chocolate sauce into a puddle of melting vanilla ice cream. “I think I should probably leave in two. I need to find an apartment, register for classes . . .” Call my father, I think. Find a job. Build a life. Make friends. Decide what I want to do with my degree. Try to find a way to be happy with this decision. Count the seconds until you come see me.
“Even though you don’t want to.”
“No,” I say blankly. “I don’t want to spend the next two years of my life in school so I can go to an office I hate with people who’d rather be anywhere but where they are and stare at four walls of a boardroom one day.”