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A minute after the delivery was supposed to arrive, someone buzzed the front door of my sister's complex.
I jumped up off the couch so fast that I felt a second of dizziness and buzzed the door open without using the intercom to see who it was.
After all, who else could it be?
Well, as I quickly found out, it could be Wesley. And after he climbed the stairwell and knocked on the door, the first thing he saw was the look of disappointment on my face.
"You're not Thai food," I said and then slammed the door on him. Normally, that might have come off as rude, but under the circumstances, I felt that it wasn’t nearly rude enough.
“I told you I didn't want to talk to you!” I shouted back through the doorway. “Also, how did you get my address?"
"I can explain if you let me in," he said.
"I'm not letting anybody in—"
He didn’t respond. At least not to me. Instead, he spoke quietly to someone else. “Hi,” he said. “Yeah, I’m just going in to see her.”
Oh no, I thought. That must have been the delivery guy he was talking to.
“Thank you!” Wesley said back to the man. “Have a good night!” There was enthusiasm in his voice.
"Good night,” the delivery guy responded, and I heard his footsteps head down the stairwell.
I couldn’t believe what Wesley was doing. It was absolutely unconscionable.
He didn’t say anything. I checked through the peephole and there he was, smiling contently while holding a paper bag.
“You’d better not be holding my dinner hostage,” I said.
“That’s exactly what I’m doing,” he told me, and I watched as he opened the bag up and shoved his face inside, taking a big, melodramatic sniff of the contents. “Smells good. What have we got in here? Chicken pad Thai? Spicy soup?”
He was taunting me.
“Just leave it by the door, Wesley,” I said, but my resolve was weak at the moment. I was hungry — very hungry, in fact — and I felt like I would do whatever he wanted if it meant that I could get my dinner.
“Either both of us come in or I’m taking it with me,” he said.
He wouldn’t.
“You wouldn’t dare,” I said.
“Yeah, okay,” he said. “I wouldn’t. But I might take the lid off of the soup and let it cool down to room temperature.”
The smell began wafting into my apartment. I was only human. I couldn’t resist.
“Oh fine,” I said and unlatched the door. “Come on in.”
He walked in and, though he was smiling, I could see the bags under his red eyes. He’d been crying. And I felt bad.
But not bad enough to forget how hungry I was.
“Give me that,” I said and took the bag from out of his hands, bringing it over to the couch where I pulled my food out and placed the containers on the coffee table. “I’m not sharing,” I told him. “So don’t bother asking.”
“Oh, for frick sakes!” I said, looking through the bag. “They forgot plasticware.”
Wesley was on it. He started going through drawers in my sister’s kitchen until he found the silverware and brought me a pair of chopsticks along with a fork and a spoon.
I was too hungry to give a damn about authenticity, so I ignored the chopsticks and grabbed the fork. I opened up the Styrofoam container and let the steam wash over my face, then stabbed and twirled my fork into the noodles and took my first heavenly bite, closing my eyes to fully savor it.
