I felt like butter in the microwave. I had no strength left to be cool or the type of dishonest you’re supposed to be this early on.
“Are we crazy here?” I asked. “I feel like you are such a different person than anyone I have ever met and I thought about you all day today. I . . . barely know you and yet I miss you. That’s crazy, right? I don’t know you. I guess I’m worried that we will be so into each other so quickly that we will burn out? Sort of an acute romance, as it were.”
“Kind of like a supernova?”
“Hmm?”
“It’s some sort of star or explosion that’s so powerful it can emit the same amount of energy that the sun will emit over its entire lifetime, but it does it in, like, two months and then it dies.”
I laughed. “Yep,” I said. “That’s pretty much exactly what I meant.”
“Well, I think it’s a fair concern. I don’t want to rush through this so fast that we run it into the ground. I’m not sure I think it’s really possible, but better to be safe than sorry.” He chewed and thought. When he was done, he had a plan. “What about this? Let’s give it . . . let’s say, five weeks, and we can see each other as much as we want, but no one can up the ante. We can just stop ourselves from being too intense up front. Let’s just hang out and enjoy each other’s company and not worry about too fast or too slow or anything. And then at the end of five weeks, we can really assess if we are crazy or not. If at the end of it, we are both on the same page, then great. And if at the end of five weeks, we have burnt out or we just aren’t jiving, we’ve only wasted five weeks.”
I laughed. “Jiving?”
“I couldn’t think of a better word.”
I was still laughing as he looked me, slightly embarrassed. “I can think of about ten,” I said and then immediately got back to the subject. “Okay. No moving forward. No freaking out about moving too fast. Just this. That sounds great. No supernova.”
Ben smiled and we shook on it. “No supernova.”
It was quiet for a moment, and I broke the silence.
“We are wasting our five weeks by being quiet. I need to know more about you.”
Ben took another piece of bread off of the table and spread butter on it. I was glad the intensity of the moment had worn off—that things were now casual enough for him to be spreading butter. He took a bite.
“What do you want to know?”
“Favorite color?”
“That’s what you’re burning to ask me?”
“No.”
“So ask what you really wanna know.”
“Anything?”
He splayed his hands out to show himself. “Anything.”
“How many women have you slept with?”
He smiled out of the side of his mouth as if I’d pinned him down. “Sixteen,” he said, matter-of-factly. He wasn’t bragging or apologizing. It was higher than I was expecting, and for a second, I was jealous. Jealous that there were women out there that knew him in a way I didn’t yet. Women who were closer to him, in some ways, than I was.
“You? Men?” he asked.
“Five.”
He nodded. “Next question.”
“Do you think you’ve ever been in love?”
He took another bite. “I believe I have before, yes. It wasn’t a great experience for me, truthfully. It wasn’t . . . It wasn’t fun,” he said as if he was just realizing what the problem truly was after all this time.
“Fair enough.”
“You?” he asked.
“I see how this is going. I can’t ask any questions I don’t want to answer myself.”
“Isn’t that at least fair?”
“That’s fair. I have been in love once before, for most of college. His name was Bryson.”
“Bryson?”
“Yes, but don’t blame him for his name. He’s a nice guy.”
“Where is he now?”
“Chicago.”
“Okay, good. Nice and far.”
I laughed, and the waiter brought our meals. He placed them down in front of us, telling us not to touch them because the plates were hot. But I touched mine; it wasn’t that hot. Ben looked at mine and then looked at his. “Can I eat some of yours if I give you some of mine?” he asked.