Chapter Ten
Since neither of us had dinner, we both head straight to the fridge when we get home. Or some version of home. I’m still thinking of it as Leon’s place, just with our stuff in it.
The bare shelves of our refrigerator wink back at us.
We each rush to blame the other. “Did you not go to the store?” he says, like it’s to be expected.
“You forgot to go to the store,” I say, as if we’d already decided he’d make a grocery run and he’d neglected to do so.
Then we frown at each other. Our methods aren’t covert anymore. Our bullshit radars are fine-tuned.
He checks the microwave clock. “There’s still time for you to run to the gas station for frozen pizza.” He hands me his keys.
“I’m all pizza’d out.” I hand the keys back. “When you go get us some burritos, I want the chicken and cheese, not beef and cheese.”
We commence a fierce stare-down. I’m doing him a big favor by staying here with him in this house that’s probably haunted, saving him from miserable dinners with his mother where she’ll criticize every single restaurant employee in the most devastatingly personal way possible.
“Go get the burritos and I’ll be nice to you forever,” I say.
“Go get them yourself and I’ll be nice to you forever.”
Not worth it. “Nah.”
“Don’t you want to see how the Jeep drives? You’ll like it better than the Saturn.” His lips twist. “Much, much better than the . . . ah . . . what kind of car did you trade it for?”
“It’s a monster, and I love it like it’s my child. Besides, I can’t go anywhere because I’m still shaken up.”
I’m not shaken up, because being far removed from Deborah has revitalized me. He can tell.
“Fine.” He relents, performing another inventory of our fridge. “I’ll fix something for myself, then.”
“So will I.” I open the cupboards and hope to god there’s an entire Thanksgiving meal up there. “For myself.”
He gets out bread crumbs and eggs. I’ve seen this pattern before: he’s making mozzarella sticks. They sound amazing.
My first thought is to make spaghetti. He doesn’t like my spaghetti? Then I’ll cook enough for a banquet and let it overflow from every Tupperware container we own.
Nicholas watches me retrieve a box of spaghetti noodles. “I see you’re still mad about the spaghetti thing.”
“Not mad.” Just holding on to it forever.
“Sure, sure.” He smiles, because the idea of successfully pissing me off makes him just as gleeful as I’m going to feel when he realizes I ate all the mozzarella cheese.
I scavenge for a big jar of tomato sauce and come up with nil.
I do find a leftover plastic tub of marinara from Benigno’s and plenty of ketchup, so I say what the hell and squirt it into a saucepan.
I find that the spaghetti box only contains four noodles, so I have to supplement with half-empty boxes of gluten-free fettuccine and organic brown rice farfalle.
I put them on to boil and wish I lived with someone less nutrition-conscious when it comes to carbs.
“What are you making?” he snickers.
“Farfaccine.”
“That’s not a thing.”
“It’s my favorite food ever. I talk about it all the time; not my fault you don’t pay attention.”
He rolls his eyes and turns to root through the fridge. My body coils tight like a jack-in-the-box, waiting. Finally: “Have you seen the mozzarella?”
“Nope.”
His gaze falls onto the trash can. He pops the lid and sees the crumpled mozzarella stick wrappers. Busted.
“Darned Leon,” I say. “I bet he kept a spare key and snuck inside last night. We should change the locks.”
Nicholas glares, then dumps his prepared breading into my saucepan.
“Hey!”
“It’s going to suck, anyway.”
“It is not.”
“Your pasta’s overcooked. And you forgot to stir.”
“Fudge.” I hurry to drain it. There are clumps stuck to the bottom of the pot.
Gluten-free anything is already atrocious.
Boiling it just makes it worse. While I’m fussing with the pasta, the marinara-ketchup combo starts spitting.
I rush back and stir, then throw in some seasoning. I’m a regular Alex Guarnaschelli.
“Interesting choice.”
“Huh?”
Nicholas taps one of the spice bottles I just used. Cinnamon.
“Oh. Yes.” I stand tall. “It’s the secret ingredient.”
Nicholas is still hunting for a mozzarella replacement. It’s no use. We have nothing. He gives up and eyes my pasta with resignation. “Farfaccine, eh?”
“A traditional Italian dish passed on from grandmother to grandmother.” It smells like raw sewage.
“Maybe if it were creamier?” he says helpfully. “Looks a little dry.”
We’re out of milk, so we do something dubious here and dump in half a cup of coffee creamer. It does look better afterward, even if the foul smell intensifies. Nicholas gets cocky and adds a sprinkling of pink Himalayan salt.
Our stomachs are growling. We ladle slop into our bowls and prod it with our forks to make sure it’s not still alive.
There are so many weird textures at play.
Our low food supply reflects our carelessness, and the only place in Morris that delivers is closed.
I’m stricken by a thought: Benigno’s might not deliver all the way out here.
I think their policy is delivering only within city limits.
Morris sucks. Nicholas should have taken that job in Madison.
We take a bite on the count of three. I want to spit mine out but he bravely chews his mouthful, so I make myself do the same.
Nicholas takes another bite. “This is the worst thing I’ve ever had in my mouth.”
Nicholas thinks Warheads are haute cuisine, so he doesn’t get to pass judgment on farfaccine. “The cauliflower you poured buffalo sauce all over and told me was a chicken wing,” I say. “That’s the worst thing I’ve ever had in my mouth.”
“It’s going to be a drill next, what with all the Butterfingers you eat. Storing them in your cheek like a chipmunk and letting them slowly erode your molars. You’ll be in dentures before you hit forty.”
“You’ll be right there with me, pal. You and your Skittles.” I can’t believe we’re still eating. We’re going to end up in the emergency room. “My tongue is numb. Is that normal?”
“I can taste this in my sinus cavities. Taste. Not smell.”
I dig out a can of La Croix and we split it. The taste pairs horribly, so it’s right on theme.
“We should mark today on the calendar and memorialize it by eating this travesty every year,” he remarks.
“I’ll copy down the recipe. Cinnamon, bread crumbs with egg in them. God, did we really use coffee creamer?”
“We’re artists. No one understands.” He slurps his sauce, a ring of red around his mouth.
I hear the crunching of gravel and we poke our heads into the living room.
The tow truck driver is here. He must’ve had trouble finding the entrance to our driveway, because we’ve been waiting on him for close to an hour.
I have to run upstairs and hide if I want to preserve my delusion that this never happened.
“Peace out,” I say, and vamoose.
“Coward!” he yells after me.
–
Nicholas finds me in the kitchen on Monday morning heating up farfaccine in the microwave.
He falls against the doorjamb laughing, straightening his cuffs.
He’s heading in to work. Today, the Junk Yard will only stay open from noon to three, and Brandy and I are the only ones scheduled.
Brandy texted this morning to say that Melissa’s quitting, and I feel like we’re the kids in Willy Wonka’s factory, dropping off left and right.
“You’re eating a bowl of food poisoning, Naomi.”
“I’m hungry. Don’t judge.”
He takes down a bowl for himself and chisels out a congealed glob from the storage container.
The microwave beeps, but I go ahead and press three more seconds onto the timer.
When it beeps again, I press three more seconds.
Nicholas stands there and lets me get away with it two more times before bumping me out of the way with his hip.
“We really need to go to the store,” I inform him. “There’s nothing here for dinner.”
“I’ll probably have dinner at Mom and Dad’s tonight.” He admires his reflection in the shiny oven door and smooths his hair. “You don’t have to come.”
This has never been optioned to me before.
I try not to be sulky. “Fine, then.”
“I thought that’s what you’d want.”
“To eat dinner alone? Here all by myself? Sure, that’s the dream.”
“You don’t want to go to my parents’ house,” he points out in a deadpan.
“No, I don’t. But I think you should try making it three days without going over there.”
“You know how my mom gets. Especially since we blew her off last night. I want to please everybody, but I can’t, and in somebody’s eyes I’m always falling short. Don’t put me in this position where I have to choose.”
I never make him choose, but he always does, anyway, which puts me in a position where I’m forced to be crabby. I press the release button on the microwave to open the door thirty seconds before his food is ready, then walk away.
“Real nice.”
I scuttle up to my bedroom so that I don’t have to say good-bye to him when he leaves, pondering what I’m going to do with my life. I check my phone for missed calls from potential employers, but I have no notifications because no one loves me and I’m a failure. I don’t even have any spam emails.
I scroll through Instagram for five minutes and then have to shut my phone off because everybody else’s lives are amazing and mine is a black hole. I have zero job offers and one fiancé too many. I have an abundance of odious fiancé. How am I going to get rid of him? I cannot marry this mama’s boy.
Every time I picture the wedding I break out in hives.
Deborah will want to come on our honeymoon with us, and she’ll switch out my birth control pills for placebos.
When baby Nicholas Deborah Jr. comes, I’ll walk into the house one day to find all her belongings stuffed in the right-hand bedroom.
I’ve come to stay with you, she’ll threaten with a nightmarish smile, head spinning all the way around. Forever!