I laughed.
"Trust me, when you’re around it all day, it doesn’t have the same appeal," I replied. "I mean, you must get it, right? Whatever you do for work, you probably don’t want to gorge yourself on it in your spare time."
"Point taken," he agreed, and my interest piqued briefly. What exactly did he do for work? He didn’t seem in any great rush to share it with me, and I didn’t want to go delving for more than he was willing to give.
"But I guess you’re not working right now, huh?" I asked, before I could stop myself. "Taking some time off to travel?"
"Yeah, you could say that," he agreed. I felt a pang of envy in my chest, and I did my best to ignore it. I had long-since learned not to hold it against people who had better or more comfortable lives than me, at least when it came to finances. If anything, I should have been glad that there were people out there who seemed to live so comfortably. Just because I didn’t get to didn’t mean everyone should get down in the dirt to suffer with me, and besides, it wasn’t even as bad as it had been at its worst.
"Well, all the more time to try new restaurants, huh?" I added. "What’s the best one that you’ve tried while you’ve been travelling?”
"Oh, good question," he replied, tilting his head back slightly as he pondered his answer. "There was this seafood place in Maine, I think that would be up there with the best. Oh, but this Thai restaurant in New York, I went there practically every night I was staying there, I think I could have lived on that food for the rest of my life..."
As he talked, I tried not to let my surprise show on my face. Maine? New York? It sounded like he had been all over the country. I had never so much as left the state, and I wondered if it was so obvious that I was distantly behind him when it came to matters of travel and adventure. I would have loved to travel, of course I would, but the kind of money it would have taken to string all that together was more than I was willing to contend with. Maybe one day in the future I would be able to enjoy that kind of lifestyle, when I had won the lottery or something. Yeah, maybe one day...
"No, you know, I’m going to say that Thai place," he finished up, holding his hands up as though he had finally decided on the matter. "It was so damn good. Almost as good as the food I had when I was in Thailand."
"You’ve actually been to Thailand?”
"Oh, yeah, back when I was a teenager," he replied, waving a hand. "My family travelled there together. Stayed at this fancy hotel in Bangkok. Not exactly how I’d do it now, I prefer to be out there in the real world with the locals, but I managed to sneak away a few times to the food markets, and they were incredible."
I rested my chin in my hand as I listened to him talk, amazed by the sheer extent of his travels. He must have had some serious money to his name, his whole family must have, actually, if they had been able to fly all of them out there like that.
"Have you ever been?”
He turned the conversation back around to me, and I blinked, surprised, then shook my head.
"To Thailand? No, I’ve never left the country. Never even left the state."
"Well, where would you go if you could?"
"Uh, I don’t know," I admitted. "I haven’t given it that much thought."
"Come on," he urged me lightly, leaning forward slightly, sending another rush of his aftershave swimming through the air. "You must have some thoughts on it, right? Somewhere you’ve always wanted to go?”
I chewed my lip as I pondered my response. Truth be told, it wasn’t something I had thought of much, because allowing my brain to linger there would only serve to let me down further. There was no way I would actually be able to afford any trips like that, so why would I have tortured myself with the possibility?
"I used to watch a lot of British comedy shows when I was growing up," I replied. "So I guess...London, if I could."
"Oh, good choice," he agreed, face brightening at once. "London’s amazing. It’s such a clash of cultures, and there’s so much history there."
"Shame about the food though, right?" I joked, and he chuckled.
"Hey, I will go for fish and chips any day of the week," he replied, and I felt that flutter in my chest again, the same one that had been there when he had first invited out to this restaurant in the first place. And, while I knew that I should have been quicker to shut it down, there was something about the way he was looking at me, something about the expression on his face, that made it hard for me to pretend that I didn’t notice it.
"Maybe I could be convinced once I’ve tried them from the source," I conceded, but before we could go on, our food was brought out to the table, and we both settled in. He was just as impressed by the ravioli as I had imagined he would be, and I couldn’t help but smile when he told me how much he loved it. We exchanged conversation about food, the best places to eat around here, his favorite locations for cuisine in all the countries he had been to. I tried not to let it show on my face just how surprised I was to hear of the extent of his adventures, but honestly, it made him stand out from the other dinners I had shared with the guys who had passed through before. Who had seemed more keen to brag about how they had discovered themselves on their travels than to actually have a real conversation with me about anything.
"Well, you were right, it was worth saving room for the cannolis," he agreed, as he leaned back from the table, plate all but licked clean. "This place is fantastic. Sorry to tell you, but I think it might have usurped the diner."
"Hmm, I think I can live with that," I replied, flashing him a grin. He returned it, and there it was again, that twisting, dancing rush of something that I could not quite put into words.
Or perhaps that I did not want to, because I knew what would come of them if they did.
"Do you live nearby?" he asked suddenly, and my eyes widened, taken aback. But he swiftly lifted his hand, as though aware of how it sounded.
"I could walk you back," he offered. "You know, make sure these mean streets don’t cause you any trouble..."
I laughed.
