After Afterall

10

"What are you doing?" Derek asks.

"I'm making eggs."

He's quiet for a second and then, "You're cooking." He sounds skeptical.

"I'm not cooking, I'm making eggs."

"If you don't realize they're one in the same, I beg you to walk away from the stove right now."

I turn on the burner and place a frying pan on top. "I'm hungry."

"Order food."

"I'm ordering too much take out. It's embarrassing. The pizza boy knows my order. The other day when he dropped off my pizza he said, 'I'll see you in three days,' because he knows I order pizza every three days."

Derek laughs. "Order something else then."

"The only delivery I can get is pizza or Chinese and I hate Chinese."

"Your life is sad."

"Hey, not all of us have a five-star chef ready to wait on us hand and foot."

"True," he says. "I could send him to your house. He'd be happy to make you anything you want. Oh, or I can make delivery places deliver to your house. I'm the President; it's my job."

I scramble the eggs up a little bit more and dump them into the pan. "I think the last thing you should be doing is worrying about the places that deliver to my house. Plus I'm fine. I have eggs."

He sighs. "Eggs do not make a good dinner."

"I'm making toast, too." I glance over at the toaster and see smoke billowing out of it. "Shit!"

I hear Derek laugh right before I drop the phone. I unplug the toaster and pull out two very burnt pieces of toast. I might suck at cooking, but I've never burnt toast so badly before. I throw them into the garbage right before I pick my phone back up. "Soooo, no toast then?"

"I'll eat a banana or something."

"Let me call delivery places."

"No." I flip the eggs and they go all over the pan in a runny, congealed mess.

I hear Derek typing on his computer. "Then let me take you to dinner."

"Definitely not."

He laughs. "Let me bring dinner to you."

My doorbell rings. "Oh, look at that, my eggs are done. Bye!"

"Wait—"

I hang up the phone and head towards the door. My phone rings in the other room, but I ignore it. My mother is standing on the other side of the door. "You don't have to ring the bell," I tell her as I step back, inviting her inside.

She removes her coat. "You're an adult. You don't just walk into an adult's house."

I could fight with her, but I don't. I take her coat and hang it up. I notice the bag she has in her hands. "I'm not being rude, but what are you doing here?"

My mom heads towards the kitchen and I follow. "Richard is working late and I realized the two of us haven't had alone dinner in a while." She stops at the threshold of the kitchen. "What did you burn?" she asks. She glances at the stove. "What are you currently burning?"

"Shit!" I push past her and take the eggs off the stove. I flip them to see the nearly black side of the eggs. I drop them into the garbage with the toast and put the pan in the sink. I turn towards my mom. "So, what's for dinner?"

We sit down to an Italian feast. My mom picked up no less than five meals from our favorite Italian restaurant and I've taken a little bit of everything: eggplant parmesan, manicotti, stuffed shells, lasagna, and zuppa di pesce. I dip some bread into my soup and as soon as I put it in my mouth, my mom asks, "So tell me about your life lately."