Page 23 of Up All Night

When Max finally left, I genuinely felt bad for not buying a vacuum. He’d looked so disappointed when I told him I couldn’t afford it, not even with a payment plan of small installments. I assured him that his demonstration had been amazing and that he’d get a sale soon.

I marched straight to my room, turning the volume on my music to full blast, knowing I would be working for the next few hours as loudly as I could.

Anger and irritation flowed into my dance moves, which was perfect for one of the angsty dance pieces I was working on. The more I danced, the more the stress and frustration left my body. Dance had always been a great outlet for me, my own personal therapy.

Kate knocked on the door frame, standing in my open doorway. “Hey, you want to take a break, order some takeout, and eat it in front of the TV?”

“That sounds perfect.” I needed a break, and now that Kate had mentioned food, I realized I was starving.

“You want me to order some Chinese?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “I’ll take a quick shower and be out soon.”

While we waited for the food to arrive, we caught each other up on our days. She laughed when I told her about the spin class and how West had looked like he was dying. She tried not to laugh when I told her about the vacuum salesman, but she insisted that even as annoying as it was, it was also pretty funny. Now that the whole situation was behind me and I had danced out my anger, I could admit it was slightly funny and that West had gotten me pretty good.

“What are you going to do to get back at him?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m struggling to find something that’s annoying but won’t get me arrested.”

She laughed, but before she could respond, the doorbell rang.

She hopped up and went to go get our food.

The strong smell of Chinese wafted through our apartment.

“That smells so good,” I said as she set it on our coffee table.

The strong food smell reminded me of the last time I’d made potstickers to get back at West for waking me up.

Which had me thinking. What other foods had strong odors?

I grabbed my phone instead of the food carton in front of me.

“What are you doing?” asked Kate, a quizzical look on her face.

“I’m looking up smelly foods.”

Her brows drew together. “Why?”

“Just want to send a little thank you meal to our neighbor downstairs to thank him for referring the vacuum salesman to my door,” I answered.

“Oh, boy.” She shook her head and started eating her food.

“Aha!” I exclaimed, ignoring her comment. I was too excited about what I was going to send to West’s door. “Found just the right thing.”

I looked up a local Taiwanese restaurant and clicked on their number. The smelly food was actually Chinese, but it was more popular in Taiwan, and the internet said I would be more likely to find the rotten smelling food being served at a Taiwanese restaurant.

The restaurant answered and I said, “Hi, yes, I was wondering if you serve stinky tofu at your restaurant?”

Kate’s brows rose.

Some restaurants didn’t serve it because of the smell. It was mostly sold as street food, but I was hoping I could get lucky finding an authentic Taiwanese restaurant in the city.

“You do?” The excitement bubbled out of me. “And do you deliver?”

They delivered! It was like the feud gods were on my side.

“That’s so amazing. I just love stinky tofu.” This was so perfect. “Yes, I’d like to order two servings of the stinky tofu for delivery.”

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