She laughed at me as I fumbled with the Chinese food container. I'd never eaten any food like it before. The smell had always turned me off, and this time the first few bites were hard to get used to. I'm a cheeseburger and pizza kind of person and breaking ruts makes me nervous. She sat there eating her food and I felt like a fool. Around her my hands are always too big and clumsy, and my sentences truncated and feeble. She smiles and tells me to complete my sentences, but her shinning facial features removes all hope of carrying out even one single word.

The food was good. It was chicken and broccoli, mixed with pale slices of bamboo shoots, and dusty orange carrot slivers. It was boiled just right so the sauce was thin and goopy like brown gravy, but it tasted much better. The feeling of being around her mixed with the flavor of the food. I could be eating boiled raw hide and it would absolutely be better than the alternative. Weekends are cold and desolate. For now, to spend it with her changes everything.

She tore open the plastic wrapper on the Fortune Cookie with great fluidity and then broke the small piece of food in two. She didn't much like her fortune, so I gave mine a try. My fingers at last found a way to tear the plastic apart, and I too snapped the cookie in half. My fortune read, "You will be fortunate in everything you put your hands to." I decided that was all well and good, but I'd just keep my hands to myself just in case. I wish it was that easy.