It’s not that I’m an antisocial person, it’s just that I’d much rather spend my time laser-focused on mastering a brunoise or getting the perfect rise on dinner rolls than trading stories with a bunch of people I’m squeezed into a kitchen with day after day. I meant it when I told the nurse that a high-paced restaurant environment was more relaxing than high school. I was never into the “school” part of school very much—too active and impatient to sit and focus on a lecture or a test—and I barely talked to the other students, too afraid of being made fun of for being chubby and gay or, even worse, somehow revealing my family’s secret. To my classmates’ credit, I never was teased for anything. I mostly wasn’t noticed at all.

Sometimes it feels like that in my family—I skate by unnoticed except on the rare days, like today, when my mom takes TOO much notice of my life choices.

“I just wish you would save some of that hyper-focused energy for things unrelated to food,” she’d said as I was cooking dinner tonight (last night? it’s 3 a.m., so whatever).

“But I like food,” I said, hoping that’d be enough to end this conversation. It wasn’t.

“You don’t only like food,” she said and I braced myself for a list. “You like rollerblading and Lord of the Rings and girls.”

“Oh my god, Mom, you’re making me sound like an eleven-year-old boy.” I had to speak up to be heard over the sizzle of the metric ton of wet spinach I’d just dumped into the hot pan in front of me, dampening the delicious smell of garlic already in the pan.

“There’s nothing wrong with your interests.” She sniffed.

“I know that.” I rolled my eyes. “But none of those things translate to a career. I’m not going to be a professional rollerblader or Silmarillion scholar or … well, I guess I could translate liking girls into a career…” I mumbled.

“Rose!” she gasped, trying her best to sound scandalized, even though my mom loves a saucy joke. “You’re spending too much time with those edgy restaurant people.”

“Mom, no one has ever called Milton edgy,” I said. Milton, despite the vaguely pretentious one-word name and gold lettering on the windows, was less Michelin-star and more “old man Boston supper club.” The menu hasn’t changed in a thousand years and we don’t get a lot of foodies in, so it isn’t exactly cutthroat. The fact that I’m allowed to do meal prep at all, as a teenager with no formal training, is proof of that.

“Inappropriate jokes aside,” she said, “when was the last time you went on a date?”