Page 52 of Time Loops & Meet Cutes
He does, and soon we have a seat.
“Okay,” he says as he picks up a fry. “Let’s see. What might I not have asked you before… okay. What’s the very best thing you’ve eaten?Ever.”
“That’s an impossible question.”
“Fine. What do you do for work, Noelle?” He waggles his eyebrows, and it shouldn’t be enough to make me laugh, but it is.
I consider my answer to his previous question. “Some of the foods I’ve eaten here have been pretty amazing. The halo-halo, for example, especially the piece of flan? Delicious.” Yeah, I’ll definitely need to get that again.
But part of the reason it was so amazing? Because I ate it with him, on our very first date. The food is entwined with that precious memory.
I don’t say this out loud, even though I’ve been honest with him today.
The dumplings I ate the first time I came here were incredibly delicious as well, but that’s a more complicated memory because of what came next.
“Now I’ll ask you a career question,” he says, “but something a little different. What was the first thing you wanted to be when you grew up? When you were, like, in kindergarten, what did you want to be? I’m guessing it wasn’t a mechanical engineer.”
“I waffled between teacher—like my father—and zookeeper. What about you?”
“It was either an astronaut or clown for me. Or clown astronaut.”
“What happened?” I asked. “You flunked out of clownstronaut school?”
He laughs. “Yeah, I didn’t do well with those big shoes in zero gravity training. It was such a pity.” He releases an exaggerated sigh. “If I’d succeeded, I could be up there right now, circling the planet in a red nose and rainbow wig.”
The image makes me giggle.
“I’m guessing we’ve never had this conversation before?” he asks.
“We have not.”
“What about you? You could have been… a zeacher?”
“A zeacher?”
“A zoo-teacher. You could have taught camels the alphabet. Encouraged leopards to learn their multiplication tables. I probably asked you this before, but what does your dad teach?”
“He’s retired, but he taught high school English.”
“You could have taught Shakespeare to baboons.” Cam sits up straight and puts a hand—the one not holding the bulgogi poutine—to his chest. “To be a baboon, or not to be a baboon,” he says solemnly. “That is the question.”
“Indeed. A very important question. The question that all clownstronauts on the moon are pondering at this very second.”
“Shh. Don’t mention that. It’s a sore subject for me.”
“My apologies,” I say grandly, then turn my attention to the tteokbokki.
I keep smiling around my food. I’m here with Cam, the weather’s nice—and now that I’ve told him the truth, I’m more relaxed than usual.
He spears a piece of meat and a fry on a fork, then holds it toward me. “I bet you’ve tried it before, but try it again.”
I lean forward and eat the proffered food. “Not… bad.”
It’s hard for me to get the words out when my mouth is so close to his.
“I really wish I could remember kissing you.” He brushes his fingers over my cheek, and I nearly shiver in the warm air.
I want to sink into his touch and learn every inch of him.
