Nothing Less

I smell onion as I use my teeth to pull the food from the spoon. I chew the soggy bite in my mouth, and the taste is good, despite the texture.

“This is just onion soup, nothing too special. Do you like it?” Nora’s voice sounds even better with my eyes closed.

I nod and open my mouth for more. I keep my eyes closed, and she feeds me another bite. I don’t think about the other table near us. I don’t even consider that the server could come back at any moment. Right now, all I can focus on is Nora’s ability to make eating onion soup sexy. I swear, she could touch a tree and I would find it appealing.

Seconds pass, minutes maybe, without interruption. “Have you traveled anywhere, Landon?”

I shake my head and open my eyes. “I went to Florida once when I was younger. My aunt Reese and her husband took me to Disney World. I got food poisoning on the second day, though, so I was sick the entire time. I ended up watching Disney movies from my bed in the hotel.”

My aunt Reese felt so bad for me, she even brought gifts from the gift shop and decorated my room. On the nightstands were two Mickey Mouse stuffed animals, and the table was covered in a beach towel with Cinderella’s castle printed on it.

“That’s awful.” Nora’s sitting so much closer than I remembered her doing before I closed my eyes. Her elbows are on the table, and she’s leaning forward enough that I wouldn’t even have to lean over to touch her face.

She’s so beautiful.

“If you could go anywhere, where would you go?”

Just before I answer, Irene comes back to our table and clears the plates in front of us. “Can I get you anything else? Would you like to see the dessert menu?”

“I’ll have an espresso,” Nora says. “Do you want one?”

“Sure?”

Irene smiles at me. “Two espressos. Got it.”

“It’s a thing people do in Europe. They sometimes have coffee after their meal,” Nora tells me.

“I really like how smart you are.”

Nora smiles at me from across the table. She leans back, distancing herself from me. “I really like how smart you are, too.”

“I couldn’t read the menu.” I laugh, reminding her.

She lowers her eyes, keeping them on mine. “You know a lot of things that I don’t know. You’re a good student and have read ten times more books than I have. Just because you can’t read a fancy menu or haven’t traveled the world doesn’t mean you aren’t smart.”

I hadn’t expected the conversation to take such a serious turn, but I notice that with those last words Nora seems upset. Her lips are pursed, and her brows are crumpled together.

“Did I say something?” I ask.

“No.”

I look up at the basket of leaves, sort of hoping it will fall on my head so this conversation will end.

“Well, yes. You do this thing where you put yourself down all the time. I don’t even know if you notice that you do it, but every time I compliment you, you try to find holes in it. Who told you that you weren’t good enough? That’s what I want to know.” She lowers her voice. “So I can have a nice long talk with them.”

Irene drops off our espressos, along with the bill, which Nora and I reach for at the same time.

“Let me.” I half expect her to fight me over it. She surprises me when she doesn’t.

As we drink our coffee in near silence, I think about how nobody has ever said to me what she just did. Not that I can remember. I’m not the most confident guy in the world by any means, but