Page 15 of That's Not a Thing

She takes my arm again and leads me back toward the kitchen, commandeering me in that affectionately pushy way of hers.

“It’s called the Culinary Touchstones Training Program,” she says while we walk. “He started it here a month ago. He’s teaching basic financial and cooking skills, life skills, and the like. It’s a fifteen-week program, and when they finish, the students are qualified to be prep cooks for restaurants. Job training. He’s donating his time.”

“That’s amazing,” I say.

“Sure is.” She nods enthusiastically, her ponytail dancing across her back. “He’s also been bringing leftover food from his restaurant on Sundays—Firebird, or whatever his place is called. That’s why you got the big line outside. The earliest folks get true restaurant fare, while the stragglers get stuck with soup and macaroni.”

“Does he stay to serve after the class?” I ask, hoping he does, hoping he doesn’t.

“Of course,” she answers, exuberant as always. “But why did I let you distract me, you little thing? We’re tight on time as it is!” She starts pulling me back into the kitchen. Before I have time to stress about my impending run-in with Wesley, she has me so overloaded with ladles and trays that I’m momentarily sidetracked.

It amazes me how quickly I can get back into the routine here, carrying large aluminum trays of carbohydrates from the warmer to the long table out front, setting up Sterno cans like I was just doing it last week. Before I know it, Katie Sue is calling out the five-minute warning, and those of us who are here to serve are re-tying our aprons and taking our posts behind the long buffet tables at the back of the gym.

There is an extra serving table on the side of the gym today, where I’m told the restaurant food will be provided. I specifically avoided that table when I chose my current post at the green beans. I pick up the enormous aluminum serving spoon and start moving the greens around in their deep tray, halfheartedly trying to bolster their appearance, stirring the melted margarine to keep it from congealing around the edges of the pan.

The back door of the gym opens, and the adults I saw sitting in Wesley’s class make their way inside, lining up first at the table full of Thunder Chicken’s food. I gear up to see Wesley, but the door closes before he appears.

We begin serving the meal, and I’m on edge the whole time, waiting for him to walk in, wondering whether he will be glad to see me. As the minutes pass and he doesn’t appear, I tell myself that he must have left after teaching his class, though I’m also hoping that he is still here, helping in the kitchen or maybe working with a struggling student. I find myself searching, alternately wistful and panicky. I’m terrified that I will have to face him before my shift is over, but I’m equally frightened that he has already left, that I’ve missed a chance to see him.

When I finally ladle out my last helping of green beans and carry my empty tray toward the kitchen, I push open the swinging door, bracing myself for whatever I will find on the other side. When I enter, I find only Katie Sue and three other volunteers washing dishes. Wesley must have left after all.

I notice the disappointment I feel, and I want to kick myself in the face, if that were a thing I could physically accomplish. It has been only a few days since I promised myself I wasn’t going to care about him anymore. It’s definitely for the best that I didn’t spend the last two hours standing next to him, serving lunch. I think of Aaron, who is probably performing some life-changing surgery on a small child at this very moment, and I have a sharp stab of regret. Aaron is my future, and I need to get steady on that train. I suppose if Wesley is back in New York, I should expect to run into him from time to time, especially if I plan to keep coming back to the soup kitchen. I can’t let my entire being flounder each time his name comes up. In fact, maybe seeing him more regularly will help me to get some closure, finally really move on. That’s the faulty logic I have grabbed on to when I say good-bye to Katie Sue and promise I will be back the following week.

Chapter Seven

January 2008

Iwasn’t sure what I was hoping for as I returned to the dorm, heading toward Wesley’s room and wondering whether my hair smelled like hospital disinfectant. I had never really been serious with anyone, unless you counted my high school boyfriend, Rudi Kramer, but that relationship had fizzled in a hazy dust of platonic disinterest long before we approached any physical milestones. I wasn’t a prude; I just hadn’t yet been presented with any prospects that I found particularly tempting. I most certainly was not going to hand over my V-card to a guy I had only just met. Which was why, I reminded myself, I was not going to jump into bed with Wesley as soon as he made a move.Was Not.Still, maybe having Wesley to focus on, a guy so hot he made my eyeballs sweat, was just what I needed to stay sane, a harmless diversion. My mother would not have begrudged me that —she so was adamant that her illness shouldn’t detract from my college experience. She would sooner text Daphne to meet me in the hallway with a box of Trojans than try to curb my frenzied hormones.

I trudged up the stairs with my overstuffed backpack weighing me down, a reminder of all the incomplete coursework I would have to finish the next day. The heat of the building was at least a welcome respite after being out in the icy night. When I reached my hall, I found a group of girls sitting on the floor, cramming for some exam. They had to rearrange themselves in order to let me pass. I stepped over their flannel-pajamaed legs and the long box of jelly beans they were all picking at, the kind where each flavor had its own compartment. I loved this part of college life, the way we were in our own time zone, where 2:00 a.m. was a completely reasonable hour to be awake and socializing. It was hard to believe that less than a year earlier, I had been waking up at six in the morning to get myself out the door in time for high school classes. In my college life, 6:00 a.m. wasn’t even the morning yet. Really, it was still yesterday.

I passed my own room on the way to Wesley’s and noted the big redXDaphne had drawn on the white-board. She had also added smallx’s ando’s at the bottom of the board—a little show of appreciation toward me, I guess, a shout-out. Other freshmen might have been annoyed at their roommate for constantly monopolizing the room, but I’d had the space to myself almost every night of first semester while she was dating Todd the ass-hat, so maybe it was fair that she got some nights to herself, too. I considered myself lucky to be boarding with my lifelong best friend, even if it meant that I was sometimes without a room at all.

When I reached Wesley’s quarters at the other end of the hall, his door was open. I heard him talking to someone as I stepped closer and raised my hand to knock on the doorframe. He was sitting up on his single bed, resting his back against the wall. In a casual gray hoodie and black sweats, he looked like he was modeling loungewear. He noticed me before I knocked and jumped off the bed.

“Hey. Come in!” He pulled me into the room and started closing the door behind me. “We were waiting for you.”

I stepped past the front portion of the room, where a wall had partially obstructed my view of the interior, and saw that we were not alone. On the bed opposite Wesley’s sat a girl, a very attractive girl, who was also clad in sweats. The bed she occupied was devoid of sheets or comforters. I supposed Wesley had this double room all to himself and the college hadn’t bothered to remove the extra bed. A stack of neon poster board and a haphazard pile of glue sticks and other shiny art supplies lay on the bed next to her.

I looked to Wesley for guidance on the situation I had just stepped into. I certainly didn’t want to be a third wheel if I had misunderstood his intentions toward me. My mind flashed back to the way he had looked at me in my revealing sleepwear the day before, devouring me, and I wondered if that was how he looked at this girl, too. I tried to keep calm, telling myself that Wesley had no obligations toward me, that he hadn’t made any promises he wasn’t keeping. No harm, no foul, and all.

“Meredith, this is Lulu.”

And she had a stripper name, too.

“Lucy,” the girl said, rolling her eyes in Wesley’s direction. “Only my family calls me Lulu, and I’ve been trying for years to make them stop. Unsuccessfully, obviously.” Her lip curled in a dainty snarl at Wesley.

“Family?” I asked. I thought Wesley had told me he was an only child, but this girl did resemble him quite a bit, now that I looked more closely at her. She had the same square jaw and strong cheekbones, the same honey-brown hair. Though she had slanted eyes that were a nondescript brown, a far cry from Wesley’s startling, translucent green.

“My cousin,” Wesley explained. “Lu came over to help me with these decorations I have to make, but we decided to wait for you. As much as you may be a science scholar, I know for sure you’re an art connoisseur, too.”

“You do?” We had never discussed my fascination with art.

“Sure.” He started pulling off my coat by the sleeve. I let my backpack drop to the floor with a thud and then slipped out of the jacket obediently.

“You told me you take art history,” he explained, “and you have that artsy pink stripe in your hair.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, unimpressed by his deductive reasoning. He had to know the pink stripe was about my mom, and one art history class did not an “art person” make.