I’ve grown to hate the sight of tissues.

Conditioning, right? Associating a stimulus with a response. That drink you can’t stand the scent of because it reminds you of your tragic, vomit filled twenty-first birthday; the food that you still can’t get down because your mom practically force fed it to you every night for dinner. We all have a trigger. For me it’s tissues. They’re benign to most people, but to me they’re anything but.

I remember the first time I placed an order for a whole case, when the individual boxes started running up my monthly CVS bill way higher than it should have been. What did depressed people do before Amazon? One-click later twenty-four boxes were on their way to my house. I’m so fucked up that I was happy to see that cartoonishly large box waiting on my porch when I got home from work that day. Imagine that—a depressed person—someone who struggles to feel happy, feeling happy at the sight of thousands of little white cloths meant to soak up your illogical tears and snot.

Now I can’t stand the sight of them, bunched up all over my place like aloe coated animal droppings. Every trashcan in my house is full of silly amounts of them—crumpled up, barely wet, a symbol of my weakness. But my bedroom is the worst of it. That’s where the magic happens. The demons always shout a little louder in there, and always at night. It’s where I cry myself to sleep, and where I cry when I wake up. In between? Nightmares, usually, but sometimes I’m lucky and wake up with no memory.

This morning is different. The tissues are all over the place because my sister drove me home last night and all of my towels were apparently dirty, so tissues were my wiping up tool of choice after I was done vomiting all the wine I gulped last night. I don’t know what I was thinking. Carla was nice enough to drive me home and Peter followed us in my car. Even though I can be a pessimist about my issues, I’m really lucky to have Carla and Peter.

I hear my doorbell ring and I sit up in bed. My head is pounding, and I still feel a little nauseous, but I force myself out of bed and put on a pair of pants. I have no idea who could be here right now. Maybe it’s Carla, bringing me coffee. I vaguely remember her saying she had something to do in the area today. God, I hope that’s it, I could really use the caff. . . oh my God, it’s Brandon!

What the hell is he doing here? Jesus, he even looks good through a peephole, but I look like a hot mess. He knocks again. “Hold on!” I yell. I try to calculate how long it would take me to get dressed, throw on some make up and answer, but before my mental calculations are done he yells also.

“I’m know I’m dropping in. You can open the door, you always look beautiful.” I smile even though my head is pounding, and he’s completely taken me off guard. If anyone else said those words to me I’d think, yeah, right, I’ll be right back after I put myself together, but I believe Brandon when he says I’m beautiful, and I surprise myself by doing what he said and just opening the door. “See?” he says, “I was right. Always beautiful, even when you don’t think you are.”

“You’re a sweet liar,” I say, refusing to just accept a compliment at total face value. “But thanks. What are you doing here?”

“I know, this is rude as hell, but you never answered my texts last night and I thought something might be wrong.”

Oh shit. I put up my finger and tell him to hold on a minute. I run to my room and scoop my phone off the bed, where it’s sitting in the mess of my sheets. I open it and see that I missed four texts and a call from him. Fuck. I was passed out, drunk. I run back, phone in hand, and start apologizing. “I’m sorry, Brandon. I wasn’t ignoring you. I was. . .”

“Fucked up?

“Is it that obvious?” I ask.

“Well you smell like you’re a bottle of 80-proof vodka and even though I think you’re beautiful, an unkind stranger might think you look like. . .”

“Shit?”

“That’s not coming from me. That unkind stranger, though.”

“Right. He can be such a prick. Is that coffee?” I hadn’t noticed when I first answered the door, but now I see that he’s holding a tray with two large coffee cups from Starbucks in them, and once I hone in on it I can’t look anywhere else.

“It is, indeed. Do you like coffee?” He’s smiling sarcastically. He knows I’m a coffee fiend, and he has this evil grin on his face like he’s trying to tempt me. I nod. “If you invite me in I might let you have this other one. . . If you want.” I reach out and grab him by this shirt, playfully, and pull him over the threshold of my door.

“I got it black, because I didn’t know how you liked it.”

“That’s funny, you seemed to know exactly the other night.” Now it’s my turn to have the evil smile, but it doesn’t last because my head hurts so much that I can’t sustain the muscles in my face doing anything except relaxing and drooping. Brandon catches it and takes pity on me.

“Cream and sugar?” he asks. I nod. He grabs all the stuff and makes my coffee and carries it over to me on the couch, where I’m sitting with my fingers resting against my temple, wishing I was capable of making better decisions in my life. “Here. If it’s cold let me know I can heat it in the microwave.”

“It’s fine,” I say, taking a sip. It is cold, but he’s being a prince right now, and I don’t want to seem ungrateful. Plus, the taste of coffee is so amazing that temperature isn’t even a consideration. He could have taken the cup out of the freezer and I’d gladly lick my coffee ice pop to extract the caffeine.

“So, you want to talk about it?”

“What’s that? You dropping by unannounced? I’m fine with it.”

“Nope, not what I meant.” He looks at me seriously, so I decide to just tell him what’s going on so he doesn’t think I’m an alcoholic.

I take two gulps of coffee, one after the other, and then I tell him about my family, and what happened last night. He listens, as he always does, never interrupting, and giving me the kind of intense focus that lets me know that what I’m saying is the most important thing in his world while I’m speaking. “They sound. . . challenging.”

“You’re too nice.”

“I’m not, actually, I just don’t want to insult your parents. I have issues with my family, too, like everyone does, so I’m just listening.”

“It’s okay, you’ll never hear me defending or protecting them. Except my sister Carla, I’d fight you if you insulted her.”

“Then I never will.”

“Carla’s great. So is her husband, you guys would get along.”

“I’m sure we would. He sounds cool from what you described of him.”

“Well you don’t have to take my word for it, you’ll find out when you meet him on Sunday.”

Band-aid pulled! I look at him, waiting for him to make an expression or say something before I do. “Huh?”

“Oh, I forgot that part. My wonderful mom insisted that you come to dinner on Sunday and I accepted on your behalf. Granted, I was drunk, but I think it’s still valid. I hope you don’t have any plans.”

“I do now. Dinner with your family.” I wasn’t expecting him to be so easy about it, especially after what I just told him about the dynamic between me and my parents, but he seems almost excited. “Just one question, though. How’d they even know about me?”

“I told them. Right after I told them I’d broken up with my ex.”

“Oh,” he says. “How’d that one go over?”

“It’s hard to tell with my mom. Dad was dad, Carla’s excited to meet you, but she’s actually a normal human being. It’s only my mom you have to worry about.”

“I’m not worried, don’t worry. I don’t get rattled easily.” There’s his quiet confidence again. It’s so sexy. But sometimes I find it unbelievable, like, how could he be so secure in himself?

“That’s great. I wasn’t expecting you to be so amenable. My mom can make a simple dinner feel like an interview for a government job.”

“It’s okay, I do well on interviews. I always knock it out of the park. I make good impressions.”

His confidence puts me at ease about the whole thing, at least for the time being. I know on Sunday I’m going to be a nervous wreck, but I can’t cope with it the way I did last night. Getting hammered at a family dinner not only in front of my parents, but also in front of a guy I’m seeing would be the worst look ever. I have to keep my issues under control. Easier said than done.

I finish my coffee, savoring the very last drop at the bottom of the cup—the one that has all the leftover sugar and coffee grinds in it, and swallow hard. I start to feel better now that my energy is up. The edge is coming off my pounding headache, and the pain devolves into just a regular headache. I hold onto my stomach. It feels like a giant bowl of acid. Brandon picks up on it.

“We already established that I’m not the best cook in the world, and I don’t want to piss off your already disgruntled fire department guys any more, so how about I take you out to the diner for lunch?”

It’s the best invitation ever. It’s just what I need.

There’s a diner a few blocks away from my place that I mentioned to him last time he was here, and I also told him how in love with their pancakes I am. We get a booth even though it’s just the two of us and sit down. I put my head on the table. I feel like it’s about to explode. “Here,” he says, reaching into his pocket.

I lift my head up just enough to see the two Tylenol in his outstretched palm. “Is there anything you can’t do?” I ask.

“A few things, here and there, but I always come prepared.”

“But how could you have known that I’d be like this?”

“I didn’t know,” he says. “Not in the traditional sense of the word. I didn’t have any factual knowledge of where you were or what you were doing, but I’m pretty instinctual. I knew you wouldn’t just leave me hanging after the other night. There was only one other logical conclusion. That you were out drinking or fell asleep. I brought the Tylenol just in case.”

The second I met Brandon I knew that he was different. I knew before we even officially met, when our hands brushed against each other. I’m looking into his eyes as he talks, savoring that effect he has on me. His face and body draw me in, but it’s his eyes that make my body ignite.

“You know what we should do?”

“Order food,” he jokes. “Otherwise they’ll think we’re freeloaders.”

“Well, yeah, absolutely, but I meant in general?”

“What’s that?”

“We should play a game. I just thought of it.”

“Alright,” he says, not sure where this is headed. “What kind of game?”

“Like a getting-to-know-you kind. Instead of just letting things come up organically, maybe we could find out things about one another a little more. . . directly.”

“Okay. That sounds interesting.”

He sounds hesitant. I would be too if my crazy ass was suggesting a random game at a diner, but I’m going somewhere with this. It’s a fucked-up thought, but a part of me is hoping that Brandon isn’t as good as he appears, that he’s damaged like me, maybe even that he’s hiding things from me, too. I know it’s my guilt talking. It’s me who’s damaged. Me who’s been lying since our first conversation. Me who’s so messed up that I’m actually looking for flaws instead of enjoying a new relationship. But I can’t have these feelings of guilt every time I see him, and I also can’t tell him the truth, so in my mind the next best thing is hoping that maybe we can be on an equally messed up playing field.

“Here’s how it’ll work. It’s called ‘question or statement.’ We take turns, and we both have to do it. One of us will go first, and we can either have the other person ask us a direct question like ‘how old were you when you lost your virginity?’, or we can bite the bullet and just make a statement about ourselves that the other person doesn’t know. The only catch is that it has be something real—not like what our favorite color is. Something personal that we’d want to know about each other.”

“Interesting,” he says. “How do we decide who goes first?”

“Coin toss? Winner decides who goes first.”

“Sounds good to me.” I’m shocked that he even wants to do this. I was half expecting him to tell me to buzz off with my stupid game, but he doesn’t. He jumps in right away. I should have known that he would.

Brandon pulls out a quarter. “Call it.” He flips it in the air and I scream ‘heads’ before he catches it. Once he flips it over and pulls his hand away; it’s heads.

“You go,” I tell him. “Question or statement? Which do you want.”

“I think I’m going with a statement.”

“Okay.” I hold my breath in anticipation. I can’t imagine what he’s going to say, but it’s right about this time that I realize I don’t know much about Brandon. I know how he makes me feel, and right now that’s more than enough for me, but I want to know the man behind the sad gray eyes. The waitress walks over just as he’s about to open his mouth. “Hold on.” We order our food—he gets a cheeseburger deluxe and I get my beloved short stack of pancakes. I’m not sure if I’m looking more forward to his answer or my food, but we’ll just see what he has to say. “Are you ready?” he asks.

“Ready.”

He takes a noticeable breath before answering, and he breaks eye contact from me, which he’s almost never done so far. “My greatest fear is being a failure. Being ordinary. Just another guy who lived a normal life.”

I’m surprised that he jumps right in to something so personal, but it also makes me happy. “Oh, wow. I was thinking you were going to tell me the name of your ex and how long you dated for. This is way deeper.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” I tell him, reaching for his hand. “It wasn’t a criticism. The opposite.”

“It keeps me up at night. I mean, everyone’s afraid of failure on some level, but that’s not what I mean. I mean that the idea of not being the best version of myself keeps me up at night. I’m already thirty years old, and I have no real career. I haven’t done anything noteworthy. I worry that I never will.”

“It’s funny. Sometimes I want the opposite.”

“What’s that?” he asks.

“Sometimes I feel like I stand out too much. That I just want to be like everyone else. I feel like the black sheep of my family, the weird one of my friends. The girlfriend who wants different things than the guy I’m with. Sometimes I just want to be like everyone else around me.”

“Did you just use your turn? Cause I’m not going twice. I might start bawling right here at the table.”

I smile and so does he. “Well I never told you to go dark with it. You could have told me something good or happy that I didn’t know.”

“Eh, what fun is that?” The beauty of diners is their speed—it’s socially acceptable fast food. It hasn’t been five minutes, but our food is already coming out of the back, balanced ever so carefully on the arm of a seasoned waitress. She places our plates down in front of us and I take the biggest breath ever. I love the smell of breakfast food, and this diner has the best pancakes around. “Enjoy,” she says before leaving us to our weird conversation.

“Next time it’s your turn.”

“That’s only fair,” I say. “It was my idea, after all.”

“Are you going to go statement or question?”

“Not sure yet. Have to see what my mood is when it comes up.” I put my little getting to know you game aside and think of Sunday again. I really don’t want him to get ambushed by my mom. “Listen, if you don’t want to come for dinner I completely understand. I haven’t exactly made it sound inviting. I can get you out of it.”

“Don’t you dare. I want to meet your family. I’m not afraid.”

There’s his confidence again. I wonder how it’ll hold up against my mom. “Can I ask you why?”

“Why I’m not afraid?”

“No,” I answer. “Why you want to meet them? We are kind of. . . new. Usually meeting the family comes later. I mean, if my mom hadn’t pushed me on the dinner thing it probably would have been longer before you met them, right?”

“Maybe,” he says. “I’m weird like that, though, even though I don’t think it’s weird. I’d never want to be seeing someone seriously, for any length of time, and not meet their family. It’s so important to know where someone’s come from, for good or for bad.”

“Brandon, are you saying that we’re seriously seeing each other?” I know that we are. I’ve been serious about him since I met him, and I hope he feels the same. When I ask he puts his food down and looks at me intensely in the eyes—so intensely that it takes me by surprise and I stop eating.

“Here’s what’s gonna happen over the next two hours, Talia. Ready?” I nod. “You’re going to eat your pancakes because you love them so much. While you do that the Tylenol you took is going to kick in, and your headache is going to go totally away. When we’re done we’re going to take a short walk because it’s a nice day and we can work our food off. And then,” he pauses, his face turning up in to a grin. “And then, I’m going to take you back to your place, fuck you harder than you’ve ever been fucked before, and you’re going to pass out from a total lack of energy afterwards. When you wake up, you’ll feel better than you have in days. Sound like a plan?”

Oh. My. God.

I think I already feel my headache going away.