Fourteen
Oliver
“We’ll have two orders of the pork fried dumplings, a shrimp ball, har gow, and siu mai,” Elle says, pointing to the variety of woven baskets on the cart next to us.
“Wait, I think there’s one thing you didn’t order,” I say sarcastically.
“This is just round one,” she replies, a dead-serious look on her face.
It’s Saturday afternoon, and Elle has invited me to a traditional dim sum brunch in Chinatown.
She let me pay for an Uber this time, because it’s the weekend and the roads are clearer, so it didn’t take next to forever to get downtown.
On the way here, I Googled the place we were going and found out there was one right by our apartment.
“That’s not the same. This is the original in Chinatown. It’s more authentic,” she’d said, rolling her eyes like this was something obvious I should have known.
“They have the same stuff on their menu,” I’d deadpanned.
“Shut up, Oliver, and prepare to watch me eat my weight in dumplings.”
And that, she wasn’t kidding about.
We’re sitting outside because she insisted that we bring Thor, even though I hate eating on a New York City street. I should only be eating outside if I’m looking at a beautiful view. Not smelling the subway fumes.
I’m pretty sure Elle has already eaten about twelve dumplings, and the cart has only passed by us once. Frankly, I’m impressed. She loves the fried pork ones, which I do too. But I only take two and leave the rest for her. I reach for the plate of har gow and put two on my plate.
“So, how was your date?” I ask, feeling like a glutton for punishment.
I think back to Thursday night, when I saw Elle walk up to the building stoop with Henry.
I remember the way my stomach dropped when he kissed her.
I can only hope that Elle doesn’t bring up the fact that I was on the treadmill for an hour that night, unable to sleep with that image in my head.
“It was good,” she replies, not making eye contact with me. “He’s really sweet.”
A beat passes between us. “But?” I prod, gesturing with my silverware.
“No but,” she says with a shrug. She’s lying. She looked down and back up again quickly. She always does that when she lies. I know this after asking if she gave Thor peanut butter with his dinner most nights. She has no poker face.
“Do you think you’ll go out with him again?”
“I think so,” she says, popping another dumpling into her mouth. “Any advice?”
I think for a moment. “I don’t know, Henry’s pretty chill. He loves his family and his business. Big into Formula 1. Giants fan—”
“Please stop listing sports things, that’s not helpful,” she interrupts.
I think for a second, getting lost in her doe eyes, before I settle on, “He’ll like you for who you are.” There’s a moment between us, when I give Elle a shy smile, and something feels unsaid. But I can’t find the words.
“You might be the worst dating guru ever,” she says plainly, shaking her head.
“I’m okay with that. That’s not really something a guy wants to be called.”
“What about Hitch? I’m sure he would like to be called that,” she rebuts, raising a brow.
“Oh please, don’t get me started,” I scoff. “That was the most unrealistic plot of a movie ever. What New Yorker goes on a jet ski in the Hudson? We all know what is in that water!” I reply, getting a bit animated. Elle smiles knowingly. “What?”
“You called yourself a New Yorker,” she says cockily. Her grin spreads wider.
I visibly roll my eyes at her, and return to my plate. I swat away a fly that won’t leave our table alone. This is why I don’t eat outside.
“Q-tip,” Elle says, mimicking the dance move that Kevin James does in the movie.
“Throw it away!” We say in tandem. We both cackle so loudly, we gain the attention of our neighbors, and the unhappy waitress pushing the dumpling cart.
Elle’s face goes red as she puts her fist in front of her mouth, trying to suppress her laughter.
I continue laughing so much that Thor even jumps up to see what the commotion is about. I swat the fly away from him.
“Fucking bugs,” I mumble.
“You’re afraid of bugs?” Elle asks, curious about my frustration.
“I’m not afraid,” I say, narrowing my eyes. “I just don’t like them.”
“No one likes bugs. Except the people who work in the bug section of the zoo, I suppose,” she says, pursing her lips. I give her a dubious look. “But you’re giving off a horse being afraid of a mouse vibes.”
I grimace. I cringe and bring my shoulders up to my ears as another fly buzzes by me. Or maybe it’s the same one, and it has a serious vendetta. “I’ll rephrase, I fucking hate bugs.”
Elle grins. And my frown deepens. I know that face.
*
“You’re a very strange person,” I say to her, as she fills a bowl with bug-shaped candy.
“I don’t find that to be an insult,” she replies, taking one of the gummy worms and pretending to slither it around my counter.
“It wasn’t meant as an insult. It was a factual statement. But whatever you have to tell yourself.”
A month ago, I would have never expected to spend an afternoon eating dim sum with Elle Thompson, the nosiest and pushiest neighbor I’ve ever had.
I would have also never predicted that on the same day I’d be sitting in my apartment with the same pushy neighbor, now betting me to eat a bowl of candy.
“Not just candy,” she’d said as she emerged from the convenience store that she made Thor and me wait outside of. “Bug candy.”
“So your torment of me has reached new heights then?” I said, as she showed me the bag of cockroaches, spiders, worms, and who knows what else.
“Precisely,” she said with a wink. And like a fool, I followed her back to our building and let her into my apartment.
“Explain to me why I should do this again,” I mutter, plopping down on one of my bar stools after putting Thor’s dinner bowl down.
“Because, Oliver—” I try not to focus on the skip in my chest when she says my name.
“I have a bet for you. I bet that you cannot eat a bowl of insects. Creepy, crawly, crunchy insects,” she says, pressing her palms into the counter and bouncing on the balls of her feet, her expression one of pure joy.
“Crunchy?”
“Yeah, the cockroaches have lifelike exoskeletons made out of processed sugar of some sort.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then you have to attend a yoga class at my studio.” She raises her brows as if to say, “What do you think?” as the smile on her face turns into a devilish smirk.
I break off our staring match to look down at the bowl of bugs in front of me.
Part of me is intrigued to see Elle teach a yoga class in a pair of those leggings.
But the other part of me knows I have absolutely zero flexibility.
And I’m sure Elle knows that too, just by looking at me.
She probably realizes what a fool I would look like in front of a room full of yoga people. Yogi people?
“Yoga?” I repeat, like the answer is somehow going to change.
“Yoga,” she says confidently, raising her brows. “Have you done it before?”
“I’ve seen it. It’s just like stretching.”
Elle lets out an audible, “Ugh,” before leaning forward against the counter. “Please try the cockroach. Please,” she says through gritted teeth. Her voice is stern, like it’s taking everything in her not to smack me.
“Again, I have to ask: why would I do this?”
“Because it would be good for your anxiety.”
I scrunch my face at her. Where did she come up with that?
“I don’t have anxiety. I have OCD. It’s different,” I say plainly.
I can’t believe I just said that out loud to her. I never talk so openly about my OCD, not even with my family. I mean, everyone knows about it, but it’s kind of just swept under the rug, ignored.
Elle looks at me from beneath her brows, her eyes calling me out on my bullshit.
“Why do you think I have anxiety?” I say, and she rolls her eyes, taking a deep breath. Those fucking eyes.
“Fine, let’s say you don’t have anxiety,” she says, trying to placate me. “Maybe I just want to torture you in public. Plus, it’s another New York City experience. It’s only a beginner class. Will you do it?” I don’t miss the fact that she didn’t answer my question.
“Do you know that you don’t have to spend every minute of every day trying to think of ways to help people?” I mirror her previous knowing look.
“What does that mean?” she replies, scrunching her face in surprise. She looks offended.
“It means that you’re always thinking of your next project, of what someone else needs. You don’t have to do that.” I say, flicking a gummy bug at her. I think she’s surprised that I remember her speech about supporting people, the one she gave me when she suggested being my New York tour guide.
Elle doesn’t say anything right away. I get the sense that people don’t tell her like it is very often. I want to say something like, “It’s annoying to have someone point out your bullshit, isn’t it?” but I don’t.
“I know I don’t have to—”
“Do you?”
“Stop trying to change the subject. Eat the bugs!” she whines, pushing the bowl towards me. I groan internally at her insistence on talking about anything besides herself. She thinks she’s sly when she puts the focus on everyone else. But I’m starting to see through her.
“And what if I do eat the bugs?” I shiver at the thought. “What do I get?”
“I don’t know…” she muses. “You can come up with another form of public humiliation for me.”
I contemplate this for a moment. I’m not really sure how that is a “win” for me, but if I’ve learned anything in the past few weeks, it’s that resisting Elle’s schemes never works for long.
“I should mention that the main thing I don’t like about bugs is the buzzing, so this game doesn’t even really—”
“Yeah, uh huh, that’s great. Start with the cockroach,” she prompts. I pick up the gummy worm instead, side-eyeing her, and throw it in my mouth.
I should have swallowed it whole.
My stomach convulses as the candy crunches against my teeth, the texture so much worse than I imagined it would be. Oh my God. Do not let me throw up in front of this woman.
I quickly swallow the worm and try to un-contort my face, to pretend like that wasn’t actually physically painful for me.
When I make eye contact with Elle again, she raises her brows at me, a hint of a smile on her lips.
She pushes the cockroach shaped candy at me.
As soon as my front teeth crunch down on the exterior shell, I spit it right back out.
“Fuck it! Fuck it!” I shout, grabbing a napkin. Thor jumps as I propel myself from my chair.
Elle laughs hysterically, hunching over on the counter to steady herself, her face flushing red.
Thor jumps up on her, just as amused by her laughter as I am, because it is the most infectious sound I’ve ever heard.
Once I’ve gotten the disgusting candy out of my mouth, I realize that I’m smiling, just from looking at her.
Elle’s laugh is the best sound I’ve heard in a long time.
Now that is a dangerous thought.