The Unexpected Everything - Morgan Matson Page 0,59
all my food pretty bland. I’d gotten adept over the years at eating around offending sauces and garnishes. My dad was the same way—it had become one of those things reporters write about, how he always traveled with his own supply of bread and peanut butter. My mom had been the one to push both of us out of our comfort zones, to make reservations at Ethiopian and Peruvian restaurants, who got us to try Korean barbeque, soup dumplings, and escargot. But without her, both of us had retreated back to what we liked, and for me that was bean and cheese burritos, extra-cheese pizza, and hamburgers without any vegetables on top. “Not so much,” I said, still trying to understand why someone would order something that spicy unless it was some kind of a dare. “But it sounds like you do?”
“Kind of,” Clark said, nodding his thanks at the busboy who dropped off two Cokes, a lemon wedge indicating the one that was diet. “It, uh . . . started as a game between me and my dad.”
“A game?” I asked, hitting my straw on the table to shuck off the wrapper.
“Yeah,” he said, a small smile starting to form on his face. “My dad’s really into the idea of mind over matter, that you can conquer your body’s reactions through discipline,” he said, shaking his head. “So one night when we were all at a restaurant—my mom and my sister too—I challenged my dad to order something with jalapeño in it. And he said he would if I would too. And then it kind of turned into a competition.”
“So who won?” I asked, taking a sip of my soda.
Something faltered in Clark’s smile for a second, and he pulled his glass toward him. “Still ongoing.”
“Well, you’ll have to tell him you ate this Reaper thing.”
Clark nodded. “Right. Sure.”
We both took sips of our sodas in unison, and then silence descended again. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him something about his family—like how old his sister was or what his parents did—but then I hesitated when I realized that if I asked him about his family, he’d probably want me to talk about mine.
Clark leaned forward, and I racked my brain quickly for some safe topic, something that we had in common. Usually with the other guys I’d been on dates with, there was shared experience. We had bosses or teachers to complain about, friends to gossip about, something mutual to provide help for these early conversations. I realized after a second that the only thing Clark and I really had was the dog. “So,” I said cheerfully, cutting him off right as he was starting to speak, “how’s Bertie doing?”
Talk of the dog, and his quirks, got us through the chips and into the meal. Whenever Clark would start to ask me something more personal, I would steer the conversation back to safer subjects—Bertie, the restaurant, the weather, the upcoming batch of summer movies. And the food itself became a subject when we started eating. I watched with alarm as Becca placed Clark’s food in front of him and braced myself when he took the first bite. But although he turned a little red and it looked like his glasses fogged up the tiniest bit, he soldiered on, and by the time he’d eaten most of his burrito, three of the kitchen staff, two of the waiters, and a busboy were lingering around our table watching him do it.
I offered to split the dinner check, but Clark insisted and paid with a silver credit card. Becca offered him a half-price discount on their DON’T FEAR THE REAPER T-shirt, but Clark passed, and when we got back to his car, he started driving right back to my house. I sat in the front seat of his Jeep, looking at the vacuum lines on the floor mats that indicated it had recently been cleaned, with the growing and undeniable feeling that this had not been a good date. I didn’t think it was my fault—I’d tried to keep the conversation light and fun, but it was like Clark had just been going along with it, like he wasn’t really having a great time. As I tried to figure out what was different, it occurred to me that most of the time when I was sitting in a restaurant across from a boy, we knew each other better and the date had honestly felt sometimes like