Table for Two Read Online Free PDF Page A

yourself?
    I turn to look at you. You grip
the steering wheel tightly, and I know you can sense me looking, but you
pretend not to notice. I want to take your hand and tell you that we will be
fine after this, but instead, I say, “I think I deserve more than that.”  
    The guy who will understand that
compliments and hugs are more important than flowers and chocolate. The guy who
will not disappoint me when he promises to do something, the guy who will make
my mom laugh and look my dad straight in the eye. The guy Charles will approve of.
The guy who will change everything without changing who I am—I need you
to be this guy. I need you to tell me, right now, that you can be this guy.
    “I don’t know if I can give you
more than that,” you say, and I am expecting to feel my insides lurch, my heart
shriveling into a sad little ball sinking straight to the pit of my stomach.
But I feel calm and collected, and maybe I have always known that we were never
meant to be together.
    You ask me, “Do you think he’ll
make you happy?” and I say, “I have to believe that he will.” You want to tell
me that competition is the only thing that propels him towards me, and like all
other guys, he will lose interest once the chase is over. Maybe you want to
tell me that his efforts are as half-baked as yours are, maybe you want to tell
me that he is just as inconsistent and uncommitted as you are. Maybe you want
to tell me that there will also be days when he won’t love me at all, and that
he should be apologizing for this, but we both know these two truths: One, I’m
the one who should be sorry because I never took a real chance on him, either.
And two, if I make my move now, it might not yet be too late.
    For the second time this summer,
you ask me,   “Are you sure this is
going to work?”
    I give you the
same answer. “No. But I can’t not try.”
    We are no longer driving around in
circles, because suddenly, we both know where we’re supposed to be going. You
pull into the parking lot of a secluded café sandwiched between a Korean
grocery and an appliance service center. At a table for two by the window,
there is a boy sitting alone, looking like he’s waiting for someone; he could
be waiting for me.
    You tell me, “You belong with
him.”
    I hug you goodbye, and you wave at
me as you drive off. Before you reach the street leading you home, the light
will turn red, and you will have to get in line. These days, as the rain pours
continuously, it seems like you spend most of your time in a travel-pause,
stuck in one place until that flash of green gives you permission to move
along. But it is hard to see this as a complete waste. Because at some point,
the waiting ends. You and I are hurtling towards many different directions,
always leaping before looking—we are bound to intersect somehow, someday,
even as we take the roads leading away from each other.
    The door to the café is heavy, and
I have to push it hard. The boy at the table by the window looks up as I walk
in, and there is both relief and surprise written across his face. He smiles,
and it is not something he throws out into the world carelessly; it is
specifically for me.
    I smile back. “Hi, Robbie. How
have you been?” I sit and listen, and in this cozy café, while the rain pounds
against the window and thunder rumbles in the distance, I finally feel safe.
     

ALL THE BEST

 
     
    “Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is this,” I hold up my best friend Blake’s pristine
white wedding invitation and toss it onto the table, where the twins Martin and
Henry were busy attacking a 24-inch all-meat pizza. Martin grabs the envelope and
gapes at it, his greasy fingers leaving dark oil spots on the paper. “Blake is
marrying that chick Vicky?” he asks. “She is a babe! Lucky bastard.” A blob of
hot sauce drips from his chin and misses the card by mere centimeters.
    “Why is this our mission? You want
us to get married too?” Henry