ROWAN
I watch from behind the elm across the street as the kid I paid knocks on the yellow door of 154 Jasmine Street. The door opens a moment later and she’s there, confusion etched on her beautiful face as she looks down at the paper bag the kid thrusts in her direction. I can’t make out the question she asks him, but I catch his little shrug before I dart behind the tree to avoid Sloane’s gaze as she scans the neighborhood. My grin spreads as I listen intently for the sound of the door closing and the kid’s shuffling footsteps as he leaves the house to approach my hiding spot.
“All done, mister,” he says as he grabs his bike where he left it leaning against the tree.
“She ask who it was from?”
“Yup.”
“You tell her anything?”
“Nope.”
“Good lad.” I slip the kid fifty dollars and he stuffs the bills into the back pocket of his jeans. “Same time tomorrow. We’ll meet at the mailbox down the street, yeah?”
“Cool. See ya.”
With that, the kid takes off on his BMX, one hundred dollars richer to spend on candy or video games or whatever the hell twelve-year-olds buy these days. He’s going to make out like a little demon if he sticks to our arrangement.
Give her the bag. Stick to the script. Fifty for the delivery, fifty when it’s done.
I pull out my burner phone, bringing up my most recent text exchange with Sloane.
I wish you’d stayed, my last message said. And she didn’t reply.
That was over a week ago. It’s been almost three weeks since she was standing in 3 In Coach with a look of absolute mortification in her eyes, as though she’d dumped her heart out on the floor just to have it stomped on. It fucking burned through me in a way I never expected. I thought I might convince her to stay and talk, but the timing could not have been worse with our friends coming in for Lachlan’s birthday lunch. In typical Sloane fashion, her first instinct was to take off, a feather in a North wind.
I can’t let her pull away any further, or she’ll slip through my fingers and I’ll never get her back.
I’m peering around the tree trunk toward the house when the phone vibrates in my hand.
Orzo…?
I lean against the bark and grin down at my phone.
???
Did you deliver orzo pasta to my house??
I have no idea what you’re talking about.
But…since it’s there, you might as well get it out.
And if there’s parmesan in the bag, you should probably start grating that.
Oh and mince some garlic too, if there is any.
Are there mushrooms? Maybe wash those.
Asparagus goes well as a side. Is there asparagus?
The phone rings and I force myself to wait for a moment before accepting the call.
“Can I help you, Blackbird?”
“What are you doing?” Her voice is wary, but I still detect the faint trace of amusement beneath her trepidation.
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“You delivered food to my house?” There’s a pause. I imagine she’s probably checking the windows, looking for any sign of me. “I have food, Rowan.”
“Good for you. I think that qualifies you as a fully-fledged adult.”
I can almost hear Sloane’s eyes rolling, can nearly feel the heat of the blush creeping into her cheeks, if I could touch that dusting of freckles that speckles her skin.
Her long, steady exhale is the only sound between us. Sloane’s voice is melancholy and quiet when she asks, “What are you doing?”
“What I should have done the other day. I’m cooking with you,” I say. “We’re going to make it together. Put the phone on speaker and start grating the parmesan.”
Another pause weighs the thread between us until it feels like it’ll snap.
My voice is low, the amusement burned away when I say, “I wish you would have stayed, Blackbird. I would have taken you back into the kitchen. We could have made something together.”
“You were busy. I was…intruding.”
“I would have made time for you. You’re…” I swallow before I can say more than I should. “You’re my friend. Maybe someday my best friend.”
The silence stretches on so long that I pull the phone from my ear to check if the call disconnected. When Sloane’s voice comes through the line, it’s little more than a whisper but still cuts louder than a scream.
“You hardly know me,” she says.
“Really? Because I bet I know the darkest parts of you better than anyone. Just like you know the darkest parts of me. And despite that, you still want to hang out with me. Most of the time, anyway.” I smile when Sloane’s breath of a soft laugh travels through the line. “So, I think that makes you my friend, whether you like it or not.”
There’s a long beat of silence, and then the sound of a drawer opening, cutlery rustling in its confines.
“I’m supposed to grate this whole block of cheese? It’s the size of a small baby.”
I know I must look ridiculous, grinning like a fucking lunatic next to a tree, but I don’t give a shit. “How much do you like cheese?”
“A lot.”
“Grate enough to make a baby head.”
“Are you serious?”
“You said you like cheese. Get to work, Blackbird.”
An unsure ‘okaaaay’ filters through the line, though I’m sure she’s talking to herself and not me. The metronomic sound of the hard parmesan against the metal teeth of the grater sets a gentle percussion to my thoughts as I try to imagine what her kitchen might look like, Sloane standing at the counter with her raven hair tied back in a messy bun and some cool-as-shit old T-shirt tied at her waist. I could be in there with her, coming up behind her, trapping her against the counter, my cock pressed up to that fucking round ass that I just want to bite, and then—
“After I’ve grated an infant’s head worth of cheese, what should I do next?” Sloane asks as the sound of the grater continues in the background. For a second I wonder if I might have moaned out loud.
I clear my throat, suddenly blanking on the ingredients I put in the bag for her. “Uhh, wash the asparagus and trim the end off the stalks.”
“Okay.”
The grater continues with a steady beat. I run my hand through my hair and resolve to pull my shit together. “So, you said you were in Boston for work. A meeting?”
“Umm…yeah.”
“What kind of meeting?”
“Investigator Meeting.”
“That sounds…terrifying.”
Sloane huffs a laugh. “Yes and no. They’re not investigators like police investigators. It’s what we call study doctors who run our trials at their clinics. An Investigator Meeting is where we train them and their staff on the study. The meetings are only a bit scary if you have to present. Being on stage in front of a bunch of doctors can be a bit intimidating. There could be fifty people in the audience, there could be three hundred. I’ve done lots of them but sometimes I still get nervous when the tech guys put the mic on me.”
“A mic? Like the whole Madonna, Britney Spears-type thing?”
Sloane giggles. “Sometimes.”
So much for resolving to pull my shit together.
The thought of Professional Sloane in a fucking curve-hugging pencil skirt and a Madonna mic, standing on stage as she bosses around a bunch of doctors with her raspy lounge singer voice is the fantasy I never knew I needed.
I’m a fucking goner.
“Cool, cool…” I say, shifting my stance as my cock practically begs me to march up to her door and fuck her on the kitchen counter. “Can I come watch?”
Sloane laughs. “No…?”
“Please?”
“No, you weirdo. You cannot come watch.”
“Why not? It sounds both hot and educational.”
Her husky laugh warms my chest. “Because it’s all confidential, for one. And for two, you’d distract me.”
My heart lights up with fireworks. “With my pretty face?”
“Pfft. No.” That ‘no’ is totally a ‘yes’. I can virtually see the burn of her blush through the phone line. I wish I could FaceTime her, but Sloane would know where I am, standing across the street like a smitten fucking fool, too nervous to scare her off to actually go to her door but too desperate to be near her to really care. “I have a baby’s head’s worth of cheese. I’m doing the asparagus now,” she says, her voice soft.
“When you’re done that, put some salted water on to boil.”
“Okay.”
The chopping starts in the background, reaching through the absence of Sloane’s voice. I close my eyes and lean my head against the tree as I try to imagine Sloane with her hand expertly wrapped around the handle of a knife. I don’t know why that’s so fucking sexy, but it is. Just like the thought of her on stage with her little Madonna mic. Same as the image of Sloane in the booth at my restaurant, bent over a sketch.
“Why do you work there?” I ask abruptly.
“At Viamax?”
“Yeah. Why not art for a living?”
There’s a pause before she snorts. The flush on her throat and down her chest must be absolutely crimson. “I’m not really going to make money selling bird sketches, Rowan.”
I’m surprised she’d go there, after the way she looked toward the booth at 3 In Coach as though she wanted to take a flamethrower to that drawing she left behind, and probably the whole fucking restaurant. But as much as she’s going straight to this moment that clearly embarrassed her, it’s still a deflection. “But you could. You could do other art, if that’s what you want.”
“It’s not.” Her firm words ring between us like she’s waiting for them to settle into my head. “I like what I do. It’s different from the career I envisioned for myself when I was young. Like, who does, right? Not many of us end up as dolphin trainers or whatever.” She snickers and pauses again, but I don’t press her this time, content to wait her out. “Art brings up bad memories sometimes. I used to love painting. I’d paint for hours. I started experimenting with sculpture too. But things…changed. Sketching is like the foundation. It’s all that was left when the rest burned down—the only thing I still enjoy. Well, that and my webs, which feel like art to me.”
These might be only tiny pieces of Sloane, but I’ll hold on to them nonetheless. My art was never so tarnished that I couldn’t bear to create it. It makes me wonder what would strip art from Sloane so thoroughly that she can no longer paint or sculpt, reduced to monochrome.
“I always wanted to be a chef,” I offer. “Even when I was young.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” I look down at my shoes as I recall the kitchen of my childhood home in Sligo, eating around the small table with my brothers, the three of us usually alone in the dark, unwelcoming house. “Lachlan would find a way to bring home food. I would cook it. And our little brother was a picky little shit at that age, so I got pretty good creating decent flavors from limited resources. Cooking became a kind of escape. A safe place for my mind to run free and explore.”
“Culinary art. Literally.”
“Exactly. And my ability to cook probably made hard times at home a little easier.” At least my father’s drunken or drug-induced rages weren’t made worse by hunger. There were a few times he controlled himself long enough to shove me into the kitchen and demand dinner rather than strike me down. Cooking became a kind of armor. Not fool-proof, but a barrier at least. Something to soften the blow. “I was lucky, I guess. It survived. Eventually, it became another mechanism for me and my brothers to build a better life.”
Sloane pauses, her voice melancholy when she says, “I’m sorry you and your brothers went through that. But I’m happy for you that your art survived.”
“And I’m sorry you don’t enjoy your art anymore.”
“Me too. But thank you for teaching me yours. I may have only grated a baby’s head’s worth of cheese, but…” she pauses to take a deep breath, as though mustering up courage, “I’m having fun.”
I gasp theatrically. “No, you can’t, that wasn’t part of my plan.”
Sloane giggles and I grin my way through the rest of the preparation of the dish. We stay on the line as she eats and insists I find something to snack on so she doesn’t dine alone. All I’ve got is a granola bar that was squished in my carry-on, but I eat it anyway as we talk about random shit. Raleigh. Boston. Food. Drinks. Everything. Nothing.
I leave when she’s finished eating, only moving from my hiding spot when I know she’s occupied at the sink.
The next day, I come back. I wait behind the tree as the kid delivers the bag of groceries. He earns another hundred bucks. Sloane calls me and we make roasted feta shrimp and polenta. I bring a pre-made salad so I can eat with her. We talk about work. About fun. A little about Albert Briscoe and the aftermath of our serendipitous visit to his house. Several murders have been pinned on him, and Sloane seems pleased. I might have nudged the police in the right direction, but I don’t tell her that.
On the third day, I hide behind a different tree a little closer to the house where I can hear her when she opens the door. Sloane peppers the kid with questions but he holds out. Gotta hand it to him, he’s pretty dependable. When I peer from behind the trunk, I can see her frustration, but she clearly doesn’t want to freak the kid out either. As he collects his bike, I ask him what he’s going to do with all this cash, and he tells me he’s saving for a PlayStation. Before he goes, I give him an extra two hundred bucks.
Sloane makes steak, a beautiful Wagyu filet mignon, with charred Brussels sprouts on the side. She’s the most nervous about this one. I know she doesn’t want to fuck it up. But she doesn’t. It turns out a perfect medium rare. She hums through every bite. We talk about our families. Well, I talk about my brothers. She doesn’t have much to say about hers. No siblings. No close cousins. Her parents keep in touch on her birthday and Christmas but that’s it. They’re too immersed in their own lives and I don’t get the sense she wants to share. Maybe there’s just not much worth remembering about them. And I get that, better than most.
The next day, I hide behind the tree for a long while and watch her house. At one point, she opens the door, takes a few steps outside. She looks down the street, her brow furrowed. I shift out of view when her gaze pans in my direction as she assesses the other end of the road. But there’s no kid. No groceries.
She steps back inside, locks the door. The curtains sweep away from the window only to fall once more.
After a few more minutes, I walk away. I’m in my rental car, already driving toward the airport when a text buzzes on my burner. But I force myself not to read it. Not until I’m back in my apartment in Boston.
Because I know if I do, there’s a chance I’ll tear the fucking door off the plane to get back to Jasmine Street.
A few hours later, the phone is clutched tight in my hand when I pour a generous shot of whiskey over the cracking cubes of ice. It’s not until I’m settled in my favorite leather chair with my shoes kicked off and my feet up that I look at the screen.
Forcing myself to wait is a delicious torment. Alcohol burns down my throat as I open the unread message from Sloane.
I missed you today.
I also realized I can’t cook for shit without you. I don’t think I’m a fully-fledged adult after all.
I smile and take a long sip of my drink before I set it aside and tap out my reply.
I missed you too. Next time you’re back in Boston for another one of those meetings we’ll make fig phyllo Napoleon in the restaurant.
At first I’m not sure she’ll reply, given the late hour and how long I’ve left it to send a response. But almost immediately I see those three dots flicker, and then:
I’d like that.
My eyes close as my head settles against the leather. I smile as I think about her face today as she stood on her front porch and looked in both directions for the delivery that didn’t come. Disappointment has never looked so damn sweet.
My phone buzzes in my hand.
See you in a few weeks for the game. Friends or not, I’m still going to kick your ass. Just so you know…
I smile in the dim light.
I’m counting on it.
