‘Steak, well done?’ the waitress asks as she reemerges, plate in hand.
She places it in front of him, along with a plate of greens and a heaping side of chips. Good as it looks, I pray he hasn’t ordered me one too. Does he even know I don’t eat meat? I don’t recall it coming up. Come to think of it, I don’t recallanythingabout me coming up. I think back to yesterday’s chatter and it occurs to me he’s never asked me anything about myself. Unless, of course, it was to do with the gym.
He grabs his knife and fork, and tears into the meat as the smell wafts across the table and under my nose. The scent, regardless of its meatiness, does a good job of reminding me that I didn’t eat breakfast this morning and am, in fact, quite hungry. I hope my meal comes soon. And I hope whatever it is comes animal-free so I can get stuck in.
‘And the quinoa salad, minus the quinoa?’ she asks.
He nods for her to place the new plate in front of me.
It does look good – a bowl of lettuce, radishes, red onions and red peppers, among other vegetables cut too small for me to even begin to guess. It also, however, is the size of my fist. I wait in silence for the rest of my main to arrive.
Nothing comes and he keeps eating. I glance around again but the waitress is off with other tables, paying us no mind.
‘Have I got anything else coming?’ I ask.
He looks up, perplexed. ‘No, that’s your meal.’
‘Oh.’
I look down again. It’s five mouthfuls of food at most. There’sno waythat’s what constitutes a main meal. I reach for the menu and start flicking.
‘What are you doing?’ he asks.
‘Just seeing what else they have on offer,’ I say, reading.
This salad doesn’t even look like it’s a main offering... I scan page after page and find it listed as a side. Maybe Hendrik missed the ‘side’ label when he was ordering.
‘You don’t like it?’ he asks. ‘You haven’t tried it.’
‘It looks nice, it’s just a little small,’ I say. ‘If you see the waitress, could you call her over? That mushroom tart is calling my name.’
I start to salivate at the thought of creamy mushrooms and look around for the server in an attempt to call her over, meeting Hendrik’s concerned eyes on the way.
‘You had that stroopwafel last night, remember.’ His brow is creased beyond repair.
‘Yeah . . .’ I don’t see the correlation.
‘So, the salad is perfect for today.’
He stretches his words long and slow, with wide nodding eyes as if he’s explaining basic arithmetic to a child. He’s dead serious. He sees no problem with this...
Houston, we have a gym bro.
And that’s fine. I already knew that, given his profession and his talk of macros and active heart rates. I have no issues with a gym bro – feel free to focus on yourself, but don’t take your toxic relationship with your body and push it onto me.
As I look across at him, it’s clear from the smile on his face that he’s incredibly proud to have balanced my meals for me. It is that genuine smile alone that stops me from clocking out of this date altogether.
‘Ilovedthe waffle last night, yes, but I still want something bigger than this salad today,’ I reply, just as slowly.
I reach my hand out for the waitress, but Hendrik lightly brings it back down. I bite my tongue yet again.
‘Trust me, you’re better off with the salad.’
‘I don’t want a salad,’ I say calmly. I’m being so calm.
He shakes his head. ‘You haven’t been to the gym yet. Are you planning to? Without it, you have no chance at a calorie deficit.’
I feel my face muscles relax. I’m done plastering on smiles and giving him the benefit of the doubt. Who brings up deficits at the dinner table? Especially to a practical stranger. I take a deep breath before I continue.
