“Are you, like… okay? Because you seem kind of… I don’t know. Distracted, maybe?”
“I’m fine,” I mumble. “Sorry. Long day.”
“No, yeah, you mentioned that.” He puts his fork down. “It’s just, you keep looking at the door.”
“Every time it opens. You’ve looked over there, like, twelve times since we sat down.”
I force myself to look directly at him. “Sorry. Bad habit. Reporter brain. Always scanning the room, heh.”
He nods, but the grin has dimmed a few watts. He picks his fork back up and pokes at a piece of chicken. “This is nice, though,” he says after a beat. “Right? Like, this is good?”
“Yeah,” I say. “This is nice.”
Against all odds, we make it through the rest of his green curry and my untouched pad thai. He tells me about his mom in Connecticut and his sister’s new baby and a ca
