This Is My Brain in Love: List 3

He lifts his hand up in an abortive gesture, as if he’s not sure what to do with his appendages, either, and ends up sticking it in his pocket.

Will and I tag team our social media sites—I respond to our Twitter mentions, and he curates our Instagram account for the college students and our Facebook page for people over forty.

“What we were talking about before, the fear that whatever you create is going to be crap, or just derivative of everything that’s come before it. When I was writing my first feature for the Spartan, I kept on worrying that my angle wasn’t unique. So our adviser told me about this Yale professor, Harold Bloom, who essentially said outright that there’s no such thing as an original poem. That you can’t escape the influence from all the art that’s come before you.”

Everything is immaculate, from the cream-colored sofas with artfully casual pillows to the sparkling kitchen with stainless steel appliances.

The only problem with this arrangement is that the Domenicis’ sectional is huge—pretty much the opposite of intimate, and there’s an entire stationary seat in between the two sections that recline.

It was meant to show you how sometimes you can be attracted to the wrong people for the wrong reasons. So...maybe not an auspicious movie for a non-date?

She pulls one of my grandma Domenici's afghans over her knees.

“Oh my God!” Jocelyn simpers. “I love it so much when that happens! Microaggressions are the best."

He explains that when they first gave test screenings of the movie, it did really well, except that everyone wanted a more satisfying resolution to the romance, so they reshot a reconciliation scene at the airport between the producer, Jane, and the pretty-boy anchor, Tom.

“Yes, please,” he says fervently, and he leans in.

All of a sudden I’m ravenous for Will, and this is just with a chaste touch of the lips that would almost certainly still qualify a movie for a PG rating by the Motion Picture Association of America.

There’s a crack in the facade of reserve that’s kept me back, held me on the sidelines all my life.

It takes just a fraction of a second for a vise to close around my chest, and I’m breathless for an entirely different reason.

Mr. Wu raps on the door again, gesticulating wildly, and Jocelyn sends me a pained look before pulling at the door handle.

Everyone knows that my dad is a blusterer, so my family’s learned to just let his ramblings roll off our backs, and his fits of loud outrage tend to burn out quickly.

After my dad disappears into the rear entrance of the restaurant I sit for a couple more seconds, bracing myself for the reckoning.

My poor mom, who probably just sat down on the couch to watch one of her beloved Law & Order episodes, eyes me with a pinched expression when I walk in before turning back to my father, who is standing in the middle of the room gesticulating wildly as he enumerates my transgressions in Mandarin.

None of it makes it any easier to hear the mixture of contempt and panicked scandal in my mom’s voice.

I like to think it’s a sign of maturity, but really it’s a sign of not giving a flying fig about their arbitrary restrictions.

Fake news expands to fill the space allotted to it.

If any of my friends are going to sympathize, it’s the guy whose case of unrequited love is essentially a chronic condition.

I get the message, which sits like a chunk of sour pineapple in my gullet.

Alan looks panicky when I try to hand over the bag, but eventually he takes it and stuffs it into the book bag that’s in the booth strewn with his homework.

So I resort to the old-fashioned way to communicate. Snail mail. It makes me feel like I’m in a Victorian novel, engaging in an epistolary relationship with Will.

I’ll give it to Priya, because I don’t want to get Alan in trouble for aiding and abetting if my parents catch him with it.

He grins, then scuttles off.

The card is one of those over-the-top laser-cut three-dimensional cards that’s basically a work of art. I never really understood why someone would want to pay the price of a matinee movie ticket for what is, for most people, really just a label for a gift, but now I get it.

When you package something like that, it’s basically fanfare for your words. It’s a neon sign flashing: HEY, LOOK, HERE’S AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE.

I open the front flap, with its intricate cutout of a garden superimposed on a lattice background.

I open the front flap, with its intricate cutout of a garden superimposed on a lattice background.

There’s no sentimental platitude, no trying-too-hard-to-be-funny joke.

“If your work looks professional, teachers take it more seriously and they’re more likely to give you extra points for all the intangibles, especially for something as subjective as English.”

He never explicitly said that he didn’t want me to see Will anymore, but it was certainly implicit.

The convenience fee should more than cover a modest salary, plus it’s a built-in incentive—the more online orders he drums up, the more he makes.

The business school jargon that I whispered to myself yesterday evening in front of the mirror in the bathroom sounds stilted, so obviously trying too hard.

The business school jargon that I whispered to myself yesterday evening in front of the mirror in the bathroom sounds stilted, so obviously trying too hard.

My mom, always so stoic, didn’t make any noise at all while I was laying out my plan, just listened and waited with that half smile that she plasters on whenever she is at the restaurant, no matter how harried or tired she is.

My dad eyes me a little more shrewdly than I’d like, and then his eyes flit over to Will.

“Are you sure about this, Will? Isn’t this kind of extortion?”

“It’s not coercion if I volunteer to do it,” he says slowly.