Page 50 of Engineering a Love Story

I don’t understand how he doesn’t feel grown. At times, it seems I’ve been an adult for years and years—decades since I lived in my father’s house.

But lying with Seth in the grass, I think too that I hadn’t really felt like an adult with Ash, not when our lives revolved so much around his family. I was more like another one of the Kelsey children. With a candle in my pancakes.

Still speaking of his immaturity, Seth tells me about the framed posters still waiting to be hung on the floor in the apartment he shares with Manish and Vitalik. “They’ve been there a while.” He plucks a blade of grass. “And I lost my sheets the other day. I took them to the laundromat on a Sunday morning and then this deal started falling apart, so I went to the office. When I got home that night, the laundromat was closed. I slept on my bare mattress. When I went to the laundromat the next morning, the sheets were gone.” He inhales. “I keep expecting to reach some point and then I’ll get my shit together, grow up, stop with the silly fuck-ups—my sheets, my power cord. Always something.”

A family sits near us on the green. We watch as their two small children, maybe twins, sit for short chunks of time but then inevitably rise to toddle around. We discuss their outfits, the tiny pink sandals and precarious sun hats. We envy the ease with which the little ones totter, fall, and stand again, all in a series of fluid motions.

Seth chuckles and looks back at the sky. “I’m still feeling compunctious,” he says, finding my hand and tapping it against the grass. “Telling you that stupid one-percent thing. But I will say this: if we have kids, we’ll never tell them they’re not measuring up. Or even that they’re exceptional. Though I’m sure they will be. That makes all your errors too fraught. And who doesn’t make errors?”

I turn my head, blades of grass moving against my ear. Seth doesn’t seem to have noticed what he’s said. That after telling me he’s in no position for a relationship, he’s just mentioned the possibility of our having children together. I wonder if this is his way of acknowledging a shift in his feelings—and that this is obviously a relationship we’re having, whatever we intended.

Part of me wants to leap up, ask him to clarify exactly what he’s talking about, and find out what he intends to do about it. But Seth is simply lying in the grass, his gaze on the sky, and the fingers of the hand not holding mine idly tapping his chest. And so I hang back, saying only, “I think using the word compunctious might be an error.”

“Agreed.”

***

When we get too itchy in the grass, we throw the remains of our lunch in a trashcan, find my car, and drive back to Cambridge. We’re searching for a parking spot when Seth asks if he can cook dinner for me that evening.

“You cook?” I throw him a glance as I scour the tight block around my apartment building for a space.

“I learned a little from my mother,” he says. “I can definitely roast a chicken.”

“We’ll need to go to the store.”

Seth says this is obvious. Once we’re finally parked, we walk to the market and he fills a shopping basket: chicken, olive oil, a baguette. He wants to know if we can buy wine here too.

“Not on Sunday,” I say.

“Why? Do you have some kind of religious hang-up I should know about?”

I explain that alcohol isn’t for sale in Massachusetts on Sundays. Seth says this place might be weirder than Singapore.

Back at my apartment, Seth rifles through cabinets, asking what kind of pan I have for the chicken. I lean against a counter. “I don’t really cook here, as you’ve probably guessed.”

With a questioning look, he lifts a salad bowl and the square bottom of a Tupperware container.

“I had all that stuff,” I say. “The dishes and the pans. There was even a punch bowl that doubled as a cake stand, I’m not even kidding. It didn’t make sense to bring all that here.”

Seth steps closer, still holding the Tupperware, and kisses my cheek. “I get it. I’m sorry.” He turns back to the kitchen. “But no roasting pan? No knife?”

I direct him to the drawer with the knives, but he’s unimpressed, lifting one that is small and blue. He continues to paw through cupboards. “You don’t have salt and pepper. I know you were freeing yourself from matrimonial bonds, but I can’t cook this chicken without salt and pepper.”

I laugh. “Sorry. I should have thought more when you said you wanted to cook here.”

“Is there a neighbor you can borrow from?”

I know only Hector. “But he’s not friendly. I feel weird going down there.”

“I’ll go.” Seth is already sliding into his sandals and heading toward the door. “Directly downstairs?”

I stretch out on the couch and pick up a section of the newspaper. Five minutes later, Seth returns with salt, pepper, and a bottle of white wine. Kicking off his sandals, he raises his spoils victoriously. “Hector and I are now good friends. I paid him twenty dollars for this shitty bottle of wine.” Seth unleashes an expansive laugh and comes toward me, hands full, deal closed. He bends to kiss me hard on the mouth. “You lie there. I’m going to bring you a glass of this bad wine and cook you dinner.” His breath is warm on my cheek. I tell him where to find the crystal wine glasses. “Well. These are something, at least.” He brings me one full of wine.

I recline and attempt to read an article that details the most recent election polls, which show the presidential race in a dead heat. The sound of Seth clanging and chopping reaches me from the kitchen. Before long, the apartment fills with the rich aroma of roasting chicken and I’m certain I’ve never smelled anything so wonderful. I definitely haven’t experienced anything like it in this apartment. It’s romantic. And sexy. Can simple domesticity be sexy? It never was before, and I’m struck by the idea that things could be different.

The dinner is delicious, and after, I try to return to my article, which has gone on to preview the first presidential debate scheduled to take place in Boston in a few weeks. It’s thought this might push public opinion toward Gore, as everyone expects he’ll wipe the floor with the bumbling, unprepared Bush. One can only hope.

But I can’t keep my mind on the article, not with Seth on my sofa, computer open in his lap. The bottoms of my feet press against his thigh, though he seems not to notice. After a bit, I sit up and lean to kiss his neck. I admire the intense concentration he gives his work, but I want that intensity shifted to me, because I know when it does, I’ll light up more than his computer screen.