Page 13 of Best Friend Burden

My mind was rambling to itself and I was absolutely speechless.

“I'm sorry!” I said as if those were the only two words I knew anymore.

“I know,” he said. “I heard you the first three dozen times.”

“What did you need?” he asked.

“It's not important,” I said. “It can wait. Do you need a minute? I could come back later.”

Before he could respond I realized what I'd said.

“Well, I don't mean a literal minute,” I said. “I didn't mean to insinuate that you... I mean, take all the time you need to...”

“It's fine,” he said in a tone that indicated it wasn't fine.

“I'm just—” I was about to tell him I was sorry again, but stopped myself. “I feel so bad. I didn't mean to. Can I make it up to—?”

I put my hands over my mouth in embarrassment.

“Not like that, I mean,” I said, but of course, I would have made it up to him like that if he'd asked me to.

"You can make it up to me by pretending it never happened,” he said, opening the door.

He was wearing clothes again so I could focus on regaining a tiny bit of composure.

“Okay,” I said.

He sighed. “Okay.”

There was a solid five seconds of silence and awkward staring before he finally said:

“So, you want me to try these tacos?”

“Yeah,” I said. “There's jackfruit, tofu, and veggie. Well, just tofu and veggie now. Unless you want to eat the jackfruit taco that was...”

“On my dick?”

I stopped myself from giggling at that. Maybe I'd call that taco the Jacking Jack Fruit after this as a private joke to myself.

“Yeah, you don't need to eat that one,” I said. “Unless you want to. Have you had jackfruit before? It's really good.”

“I'll try the other two.”

I waited patiently as he tried them, wishing I could see the look on his face. What if he told me they were good just to be kind and he thought they were disgusting?

“Okay, first one,” he said. “Straight veggie. It's... it's better than what we had the other night.”

I was hoping for a follow up, but it never came. “The other one, same deal. Definitely better than the competition.”

“But it's good on its own, right?” I asked.

“It's good for vegan, I guess,” he said.

“That's not what I asked.”

“You want the truth?” he asked.

“The brutal, honest truth,” I said. “If you've got it.”

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