Best Friends Forever

“Actually? I think I have potential. Dinner was completely edible. In fact, are you hungry?”

His eyebrows go up. His blue eyes glitter.

“Am I hungry? Is that seriously a question?”

“Okay, okay,” I sigh as I heave myself off the couch. “I should not let this go to waste. This is my entire food budget for the rest of the month.”

“Oh, come on, Penny,” he scolds me gently. “You didn’t really, did you?”

I just shrug as I turn on the hot tap water, shaking the pasta underneath it to try to warm it up. He doesn’t really need me to admit it, and I don’t really need to say it out loud again.

“So… I guess he just forgot,” I say into the sink.

Clay brings over a couple of plates and sets them gently on the counter next to me. After a couple of minutes I can untangle some decent-sized portions of spaghetti noodles and wrangle them onto the plates. They slide around wetly as I spoon sauce over them.

“I don’t know if we should eat this,” I mumble uncertainly as I squint at the cold sauce and slightly-less-cold pasta.

“Oh, we are definitely eating this,” Clay asserts as he takes the plates from me and deposits them on the table. “Looks really delicious! I didn’t even realize you could cook like this!”

I want to giggle as he makes a big show of stabbing his fork right into the middle of the pile of rubbery pasta and twisting out a mouthful out of it. He stuffs it into his face and grins happily.

“Seriously delicious!” he mumbles over a mouthful of food. “Have some! I insist!”

Relieved, I sit across from him and manage to get a couple of noodles into my mouth. Once I adjust to the strange temperature, the texture isn’t terrible. The sauce is good, anyway. Those guys at Prego really know what they are doing.

“That jerk doesn’t realize what he’s missing!” Clay continues as he eats with gusto.

He was right, too, the wine isn’t as terrible as I thought it was. It’s really the perfect complement to icy, gluey pasta.

“And he was stoned!” I blurt out. “I mean, not like I care, but isn’t that rude? Like he stood me up and then I couldn’t even yell at him because he was too high to understand anything I was even saying.”

“That is unbelievable!” Clay scoffs. “Is that why he was late?”

“Who even knows? Maybe? But then he just said he was leaving, and ‘we knew it was coming.’ Just like that!”

Clay pauses in mid-chew. “Wait… Is that how you broke up? He just left?”

I shrug. It seems silly to admit that I didn’t even throw a fit or anything. I feel like such a wimp. I just let him walk on out the door like some shitty R&B song.

He sets his fork down gently on his plate and reaches his hand across the table to cover mine around my wine glass.

“Penny, you deserve a million times better. I can find Mike and ask him to—”

I laugh, not wanting to draw my fingers away.

“I already told you! I don’t want to put a hit out on him or anything!”

“Because I absolutely would! I absolutely would get Mike to do it!”

“I believe you!” I giggle, catching his fingers between my fingers.

“Nobody should ever make you feel that way,” he says, suddenly serious.

His lips twist slightly to the side, a pout that I’ve seen him reserve for puppies and basketball finals.

“I’m fine, Clay,” I assure him, squeezing his fingers between mine. “I really am.”

He squeezes my fingers back.