Do people remember the exact moment they fall in love?
I do. Yasmen brought me homemade chicken noodle soup when I was so sick it hurt to blink. Tasted like day-old dishwater. Not sure how you mess up chicken noodle soup, but my girl managed it. She watched me expectantly with those long-lashed doe eyes. God, I’ll never forget her expression when I spat that soup out, but it was so bad and I was too sick to even play it off.
For a second, Yasmen looked distressed, but then, despite feeling like someone dragged me over hot coals and needles, I laughed. Then she laughed and I wondered if this—finding someone you can laugh with when everything hurts—was the stuff happily ever afters were made of. Not the sugarcoated kisses and hot-air balloon rides and romantic walks under a full moon. My whole body throbbed with whatever plague infected me, but that day Yasmen made me happy. In the midst of a raging flu, she made me laugh.
And I knew.
I tipped over from wildly attracted and more-than-slightly pussy-whipped into the real thing. Into love. That moment is soldered into my memory. It’s one I’ll never forget.
And here, just months later, so is this one.
“What do you think?” Yasmen looks up from something she’s working on at the card table in the middle of the living/dining/kitchen zone of my dilapidated one-bedroom apartment, complete with impoverished student decor.
“Think about what?” I ask, sitting down in the raggedy chair across from her.
“Grits.”
“Baby, please don’t make grits again. I’m still recovering from the last time you tried.”
She glares at me without heat, the corners of her mouth fighting a grin. “Boy, not cook grits. Have you even been listening? I said what if you name your restaurant Grits?”
In an unprecedented move, I took a girl home for Christmas. She and my aunt Byrd hit it off right away, and by New Year’s Eve, the two of them were scheming about a restaurant I could open using my MBA and Aunt Byrd’s family recipes.
“Oh, yeah. Sure. Grits.” I scoot my chair closer and push back the fall of braids cascading over Yasmen’s shoulder. “Sounds good.”
“Sounds good?” She lays the back of her hand across my forehead. “Are you sick again? The Josiah Wade I know picks apart every suggestion and always has a yes, but on the ready.”