The Day I Lost My Taste for Love, and for You Chapter 03
I stared at the piece of pork in my bowl, so red it was leaking oil.
The pepper seeds stuck all over it looked like a swarm of tiny eyes laughing at how weak I was.
“Her effort?”
I repeated it quietly.
“That’s right.” Jessica pulled out a chair and sat down, shaking the bandaged back of her hand at me.
“I chopped so many ghost peppers my hands blistered from the burn.”
She propped her chin on her palm and looked at me like someone waiting to be thanked.
“Try it, Anna. If you can pick up even a trace of heat, then today wasn’t a waste.”
Oliver pulled out the chair beside hers and sat down.
He poured a glass of warm water and set it by my hand.
“If it’s really too hot, rinse it in the water first.”
He was thoughtful to an extraordinary degree.
So thoughtful that I could no longer tell whether he was protecting me or protecting Jessica’s pride.
I picked up my fork.
Both of them locked their eyes on my hand with the expectant look of people watching a lab rat.
I speared the piece of pork and did not put it in my mouth.
I turned my wrist instead and dropped it straight into the trash can beside the table.
There was a soft thud.
The living room went silent.
Jessica’s smile froze on her face, and her eyes widened by degrees.
“Anna, what’s that supposed to mean?”
Her voice shot up, raw with the anger of someone whose face has been slapped in public.
“I slaved over that meal for you, and even if you’re not grateful, you don’t have to throw it in the garbage right in front of me!”
Oliver’s expression darkened, too.
He stood up and came over to me, and there was a rare hardness in his voice.
“Anna, you’re out of line today.”
He looked at the pork in the trash.
“What the doctor said is one thing, and Jessica spending her whole afternoon on this is another. If you didn’t want it you could have said so. Why ruin what somebody made for you?”
I lifted my head and looked at him.
“I did say I wasn’t eating it. The two of you insisted.”
My voice stayed level, with no hysteria and no angry shaking in it.
“And wasn’t the cut on her hand from the cat?”
That stopped Oliver short, and his eyes flickered for half a second.
“That doesn’t change the fact that she wore herself out in the kitchen for you.”
Jessica’s eyes went red all at once.
She shoved her chair back so hard it screeched across the floor.
“Fine, I’ll mind my own business! I’m pathetic, is that what you want to hear?”
She untied her apron and threw it down on the chair.
“Oliver, I’m leaving. I wouldn’t want to be an eyesore to certain people.”
She grabbed her bag and headed for the door.
“Jessica!”
Oliver went after her at once and caught her arm in the entryway.
“Your hand is hurt and it’s raining out there. Where are you going?”
“Don’t worry about it! Nobody here appreciates me anyway!”
Jessica pulled against his grip, and there were tears in her voice now.
I sat at the table and watched them tug at each other, and it was like watching a bad soap opera.
Oliver got her back inside in the end and sat her down on the couch.
He turned to me with his brows knotted and his eyes full of disappointment.
“Anna, go apologize to Jessica.”
He did not raise his voice, but there was an order in it that left no room for argument.
“She’s in this state because of you. There is no reason for the way you’re acting today.”
I looked at him.
At the man I had loved for five years.
We had survived a long-distance relationship all through college and had scraped together a down payment in this city side by side.
He had once ridden a rented bike for an hour in a hundred-degree heat to bring me a bowl of shaved ice from across town.
And now he was telling me to apologize to a woman who tortured me over and over again.
“No,” I heard myself say.
Oliver took a deep breath, visibly forcing his own temper down.
“Anna, you never used to be this impossible.”
He came and stood over me, looking down.
“You’re sick and everyone is making allowances for you. That doesn’t give you a license to hurt your friends.”
“Friends?”
I finally laughed, though the laugh tasted bitter even to me.
“Would a friend pour grain alcohol into my water glass after finding out I’d lost my sense of taste?”
“Would a friend feed me live maggot cheese on my birthday?”
Oliver frowned.
“Those were jokes. Jessica’s intentions were good…”
“Do you really not know what her intentions are?” I cut him off.
Oliver went still.
He opened his mouth as if to argue, and nothing came out.
Jessica suddenly covered her face on the couch and began to sob.
“Oliver, stop, please. It’s all my fault. I should never have walked into your lives.”
She cried and watched him sideways through her fingers to see how he was taking it.
Oliver’s shoulders dropped.
He shut his eyes and rubbed the space between his brows.
“Forget it.”
When he opened his eyes again, his voice had gone back to that exhausted gentleness that made it hard to breathe.
“Anna, you’ve had too much today. Go rest in the bedroom. I’ll drive Jessica home.”
He did not wait for my answer, and he turned to get his keys from the hook by the door.
“Let’s go, Jessica.”
The door closed.
The apartment fell into a dead silence again.
The smell of that ghost pepper chili was still rampaging through the air.
I got up and went into the kitchen.
I poured the whole pot down the drain, meat and broth and all.
Then I turned the faucet on.
I watched the rushing water carry every trace of that glaring red away.
Nothing was left behind.
It was exactly like those five years.