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“Yeah.” I laugh.
“I guess that’s not what you’re used to, huh?” She narrows her eyes at me, and I wonder if I’m treading into some dangerous, unknown territory.
“It’s not,” I say, carefully choosing my next words, “but it wouldn’t be a new experience if I’d had it before.”
“What wine do you usually pair with PB and J?” Cherry asks as she hands me the bottle and a corkscrew.
“Oh, maybe a Chateau Latour red.” I tap my finger on my chin, pretending to ponder.
“I have no idea what that is.” Cherry pulls a jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread from a cupboard and places them on the kitchen counter.
“Pretentious wine from France, naturally.”
“Well, this is a very pretentious peanut butter,” she tells me, pointing at the label. “No store brands here!”
“Well, I’m glad to hear there are standards!”
“Did you think I didn’t have any?” Cherry looks at me out of the corner of her eye, and I’m not sure if the banter is supposed to continue or not.
“I just hope I don’t fall short,” I say quietly.
We lapse into a brief silence as I pour the wine, and Cherry makes the sandwiches. She has one of them done when she begins to search through a drawer.
“Something wrong?” I ask.
“Just trying to find the spatula,” she says. “Here it is! I’m still running into post-move, where-the-hell-is-that-thing issues.”
She starts to dig into the peanut butter jar, scraping the sides.
“I’m not sure you have enough left in there for a second sandwich.”
“There is always—and I mean always—one more sandwich worth of peanut butter in the jar.”
She’s right. By the time she’s done, there is plenty of peanut butter on the bread, and the sides of the jar are almost completely clean. We sit down at her small kitchen table, and she holds up her wine glass.
“To second dinners,” she says.
“And spatulas,” I add.
“And spatulas!”
We clink glasses, and I feel myself finally start to relax and forget the restaurant. Maybe I can salvage this night after all. The problem is the unexpected setting. By this point, I had expected us to be driving around the lake and stopping at a romantic spot near the docks, not sitting in her apartment.
“Well?” Cherry asks pointedly after I take a bite of the sandwich.
“It’s really good,” I answer honestly.
“Everything is good when you’re about to starve to death.” She laughs.
“No, really,” I say. “This is great! I haven’t had a PB and J since I was a kid, but they were always my favorite for school lunches.”
She eyes me for a long moment.
“What?” I ask.
“I’m just trying to picture you as a kid with a brown-bag lunch.”
“And?”
