The Seven Year Slip

“And you’ll follow?”
“To the moon and back,” he replied,

I didn’t need to be fixed. I just needed . . . to be reminded that I was human.
And dinner with a stranger who didn’t look at me like I was broken had been a surprisingly good start.

“You are who you are, and you like what you like,” he replied, and there was no sarcasm in his voice. “You are you, and that’s a lovely person to be.”

“Whatever you say, Lemon.”
I shot him a glare. “It’s Clementine.”
“Clllllllemontine.”
“I suddenly hate you.”

My aunt used to say, if you don’t fit in, fool everyone until you do.

I didn’t even know what love was supposed to feel like

I haven’t? Okay, okay—picture it: long family-style tables. The walls are red. Everything is comfy, the leather on the chairs broken in. I’d get a local artist to design the chandeliers, hire all my favorite people, put your art on the walls,” he added with a wink. “It’ll be a place where you feel a bit at home, you know?”

He leaned over the table and pressed his lips to mine. Then we broke away—just for a moment, a sharp intake of breath—and crushed our mouths together again. I curled my fingers around the front of his dress shirt and tugged at his already loose tie. He cupped my face with his hands, and drank me in. I melted into him faster than ice cream on a hot sidewalk. He kissed like he wanted to savor me.

It is rarely the food that truly makes a meal, but the people we share it with. A family spaghetti recipe passed down from your grandma. The smell of dumplings clinging to a sweater you haven’t washed in years. A cardboard pizza across a yellow table. A friend, lost in a memory, but alive in the taste of a half-burnt brownie.
Love in a lemon pie.

The Emily Dickinson gave me the worst hangover.”