Make Hummus

It had been hours and hours of soul-searching, but Dale was finally ready. Or as ready as he would ever be. He found Tina sitting up in bed, reading a book.

“Honey,” Dale said, standing in the doorway. “I’ve been thinking about what you said earlier.”

“Um, sorry,” Tina said, looking up from her novel. “What did I say?”

“Well, I said, ‘We should have a snack,’ and you replied, quietly, ‘I need to process that this is the sum of us,’” Dale said.

“Oh, no, honey, what I–” Tina began to say, but Dale held up his hand.

“Please,” he said. “This is heavy stuff, and I need to get it out. At first, I was angry. I was in denial. I thought, ‘No, this is not the sum of us! There’s more to us than a snack in the afternoon.’ But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve realized how right you were. When we were younger, we burned with a love for each other that honestly frightened me at times. And while we still love one another, there’s a definitive lack of passion. We’ve lost our sense of adventure. We don’t court danger like we once did. When we were younger, we promised each other that we wouldn’t let what happens to other couples happen to us. We said wouldn’t settle into bland careers. We said wouldn’t buy a house in the suburbs and spend our nights watching reality television shows. And yet here we are. I’m a project manager at an IT firm and you’re at administrator at the hospital. We moved outside of the city to this newly constructed house that looks like all the others, lured away from the excitement of downtown by the promise of a pool we rarely swim in. We get fired up about episodes of Chopped. We have, in short, grown into the boring old people our younger selves despised. But that ends today. Honey, I’ve quit my job. And I quit yours on your behalf, as well. I’ve put the house on the market and purchased two one-way tickets to Panama. What I’m saying is: for so long, we added up to little more than another pair of losers who gave up on their dreams. But our story isn’t over. Not by a long shot.”

“Honey,” Tina said. “What I said was, ‘I have to process some hummus.’ But I sort of stuttered a little.”

“Wait,” Dale said, “really?”

“Yeah,” Tina said. “Remember? Because then I went downstairs, took out some cans of chickpeas and our 13-cup food processor, and made some hummus?”

“Oh,” Dale said.

“You were joking about all that stuff, right?” Tina said.

“Yeah, of course,” Dale said, forcing a laugh. “But just for clarification, when an airline says tickets are non-refundable, do they, like, really mean that?”