Food for Thought Read Online Free PDF

know, that’s a little personal….”
    “No sex,” Keegan assessed flatly, and he stopped Emmett with a hand on his arm. “Emmett—honey, you know, this isn’t really fair to either of you, right?”
    Emmett didn’t shake him off—it felt so good to be touched. “I, I mean, she’s got all the right qualifications, you know? She’s funny, she’s nice, she puts up with my psycho cat—”
    “But… but sex . Do you even want to kiss her?”
    “I… it’s something I’m trying to get over,” Emmett said staunchly. He didn’t want to talk about this, but if he had to talk about it, Keegan was the one person he could talk to. “It’s… you know… the whole—”
    “Jordyn thing,” Keegan snapped, for once not sounding sympathetic. “Honey, you cannot let one failed relationship define your entire life!”
    “I’m trying not to!” Emmett snapped, clicking his remote because they were drawing near his car. “I mean, it’s not like he can hurt me anymore!”
    Keegan let go of his arm so quickly Emmett stumbled without dragging along the extra weight. “He?”
    “She,” Emmett muttered. “Slip of the tongue. Swear. She. She was a real bitch.” Except Jordyn wasn’t the bitch. Paula was the bitch. Jordyn was just as scared as I was. But he hadn’t told that part of the story to anyone, not Vinnie, not Flora, not Keegan.
    He thought he’d keep that part of the story to himself.
    They got into the car silently, and Emmett turned the ignition. “Where do you want to eat?” he asked brightly.
    “Freebird’s,” Keegan replied absently, still staring at him. “She.”
    Emmett swallowed and looked straight ahead. “She.” Carefully, without making eye contact as he swung his head around, he looked behind him, so he could back out. Keegan let him, and it wasn’t until they were heading out of the movie theater and down the road that he spoke again.
    “She.”
    “So I said.”
    “I don’t believe you.”
    Emmett sighed. “I can’t help that,” he said, hoping to keep his dignity.
    “You can, but you won’t,” Keegan snapped.
    “Do you not want dinner and television?” Emmett asked, his voice throbbing with hurt.
    “No, boyfriend. I’m not bailing on you now. This shit is just getting good.”
     
     
    T HE SILENCE healed during dinner, when Emmett told the story of Uncle Jimbo, and the kid whose lips were turning blue but wouldn’t get out of the pool. He told about the long game of Risk after most everyone else had gone home, and how Vinnie’s older sister Rebecca had practically table danced when she won around three in the morning.
    Keegan ate his burrito bowl with gusto, while Emmett picked at his salad.
    “You really live for this shit, don’t you?” Keegan asked, his mouth full, and Emmett shrugged.
    “You know. Me and Dad. It was lonely. And then Dad died and… these are the only people who care if I’m alive or dead.”
    “Not true,” Keegan said after he swallowed. “I care. I give a ripe royal shit. Doesn’t that count?”
    “It counts for a lot,” Emmett said sincerely. “I mean… you know. I was a wreck. I’d be a wreck without you, Kee. You know that.”
    “Yeah, but has it ever occurred to you that I should have a boyfriend, just like you have a girlfriend?”
    Emmett shoved his salad aside. He wasn’t hungry anyway and he had those sandwiches from Flora in the refrigerator. “I sort of wait in dread,” he said, looking elsewhere. “I mean, I know you were dating when I moved in, but… you just made it so easy to forget.”
    “Yeah, well, you make it easy to forget you have a girlfriend. You know why?”
    Emmett grunted. “Because I don’t treat my girlfriend very well.”
    “No, because you don’t have a girlfriend!” Keegan gestured with his fork. “You don’t have a girlfriend, I don’t have a boyfriend, and neither one of us is having sex! Can you tell me why that is?”
    Emmett sighed. “Because I’m an ugly pathetic loser who