Page 32 of The Arrangement
The cooking classdate left me with mixed feelings.
I blamed the pasta for softening my heart toward the Great Betrayer. Pasta possessed a magic few understood. All I knew was that it was delicious and lowered all my defenses. Which was why I shouldn’t have shown interest in the ravioli-making class. But, come on! It was ravioli. The perfect pocket pasta holding tasty surprises while being bathed in a delicious sauce. How was I supposed to turn that down?
Still, it was looking like Liam had grown from his homophobic past and crawled out from the dangerous influence of his mother. Maybe not full acceptance, but at least “tolerance”—which I used very tongue in cheek. Much like I “tolerated” the existence of creepy spiders so long as they weren’t in my house.
I hoped I was wrong.
I hoped I was wrong about a lot of things with Liam.
He might have hurt me, but I couldn’t shake off all those years that we’d been friends. Part of me wanted that old friend back, but I was terrified to trust him.
So, I did the only thing I could think of to bridge that gap. I decided to annoy him.
Thank God for smartphones and texting.
Rome: Congrats! I heard scientists uncovered a new, incredibly smart dinosaur.
Rome: It’s called a thesaurus.
Rome: What’s a dinosaur’s favorite beverage?
Rome: A cup of Tea-Rex!
Rome: [Image: Dinosaur sitting playing a video game as a meteor rushes toward the earth. Caption: Just one more game]
Rome: Look! It’s a Procrastinator Rex!
Rome: What did they name the dinosaur with only one eye?
Rome: An EYE-Saur.
Liam: If you send me one more bad dinosaur joke, I’m going to kill you.
I snickered and shifted my joke search to terrible dad jokes. That wouldn’t be breaking his rule at all.
His frustration was palpable through the phone, which meant that I needed to fire them off as quickly as possible once I lined them up.
Rome: How do cows stay up to date? They read the Moo-spaper.
Rome: Which days are the strongest? Saturday and Sunday. The rest are weekdays.
Rome: What do you call a werewolf with a YouTube account? Lycan Subscribe!
Rome: What do you call it when an animal is invisible in the desert? Camelflage
Liam: Holy fuck! Don’t you have to work or something?
Liam: Please give your phone a rest. Some of us have important things they need to get done.
Rome: Send me a joke and I’ll stop.
I waited, eager to see if he would play along. As kids, Liam would cackle at the very worst, lamest pun jokes in the world. I refused to believe he’d lost that sense of humor. If he had, I was going to give up on him completely. It was too sad to think the grumpy man had lost the ability to laugh.
Liam: I don’t mean to boast about my finances. However, my credit card company calls me all the time to tell me my balance is outstanding!
“Yes!” I hissed, pumping my fist into the air the second I saw Liam’s text. That was just as bad as I remembered them being. I lounged on my sofa and prepared to search the internet for yet another bad dad joke. It was tempting to return to the dinosaur ones because he was a paleontologist. Or maybe I should look up some about rocks. He’d studied geology as an undergrad. He’d appreciate some bad rock jokes.
Liam: No more jokes. I’m serious, Rome. I’ve got to get back to work, and I don’t like turning off my phone during the day.
