“There’s something about getting something right,” she said. “It’s addictive. Food isn’t something you can perfect all the way. You can master your technique, know all of the different ways of preparing something, learn every single dish but, at the end of the day, every time is going to be a little bit different. The ingredients will be just a little bit different than they were the last time because you’ve gotten them from a different grower, or the crop has changed in some minuscule way. Bringing out the flavors of an ingredient isn’t the same each time you do it. That’s what I love. You just keep doing something, over and over again, to try and get it right, knowing that each time you’re starting with just a couple of bits of things that came from the ground or the ocean or the sky and you get to transform it into something else.”

I genuinely didn’t know what to say to that. Daisy hasn’t even been to culinary school yet—she’s saving up at the moment—but she thinks more about her craft and her work than 75 percent of the people I go to school with. It is … unbearably sexy. That level of dedication, of focus …

I want to go out with her again and have her turn that focus fully on me.

SEPTEMBER 18TH, 2016

I was wrong. I was so, so wrong.

I don’t know why I was so resistant to the idea this whole time, that I could be Atypical. I think, deep down, I didn’t even want to entertain the possibility, just in case it wasn’t true. I’d made my peace with that never happening. I didn’t want the old fantasy dangled in front of me.

Last night, I was back in high school. At first I thought I was just in the same old anxiety dream that’s been cropping up ever since freshman year and, I was horrified to discover, did not go away when I had my diploma in hand. It’s a standard dream: I’m late for class, I show up only to discover that we’re giving class presentations about a book I’ve never read and I’m first up. I get up in front of the class, no notes, no knowledge of the book and then, you know, horrible sweat-inducing nightmare. Nothing earth-shattering.