Eternal Adoration [ON PAUSE]

3. Food Comas

SERAPHINA

I've heard of food comas, but I've never experienced one before.

Not until now.

"You good?" Aristide asks me from the kitchen, where he's washing the dishes like a dutiful housewife, what looks like slight concern laced in his features.

"Huh-huh." I nod from my position on the couch. "I think I've fallen in love."

He grunts, then goes back to scrubbing at the plates with much more vigor than necessary. I almost tell him that the plates don't necessitate that much anger, but I think better of it when I notice the thickness of his forearms.

"Pasta is life, man."

He grunts or grumbles or something, but I know that is his sound of acknowledgment. He agrees with me, pasta is indeed life.

"You know it's my birthday today?" I blurt out randomly after a few minutes of only the sound of the soapy sponge against ceramic filling the space between us.

The scrubbing stops and he goes silent for a moment, then resumes without turning to look at me. "Yeah?"

"Yup. Nineteen on the nineteenth," I joke, the pasta making me delirious.

I knew I shouldn't have accepted when he pushed his plate at me after I scarfed down my portion. But no one has ever given me their food before, so I couldn't reject it.

Aristide doesn't wish me a happy birthday or even smile at me for the huge accomplishment, but instead, he rinses the plates and finally asks me questions I've been expecting since I walked inside his apartment.

"Why were you in the alleyway?"

He doesn't add on your birthday, but I can hear it in his question. He's probably wondering why the hell I wasn't home celebrating with my family or at least out with friends like a normal teenager on my birthday.

"I was going home from work," is all I tell him, watching as he dries the plates meticulously. He does everything meticulously. From grating cheese to cleaning water off dishes. The man is a perfectionist. "A girl's gotta make her dough, you know?"

He doesn't say anything. No word, no smile, no grunt. Even his silence is meticulous.

"The . . . body," I start, clearing my throat. "It was right in front of my door."

"Your door?" He sets the plates in the cabinet where I see lines of dishware, all in their respective places, all white and straight out of those home magazines.

"Yeah, my apartment is in that alley. Which reminds me," I sit up a bit and he turns around, leaning on the counter and crossing his arms, his eyes back on me, "I hope it will be removed before I have to go back."

It's sick to talk about a dead body in that way, but desensitization is real. When you've seen revolting stuff over and over, at some point, it gets less revolting. Still sick and shocking, but less revolting. Easier to talk about, and easier to move past.

"It's already taken care of," he tells me, dark eyes observing me as I casually ask him to remove a dead body from my front door.

Have I said that I'm messed up? Because I am.

"Where's your family?" he asks me another question that should have probably been asked earlier.

"Don't have one," I respond as sweetly as I can when on the inside, something hard pounds against my chest.

A reflective pause, then, "Everybody's got a family."

"Not me."

He pushes himself off the counter and takes a few steps toward where I sit in the living room. "Fine, no family. Then who gave birth to you?"