Missed Connections by Tan-ni Fan Read Free Book Online

about the new roller derby team with Lisa who was doing a thing on erosion and irrigation. He actually asked Miguel about his weekend. But when Rob volunteered that he'd also gone to the same street fair as Miguel, Jack shut down and moved away.
    So Rob was pretty sure it was just him.
    It wasn't a tragedy, because you don't go to senior thesis seminar to hook up, right? But Rob was used to being liked. He had a couple of friends from high school who still called him "Golden Boy" because people tended to give him unsolicited offers of employment and invitations to parties. So it was annoying not to be liked by someone he liked. And he likedJack a lot. He wanted Jack to like him.
     
    Entremets: A slight dip into confusion at a party
    At last he brought his hopefully final final draft to his sponsor. The last day of class was a party at Dr. Fleischmann's house. Rob brought a spinach and artichoke dip his mother had taught him to make. He was pretty smug about its snazzy presentation in a hollowed-out round of sourdough French and a pile of bread cubes and cut-up veggies to surround it. People liked it as usual. He was taken aback by Jack's reaction, though.
    Jack approached the spinach dip on the alert, as if he didn't believe such a yummy thing could be sitting out on the coffee table in his professor's living room without some kind of trap associated with it. Then he parked himself on the sofa. He began eating slowly, savoring every drawn-out nibble. He even closed his eyes and hummed on particularly pleasurable bites. Rob's mom's spinach and artichoke dip was very nice, but it was only dip.
    Lisa started laughing as she said almost the exact thing that Rob was thinking, "Rob's dip is pretty good, Jack, but I wouldn't expect to see you getting your rocks off on it."
    This seemed to cool Jack off immediately. He looked around and found Rob watching him bemusedly, and scowled. He stood up, crossed the room, and whispered fiercely to Rob, "If you think you're going to change things one iota with your mom's dip , you are mistaken," and then stalked out of the room to join a group of soon-to-be grads who were passionately lamenting Congress's latest cuts to EPA funding.
    Stacey asked Rob, "What was that?"
    Rob said, "I have not the slightest idea, but apparently he knows my mom."
     
    Commencement
    Graduation was a great relief. It was also terrifying. Because of the fifth year Rob had accumulated more debt than he had intended to. And because of those budget cuts that the students had been complaining about, he was worried about getting a job to pay the debt off. But he refused to be ruled by terror.
    His mother came up for graduation, and two of his stepfathers, most of the gaggle of half-siblings and stepsiblings, fictive cousins, as well as some old friends from high school. It was an amazing weekend. His mother said they must have accounted for a full tenth of all the motel rooms in town. Rob showed her by doing the math that she was off by a couple of orders of magnitude and she just beamed.
    She beamed a lot over the weekend. She sometimes would just stare at him and break out laughing. When Rob asked "What?" she shook her head and said, "Just—look at you. Graduating."
    "Did you ever doubt it?" he asked.
    "No, but it doesn't make it any less wonderful. I mean, I only graduated ten years ago, and now here you are, graduating on time."
    "Fifth year, mom," he said.
    "Yes, but you're only twenty-three. I was—"
    "Twenty-eight, not that much older, Mom."
    She shook her head again and smiled even wider. "We're both just babies."
    This conversation took place at a barbecue restaurant with long paper-covered tables. Farther down the table, Rob's stepsister Maria was having an animated chat with his half-sister Emily about her adventures scuba diving in the kelp forest. Emily was asking her how difficult it was to get certified.
    "No," Rob said. "We're kids. They're babies."
    Rob had meant to ask his mom if she knew a guy his age