medium well.

You liked your steak medium-well, a minor thing that I always secretly considered a major flaw. I remember that time, at my graduation dinner, where we both ordered the filet - my parents were paying - and you ordered it like you always do. The chef joked that you had to leave for asking for a filet mignon cooked that way, and I, honestly, was a little embarrassed. You were always "medium-well, pass the A-1," while I was content to eat my red meat solo, the steak's juices better than any sort of thing you can buy in a bottle. When meat is burnt, it all tastes the same to me. You always acted like I was gross, I was nasty for putting such a bloody-looking thing in my mouth, and I didn't argue back much (unusual for me), because I didn't want to let on how unsophisticated I thought your preferences were.

Do you remember our seven-year anniversary, the one where we actually dressed up and had a nice dinner for a change? I ordered some sort of chicken thing, and you had steak. Medium-well, please. They brought your steak and it looked like a fine piece of delicious meat, to me, anyway. You cut it in half and saw the red juices seeping out, natural marination that made the whole table smell like a fresh kill in a nature documentary. Unacceptable, and I looked pained as you prepared to flag down the waitress to send your steak back for another round with the grill.

But first, you cut off a bite out of the reddest, juiciest part and held it out to me, because you knew. The way steak is divine to me is gross to you, and the way you prefer it seems like only a waste of a good piece of meat in my eyes. You fought back a scowl of disgust and held our your fork, its passenger dripping. I received it gratefully.

It was delicious.

I am with someone now who agrees with me on the matter of meat preparation, and I cannot tell you how relieved I was that first dinner when he ordered his lamb chops medium-rare. It's a little, little thing, one that I am ashamed has taken on such importance on my mind. That's why I'm still here, writing out these words that paint me so poorly so that it will be out in the open that I am a medium-rare snob and that once I loved a man who preferred medium-well. You were so picky about your stupid steak, about your cheese-only cheeseburgers, about everything you ate and it drove me crazy, but only after. It was just one of those things that grew out of proportion in my mind once I didn't have you around to remind me why I put up with it.

And now it's all fading, our years together. I can't even remember if you liked the stalks or the trees of your broccoli anymore, even though I must have watched you cut and separate your green vegetables a million times. But the bitterness is fading, too, all that anger I had about the stupid stuff like your steak is slowly melting away. Now I can just look back on it all and think not about the times I was embarrassed to order dinner with you, but the time that you held out that one piece of medium-rare steak to me, and how delicious it was.