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onto the plate and topped the noodles with the vegetable and beef mixture.
    “Oh, hang on,” he said as he set the plate in front of me and stood up. “Forgot something.”

    He went to the fridge and came back a moment later carrying a bottle of soy sauce.
    “Oh, thanks,” I said stupidly, nearly dying from how awkward I felt. I hadn’t had dinner with a man in a very long time, much less a man who looked like Alex did. That was never.
    “I’m glad you agreed to eat with me,” he said as he piled food onto his own plate. “I hate eating by myself. I find it depressing.”
    I silently agreed with him despite the fact that I did it every day. I hesitantly scooped some of the food onto my fork and shoved it into my mouth.
    “Wow!” I said as I chewed. “This is amazing!” He chuckled as he took his own bite. “Glad you like it.”
    “Where did you learn to cook like this?”
    He finished swallowing. “I studied in England for a few years and one of my roommates was from Thailand.
    His mother owned a restaurant and he had worked in it pretty much all his life. So, he taught me.”
    “England?” I questioned after swallowing another amazing bite. “You’ve done a lot of traveling it sounds like.”
    He wiped the corner of his mouth with his napkin. “I haven’t been back in the states for more than a month since I was eighteen. I’m twenty-three now.”
    “Where were you studying in England?” I asked, realizing there was a lot more to his man than I had first realized.
    “Oxford,” he said softly before taking a long drink of water.

    “Oxford?” I repeated and couldn’t help but feel totally insignificant. I still had yet to attend any form of college.
    “Ya,” he said, looking slightly embarrassed. “I somehow managed to get an international business degree.
    Pretty boring sounding, right?” he said with a chuckle. “It’s kind of a miracle that I actually did get the degree. I kind of like to wander.”
    “Sounds like it,” I said.
    There was a moment of silence as we both ate but it was comfortable and easy. That was a quality I liked in people. There didn’t need to be constant chatter and mindless talk. Sometimes it’s nice to just sit in silence.
    We each finished our food and sat back in our chairs, feeling stuffed to the limit.
    “So what about you?” he asked. “Are you from Bellingham or something?”
    “No,” I said feeling instantly uncomfortable. Talking about my past wasn’t exactly easy for me. “I grew up in this really small town called Ucon, in Idaho.”
    “Wow, not what I would have guessed. So what happened?”
    I was taken aback by how quickly he seemed to have guessed there was something that had in fact happened.
    “Let’s just say it was time to leave home or both me and my parents were going to regret things that were about to happen.”
    I hadn’t meant for the words to come out that way and suddenly wished I had given a more tactful explanation.
    “You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to,” he said quietly.

    “Thanks,” I whispered as I looked at my hands in my lap. There was a moment of silence again but this time it wasn’t quite so comfortable.
    A thought occurred to me and I looked up to his face.
    “So now that you’re here and have this house left to you, are you planning to stay or go back to Africa?”
    “I think I’m going to stay around here for a while. We were about done in Kenya anyway and by the time I could get back it’d be over. I had been trying to decide what to do when it was over. So, ya, I think I’ll stay around for a while.
    I like Washington.”
    I felt weird asking the next question but it was important. “I can find somewhere else to live now if you’d like. This is probably weird for you moving back and finding someone living in your house.”
    “No!” he sounded almost alarmed. “Not at all.
    Please, stay as long as you want. Like I said, there was a pretty good chunk of money left in a