Today, I got to pick the restau­rant. I chose one that’s always bustling on the week­ends, even when there isn’t a wed­ding recep­tion being host­ed, named after the Yangtze River in China. There was a mix­ture of lan­guage in the air, due to the fact that I was sur­round­ed by large Chinese fam­i­lies, catch­ing up on each oth­ers lives, and young Caucasian cou­ples, on their Friday night dates. The fam­i­lies were all famil­iar. I could relate to every young boy in them, try­ing to fin­ish his deep fried crab claw balls while con­cen­trat­ing on the game in his GameBoy. The cou­ples…

I thought about the time we walked around those long, ster­ile aisles that only you could take me to. There were small plants of basil next to a mis­cel­la­neous food item sam­ple stand, and it was my first time smelling the aro­ma of a live stalk. What a dras­tic dif­fer­ence it was from the basil I bought in a con­tain­er, or labelled as “FRESH” when they were ripped from the roots before trans­porta­tion.

“For some rea­son, I feel like steak”.

Someone from anoth­er cou­ple over­heard and could­n’t help laugh­ing.

“I know exact­ly what you mean”, the man jovial­ly said.

We looked for a steak­house after­ward. On the high­way, I asked for a sug­ges­tion. Your knowl­edge of the local restau­rants was always wider than mine. I gave rea­sons against your first two pro­pos­als, and you refused to con­tin­ue, frus­trat­ed. I thought about the time we tried to find a game we could both get into, and you reject­ed the first eight. How dif­fi­cult it was to not kick that Gamecube into the wall, and yet I did­n’t say a word, some­thing I could only con­trol because of how much I still cared at that point. I put my foot down to make a deci­sion (much bet­ter than the alter­na­tive), and we set off for a tep­pa­nya­ki steak­house.

It was a place that I saved for cel­e­bra­tions. We were seat­ed alone at a table usu­al­ly reserved for eight, along with a lone per­former, twirling his knife and flip­ping his flip­per. A cel­e­bra­tion of us we agreed.

And I decid­ed that those cou­ples around me weren’t so unfa­mil­iar either.