It has been a fantastic week, though. Best he’s had since the last time.
* * *
—
By the time he returns to the table, their entrée plates have been cleared. Ivy drinks the last of her wine, looking at him over the rim of the glass.
“I ordered two cappuccinos. I wasn’t sure if you wanted dessert,” she says.
“No, coffee is fine.” He pauses, almost makes a joke but decides against it. “I don’t need any dessert. I’m pretty full.”
“Me too.”
“I’m not surprised.”
She doesn’t react to that. Not even a raised eyebrow. Honestly, the woman should play poker, because she would make a fortune. But that isn’t the game she likes.
The cappuccino arrives, and Ivy talks about learning Chinese. This is her third new language, but she doesn’t speak any of them fluently because she can’t practice speaking out loud at work. Though she has cursed him out in Russian and French before.
In the past, he has told her there are so many other things she could do with that kind of time at work. So many other things she could study. Tonight, he keeps his mouth shut.
There is no bantering. No innuendo. None of the usual talk they have during coffee. Wes had really been looking forward to this night. Now all he feels is disappointment. And anger.
When they leave, she stops and faces him in front of the restaurant.
“You seem like you’re in a bad mood,” she says. “Maybe I should just go home tonight.”
A war erupts inside Wes’s head. It’s all on him now. Either he apologizes for his mood and she comes to his place, or he doesn’t and he goes home alone.
Sex or no sex. That is the question.
If only she hadn’t worn that dress. Which, as it happens, looks fantastic on her. Especially out here, under the night sky.
If only she hadn’t made it worse by ordering that prime rib, knowing how it makes him sick. If not for her behavior, he wouldn’t be in this mood, and he wouldn’t have to make this decision. The worst part: She knows all of this.
His internal war doesn’t last long.
“I’m sorry I’ve been in such a bad mood tonight,” he says. “It’s work. A lot of problems at the office today.”
Sex with Ivy always wins.
19
Wes knows exactly when he realized Ivy was the one. Getting there was a process, and it started a few weeks after they met. Since he and Ivy didn’t have a lot of money, they ate a lot of junk food. The first time they bought it together, they were at a gas station convenience store.
He picked up his favorites: Crunch bar, Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, and Diet Coke. Everyone in California drinks water, but his Midwestern roots were too strong. Soda was the only option. The diet part was his only concession.
Her choices were completely different: Butterfinger, Harvest Cheddar SunChips, and Fresca.
Fresca.
When she grabbed a bottle of it, he assumed it was because they were sold out of Sprite and 7Up. But then she did it again at another store. Even when a cooler filled with 7Up was right there.
“Grapefruit soda? Not lemon-lime?” he said. “Who does that?”
“I do.”
“It feels weird,” he said.
“Not to me.”
She gripped that bottle like she would fight to the death if anyone tried to snatch it. And she continued to buy Fresca, which confounded him to no end. It was one of the strangest things about her, and he had noticed a few of them. Like the fact that she squeezed the tube of toothpaste in the middle. Not the end, not the front, but the middle. That was weird enough. The Fresca was even weirder.
But he stopped mentioning it because she wasn’t going to budge. Plus, she never commented on his choices. Not once.
The topic of their favorite junk food didn’t come up again until a couple months later, after a party. Wes had gotten a little drunk. No, a lot drunk. And he had . . . well, he had screwed up. According to her. He couldn’t remember a whole lot about the night.
What he did remember, sort of, was that they had their first fight. At the time, he was living off campus with three other guys. After the party, he and Ivy ended up back at his place. To this day, the details aren’t clear. He has flashes of what happened, of sitting on his bed while Ivy screamed at him. Vague recollections of Ivy accusing him of flirting with a girl （he hadn’t, or at least not seriously）。 She demanded to know how long he had known the girl （not at all） and if he liked her （he couldn’t even remember who she was）。 All he had wanted to do was lie down and pass out.
The last thing he remembered was the sound of his bedroom door slamming when she left.
In the morning, he woke up with a headache, along with the feeling that he had messed up. Wes didn’t think he had, not really, but between the alcohol and the accusations, the truth had been lost.
He staggered to the kitchen, which was empty. If his roommates were home, they were still asleep. Or maybe avoiding the mess.
A bowl sat in the middle of the scratched secondhand table. The biggest bowl they had—a porcelain thing with yellow stripes on the side. It took Wes a few minutes to realize what was inside it.
Crunch bars. Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. Both had been crushed into tiny bits, as if Ivy had smashed everything with a hammer. The chocolate crumbs and orange flecks were drenched in Fresca.
Wes tried to imagine Ivy as she did this, tried to imagine how she had ever come up with this idea. He knew for a fact there was no Fresca in the apartment; neither he nor any of his roommates drank it. Which meant she had gone out, bought it, and returned to put together this horrible concoction.
The fact that she had chosen his favorite snacks. The commitment to destroying every Cheeto, every square of chocolate. The amount of thought that had gone into this particular revenge. The fact that it was done out of anger didn’t matter. Wes couldn’t remember the last time someone had gone to so much trouble for him.
He wasn’t about to let a woman like that go.
Wes went straight to her dorm and knocked on the door to her room. Lightly at first, harder when she didn’t answer. He could no longer feel the hangover, only the fear. Fear that something had gone too far, that she would never forgive him for the things he couldn’t remember. That she was gone for good.
Finally, she did open the door. Ivy looked as bad as he did, like she hadn’t slept at all. Her room was filled with clothes. They were on the bed and on chairs and covering her desk. She had taken all her anger out on her closet.
They stared at each other, each waiting for the other to speak first.
He wanted to tell her that he didn’t remember, that he wasn’t trying to pick up another girl and he never would, because she was the only one he wanted. But she wouldn’t have believed it. She would have thought he was saying it because that’s the thing you’re supposed to say after a drunken night of stupid choices. So he said something that he hoped would cover everything.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I screwed up.”
She slammed the door in his face. He knocked, called out her name. She ignored him.
Wes waited a day, hoping she would calm down, and tried to call her. Straight to voicemail. He sent a long-winded apology over eight text messages, and she left every one of them on Delivered. Never read them.