Page 100 of Lessons in Chemistry

“I’m used to them not being around. But you don’t need to listen to my family woes. Let’s forget my parents and enjoy the food. How’s the sushi?”

I ordered cucumber sushi. “It’s great. I’ve never had it before.”

“Not brave enough to try some with raw fish?”

I must pull a face because Auggie cracks up laughing.

“I’ll take that as a no. That’s fine. There’s plenty of other stuff to try. I recommend the salt-and-pepper chicken wings or the salt-and-pepper bean curd.” He does a chef’s kiss.

“Can you cook stuff like this?”

“I’ve not tried. Yet. I should.”

“When did you get into cooking?”

“At school. We had lessons, but we also had study time to fill. Some of that was meant to be homework time, but there were also clubs. I joined the cooking one.”

I eat some of the vegetable tempura, which is vegetables deep-fried in a light batter. It’s melt-in-your-mouth amazing. “But your parents don’t know how much you enjoy cooking?”

“Don’t know. Don’t care. Someone needs to take over the business, and I’m an only child, so—”

“Me too. I mean, I’m an only child. There’s no family business for me to take over.”

Auggie raises his bottle of beer and toasts the air. “That means we’ve got something in common.”

“We have at least two things in common.”

Auggie raises his eyebrow.

“Em.”

“Technically, three things. We’re both doing science degrees.”

“Neither of us likes high school movies all that much.”

He laughs. “But we’ll both watch them to make Emory happy. I prefer horror movies.”

“Ugh, really?”

“Yeah. I think it comes from sleeping in a dorm.”

“They let you watch horror movies at boarding school?”

Auggie snorts and pauses to eat some raw salmon sushi. “Nah. But we stayed awake after lights out and sat under blankets, with torches illuminating our faces, and told each other ghost stories. The idea was to scare the shit out of each other.”

I shudder. “That doesn’t sound like fun.”

“It was great.” His eyes have gone dewy. “Let’s order some more food. I want to try as many dishes as possible. Then I can plan a Japanese-style meal for you and Emory.”

“Don’t you mean Emory?”

“Um. No. I don’t think I did. Unless you don’t want me to cook for you.”

Do I? The Indian meal he cooked was the best I’ve ever tasted. But he’s Em’s boyfriend. I have to keep reminding myself of that, no matter how date-like this meal feels. We’re friends. Em’s boyfriends having a meal out together. That’s totally normal, right? And Auggie can cook for me, as I’m his friend. Just like the three of us watched movies together last night. And I fell asleep on Auggie. With my head in his lap.

“Casey?”

“I was staring into space, wasn’t I?”