Page 7 of The Situationship

“I’m a vegetarian too,” I said.

“Oh yeah?”

I held the guitar up. “Can you play this?”

He looked over. “I only play one song.”

“Are you good?”

“Not really.”

“I want to hear it,” I said.

“Okay.”

I sat at the butcher block island while he made us lunch. He had his back to me so I couldn’t see what he was putting together. There was a lot of sizzling. Then he took a grilled sandwich from the pan and cut it in half with a satisfying crunch and plated it and set it in front of me. I lifted the edge of the bread and looked inside. “This looks fucking amazing,” I said.

“Thanks. It’s a goat and Gouda grilled cheese with raspberry jam and honey.”

He poured me a glass of lemonade and poured himself a huge glass of milk. Then he picked up his sandwich and leaned against the kitchen counter to eat it.

I took a bite and had to close my eyes. It was incredible. It was probably the best thing I’d ever eaten and the man pulled it out of his ass in less than ten minutes. This was a love language to me.

“This is good,” I said, begrudgingly. “I’m impressed.”

He nodded at it. “I made the goat cheese and jam myself. I grew the berries. I baked the bread too. The honey’s from my bees.”

“You made all this stuff? Like, from scratch?”

He chewed and swallowed. “I like to cook. Bottle things. I try to stay busy.”

“You’re not busy enough?” I said. “You’ve got the petting zoo and the pizza thing and the pig side hustle. How busy do you need to be?”

“I get depressed if I don’t have stuff to do,” he said. “Especially in the off-season.”

I stopped to study him. “You feel depressed or actual depression?”

“Actual depression,” he said, taking a bite.

“Have you ever been to therapy?” I asked.

“Every week,” he said.

“Do you take meds?”

“Never missed one dose. Do you always ask such invasive questions?”

“Do you always answer them?”

“I do if I’m not ashamed of the answers,” he said, licking honey off his thumb.

Green flag, green flag, green flag.

I liked a man who was self-aware. I liked a lot of things about him, actually. Interesting.

“So what’s your life like here?” I asked, in between bites. “You just wake up at the crack of dawn and do farmer things?”

“Pretty much.”