He had me there. I became obsessed with cooking at age eight and never really looked back. I was never very good at focusing in school or extracurriculars that weren’t food based and I’ve never had an enormous bevy of friends. I’ve never really had a serious girlfriend either. I came out sophomore year and then endured about nine months of nonstop questions from my family about my love life. I think they worried that I’d been bottling up my sexuality and now that I was finally out, I was going to peel back the curtain on my exciting life of romance.

The reality is much less thrilling. It’s more that I didn’t think about anyone that way for a long time. While every girl in my class was going boy crazy in middle school, I was finding everyone my age completely ridiculous. That’s still mostly true, but I did just wake up one day when I was fourteen and realize that I thought girls were very, very cute. I still think that but: thinking girls my age are cute + thinking most people my age are ridiculous = my mother calling me “too picky” and saying “let me just introduce you to the Lowenthal girl, she’s an LGBT too” and me turning up the food processor as fast as it goes until I drown her out and ruin the pesto.

So, yeah. Commitment. Not so much.

“Rollerblading!” I blurted, finally. Aaron rolled his eyes but I could see a tiny smile on his face.

“What are you doing with your time anyway?” I asked.

“I’ve got stuff,” he said, shrugging.

“Oh yeah? What stuff?”

I wasn’t being combative—I really did want to know. Aaron’s been jumping from job to job since taking a leave from college. Mind reading and a packed classroom don’t mix, I guess. He’s been taking online classes, but that doesn’t really fix the “doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life” problem. HE’S allowed to flounder and go a nontraditional route because HE’S Atypical.

“I think I could be good at tech stuff,” he said.

“Tech stuff?”

“Yeah, like, computer science, IT, that kind of stuff.”

“Where is this coming from?” I asked. Aaron spent a lot of his time on his computer, but it’s 2016, everyone spends a lot of time on their computer. I just assumed he was watching YouTube and, I don’t know, getting into podcasts like everybody else. I didn’t realize he actually liked computers.

“I’ve just been learning coding and stuff,” he said and, shockingly, I saw some red rise in his cheeks. Aaron never gets embarrassed or shy or anything that remotely resembles seeming uncool, so watching him blush talking about something he cares about was sweet, sweet victory.