Clay and I had been seeing each other for a few months when I noticed I’d put on a few pounds and I knew exactly who was to blame for it. When I was younger, I’d been a chunky kid. Classmates teased me by calling me “Fatty Patty” or “Holt the Hulk.” I didn’t manage to shed that extra poundage until high school when hormones kicked in and my metabolism went through the roof. And I’d managed to keep my weight down in my adult years by not eating like a mad man and working out. But now that Clayton Teal had come into my life with his delicious cakes and other assorted foodstuffs, I was porking up again. The average person wouldn’t have noticed I’d put on a few pounds, but I noticed. Having dinner with Clay a few times a week was wrecking my diet. Before I’d started seeing him regularly, I could come home from work and have a bowl of cereal or a sandwich for dinner and call it a meal. But dinner with Clay was a full-blown affair. When we weren’t eating out, he’d make dinner for us. And he couldn’t just make something light like a salad with a grilled chicken breast. No, he had to serve garlic mashed potatoes with that chicken accompanied by a green bean casserole and a side of biscuits. One would think eating this way would make Clay himself a fat man, but he wasn’t. Somehow he managed to keep his own weight down. When I asked him about this, he admitted that he didn’t eat much of the food he cooked, something I hadn’t really noticed until he’d brought it to my attention. While Clay was shoveling hefty helpings of chicken and potatoes onto my plate, his own held much smaller portions. And, before I came along, he told me that if he baked a cake, he usually took it in to work for his coworkers to enjoy.

“I like cooking for other people,” he said, “but if I ate all the food I cooked, I’d be three hundred pounds.”

“Oh, so you’re trying to make me three hundred pounds instead, right?” I asked.

“You could stand to eat a little more, Patrick. Hell, you’re, what, six feet tall?”

I had to explain to Clay that I’d been a fat child and I worked hard to keep my weight down as an adult.

“So you’re trying to tell me you’re still that little fat boy inside, right?”

“Exactly, so stop trying to turn that little fat boy into a big fat adult.”

“I’m not trying to make you fat, Patrick. No one’s force-feeding you. You can say no and push back from the table any time you want to.”

“But I can’t! Don’t you see that? Your food’s too good to refuse.”

“And that’s my fault?”

“Yes!” I blurted out even though I knew my response was totally ridiculous.

Clay laughed. “You crack me up, Patrick.”

“I’m glad you can laugh at my pain.”

Clay rolled his eyes at that. “Do you want me to stop cooking for you?”

I shuddered at the thought of not being on the receiving end of Clay’s delicious meals. No more cakes, cookies, and casseroles from him would surely make me crazy. I didn’t want him to stop cooking entirely. I didn’t even want him to stop making the foods he knew I loved. I just needed him to stop making them so frequently.

“No, I don’t want you to stop cooking for me,” I said. “I just want you to ease up on the cakes and biscuits and mac and cheese.”

“All of the things you love?”

“Yes.”

“And what should I cook instead of cakes, biscuits, and mac and cheese? Kale, quinoa, and alfalfa sprouts?”

Of course Clay would pick three of the worst food items known to man to suggest as substitutes. “Well,” I told him, “let’s not go crazy here.”