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work.”
    “No, I didn’t mean it that way. ” Brandon smiled. “I meant, I like it, it feels like you.” He looked at me warmly.
    “What do you mean by that?”
    “Well, it’s homey and filled with signs of love,” he said as he walked the few steps towards my bookshelf and looked at the photos of me with my mom and friends. “It’s a reflection of who you are,” he said as he looked up at me. “You don’t seem to know it, but you have a way of making people feel comfortable around you and you give people a lot of love.” He smiled at me in a way that took my breath away.
    “ Thanks.” I was touched by his words and filled with a wave of emotions to hear the way he thought of me.
    “Is this your mom? ” Brandon asked.
    “Yeah,” I said as I saw the picture of my mom and me at my graduation commencement ceremony. I smiled at the memory of that day. Besides my move-in day freshman year, that was the only time my mom visited me on campus. She lived in Sacramento, which was a six to seven hour drive to Los Angeles, and she could not afford to take off that much time from work. I loved my mom and wished she could have visited more often so we could spend more time together. But I knew she had a lot of debt from the all the years of raising me as a single mom. So when she visited L.A. for my graduation, it meant a lot to me that she was there, and that picture reminded me of everything she has done for me in my life.
    “I don’t see any pictures of your dad.” Brandon’s comment pulled me from my thoughts and a wave of sadness hit me. He looked over at me and saw the pain in my eyes and immediately said, “I’m sorry, Emma. I didn’t mean to …”
    “It’s okay. You’re right, there isn’t a picture of my father.” I paused. “I actually don’t know what he looks like. He was never a part of my life.” I looked away from Brandon as tears filled my eyes. I walked over to the stove to remove the chicken out of the oven where it had been warming.
    “I’m sorry, Emma,” came Brandon’s voice from behind me and I felt h im gently put his arms around me from behind. I turned around to face him and I saw the concern in his warm, brown eyes. “I didn’t mean to … do you want to talk about?”
    “It’s okay, but I don’t really want to talk about it right now. Is that okay?” I was not ready to talk about the father that was never a part of my life. A man who I had hated for so long.
    “Of course,” he said softly as he leaned down and kissed my forehead. He pulled away and smiled at me—a smile that had a way of melting away my sadness. “Only happy thoughts tonight, okay?”
    “Deal.” I smiled, grateful that he hadn’t pushed me to tell him more about my father. I wasn’t ready to go through that emotional roller coaster. Not tonight.
    “Wow, I’m excited about this curry butter chicken thing. It smells amazing,” he said excitedly. “I think I’ve had it once at a restaurant, though I’m n ot sure it looked like that,” he said as he suspiciously eyed the dish.
    I frowned. “Oh? You have?” This was a simple home-style chicken recipe. I wouldn’t expect to see it served in a restaurant. “Did you like it?”
    “Yeah, it was pretty good. I’m impressed you know how to cook Indian food.”
    I looked at him in confusion. “What do you mean? How do you know I can cook Indian food?”
    “Because you just made it. The curry butter chicken.”
    I started laughing when I realized what Brandon must have meant. Brandon looked at me in confusion. “What did I say?”
    “I think you thought I was making butter chicken, which is an Indian dish. But I made a baked chicken with a mixture of honey, butter, and curry powder. It’s not an Indian dish at all,” I said between giggles.
    “Oh.” Brandon began to laugh too. “That makes more sense.”
    “How so?”
    “Well I was wondering why you’d make an Indian dish and grilled asparagus in the same meal.”
    We both