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“And what are you looking for, Emmy?”
I look at him from behind—his tall and athletic figure, so reminiscent of the boy he used to be. The same person and yet, somehow, so different. His strong hands, with the long and deft fingers of a doctor, wrap around the handle of the saucepan. It’s almost erotic. I swallow heavily and try to focus.
“Umm … I’m looking for … I don’t really know, to be honest. I suppose I’ll know it when I see it, right?” I tell him. “What about you, then? You’ve had some relationships as well. How come nothing ever, you know, stuck?”
“Stuck?” He laughs. “What does that mean?”
“Come on … everyone is thinking the same thing, Evan. A man like you, not married? How is that possible?”
He turns around and stares at me, while still moving the saucepan back and forth on the stove. “A man like me? Am I … different?”
“You are.”
“In what way?”
“You’re … better than everyone else. Better than every other man,” I tell him.
He looks into my eyes, and his face is now serious and grave. “Evidently, you don’t mean that. If you truly thought I was better than every other man, then you and I would—”
“No, that’s not what I meant,” I interject. “I meant that…”
But he turns around and focuses on the pasta again—adding a large quantity of sweet tomatoes to the mix. I hear them sizzle in the hot olive oil. As he keeps stirring, they create a luscious and silky tomato sauce that makes my mouth water.
“Anyway, to answer your question, Emmy, I guess I’m just like you. I never found someone that I thought was good enough. To spend my life with, I mean. Someone that … made my heart skip a beat, as they say. Someone that I could truly see myself spending every day, every night, with. Where would I even find a person like that?”
“Yeah … you know what’s funny, though? I’ve had so many boyfriends who were jealous of you,” I tell him.
He turns around to face me.
Leaning against the kitchen counter, he grabs his glass of fancy Tuscan wine and sips it casually. I can see his toned abs bulging through the white cotton T-shirt, but I try not to pay attention to just how good he looks. To how good he looks doing practically nothing—just standing there, drinking wine.
“Really? Your boyfriends have been jealous of me?”
“Oh, absolutely! With some of them, I noticed it from their behavior. Others told me to my face,” I reply.
He starts to laugh again. “You’re joking! Men have told you to your face that they’re jealous of me?”
“Mhm. I had one guy who flat out said that he thinks you and I are in a secret relationship and that I was cheating on him with you.”
“What did you say?”
“That he’s crazy! I mean, why would I do that? That’s a conspiracy theory. But others have told me that our friendship is far too close. Or that we spend too much time together. Stuff like that.”
“Yeah, I suppose they might be right there,” Evan says. “Some women have told me that as well.”
“About the friendship thing?” I ask him.
“Yes. That, according to them, we’re in some kind of faux relationship or platonic relationship. That we are each other’s surrogate for a boyfriend or girlfriend.”
“Is that so? And what do you think?”
“I think they were just jealous, honestly. In my opinion, a friendship like ours doesn’t happen that often. It’s that whole, ‘men and women can’t be friends’ thing, you know? The old stereotype. So, when people see a man and a woman who truly are best friends, they automatically think that they must be having some kind of secret affair, or that they’re trying to compensate for something. But we’ve been best friends since we were children. We love each other,” he says.
“You got that right! But…”
“What?” he asks me.
He’s stirring the saucepan once more. Now that the sauce is ready, he adds the spaghetti.
