When a food’s tied to a person.

We didn’t have the same friends for the most part, until one afternoon you and I were both invited to go out to eat, separate parts of a larger mixture of maybe four different but now overlapping friend groups. It was my first time having Thai food. We sat at the same end of the table — I carefully orchestrated my movements to be next to someone I knew and at the same time near enough to you — and folded my legs underneath me. You professed your love of pad Thai and I had the chicken skewers in peanut sauce. Someone convinced me to try the rosé.

The next time we got food together it was you and me and two friends and I ordered the mango salmon (or, more accurately, you re-ordered for me because I’d stumbled over my words the first time) and though it was delicious I wasn’t feeling well and had to take the rest of it home. You didn’t mind. We ate a few more times together but those dishes don’t hold the same weight.

I tried making the peanut sauce at home one time and it came out okay.

A while later a new Thai restaurant opened up near me and a friend invited me to go try it, and I skipped over the chicken options and went for the pad see ew. It was great but I couldn’t help thinking about the chicken skewers, imagining the peanut sauce the whole time, though I’d convinced myself months ago that I was over it. It was just the food.

The same friend hosted a birthday party at a different Thai restaurant. Of course I went. We finally sat down to eat and I looked through the menu and realized I was in the mood for something sweet, and almost without thinking about it I ordered a chicken dish with peanut sauce. The tastes nearly reminded me of sitting across from you that time but then it was out of my mind in the excitement of the night. The portion was bigger than expected and I ate it all.

And that food and my friends were all I thought about for the remainder of the evening.

— Lora