THE FROZEN PIZZA WAS exactly what it promised to be—it tasted like cardboard with a little bit of plastic cheese on top. And it was delicious in the same way that five-dollar pizzas from the supermarket and cheap wine always were—predictable and solid.
While we waited for it to cook, I had dug out some of my old jeans that still fit from my leftover clothes in my aunt’s closet and put on a dark gray T-shirt that I’d lost in Spain two years ago, and he fixed up some sort of pie that smelled of lemons and popped it into the hot oven as we ate.
“How was the interview today?” I asked as I took my last slice. We’d gone through half the bottle of wine already, and picked through most of the pizza.
“Glorious,” he said with a content sigh. “It was just like I remembered. They even still had the table my grandpa and I sat at.”
“Was the head chef there? The one your grandpa liked?”
He crinkled his nose and shook his head. “Sadly, no. But I think the interview went well! I was one of twenty-three applicants who made it to the final round.”
“For a dishwashing gig?”
He picked a piece of pepperoni off his pizza and corrected, “For an opening at one of the most prestigious restaurants in SoHo. It’s an institution, of course a lot of people want to work there.”
I shook my head. “I can’t believe you can’t just start as a line cook.”
“Maybe if I were more talented, sure,” he replied with a shrug, and I didn’t believe his false modesty one bit. There was a pie that he’d made from scratch in the oven, and I wasn’t about to say I was a connoisseur, but I’d eaten my way around the world. I knew good food in the same way anyone who was well traveled enough knew the best pizzas were always in grease-stained hole-in-the-wall joints, the best tacos from tin-colored food trucks, the best falafel from street vendors, the best pasta from family-owned restaurants in the bowels of Rome. Iwan was talented.
The windows were open tonight, and a soft breeze came in from the street, fluttering the gauzy white curtains. The two pigeons that roosted on the AC were cooing in their little nest, Mother and Fucker enjoying the evening.
“So,” he said, changing the subject, “what’ve you been doing all day?”
“Taking a bath,” I replied, and when he arched an eyebrow, I sighed and said, “I accidentally fell asleep in the bath. Before that I was . . .” I frowned. “In the tub.”
“Just in the tub?”
I hesitated, setting down my last crust of pizza. I wasn’t really hungry for it, anyway. There was no reason not to tell him, especially after he’d shared so much with me last night. “Don’t laugh, but I was always a messy painter as a kid. I’d get watercolors everywhere and my aunt would be livid, so she set me up in the bathroom and told me to go wild. So that’s what I was doing. You know, before I took a bath.”
He seemed surprised—in the best way. “Painting?”
I nodded.
When Nate found out about my hobby, as he stumbled across my landscapes and my still lifes and my portraits, all tucked into my closet, his eyes glowed with the possibility of selling them. Monetizing my passion. “Make it work for you. You’re fantastic at it.”
But I already worked in an industry that sold art as commodities, and I really didn’t want to go down that path. I didn’t like painting because other people might like it; I liked painting because I appreciated the way the colors blended, the way blues and yellows always turned green. The way reds and greens turned brown. There was a certainty to it all, and when there wasn’t, there was always a reason.
And, besides, by the time Nate and I got together, I’d stopped painting entirely.
“Could I see?” Iwan asked, and when I didn’t respond immediately, he quickly added, “You don’t have to. It’s okay. It’s something for you, right?” he guessed. “It’s private.”
I stared at him for a long moment, because that was it exactly. I’d always had to explain it. “Yes. It’s for me.”
He nodded, like he understood. “Cooking was like that for me. I liked keeping it secret—just between me and my granddad. It felt powerful, you know? This little thing that no one else knew about.”
“And if you show it to anyone else, you’re afraid it might spoil.”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“But you did—obviously. Since you cooked for me.”
He gave a one-shouldered shrug. “I thought I just wanted it to be a pastime, but then I decided . . . what the hell?”
I looked down at the tiny bit of paint still stuck under my fingernails. “Do you regret it?”
He cocked his head in thought. “Ask me in a few years.”
If I find you, I thought, I will.
Though I couldn’t imagine that he would—there was a certain kind of person who took hold of their passion and never let it spoil. He’d never lose sight of why he wanted to be a chef in the first place.
I admitted, “The painting in the bathroom? Of the moon? It’s mine.”
He thought, his eyebrows creasing as he recalled the painting, and then his eyes lit up. “Oh, that one! It’s lovely. Do you have others around the apartment?”
To that, I smiled and tapped a finger to my lips. “I do. I’ll show them to you next time,” I said, “if you remember to ask me.”
“Deal,” he agreed. “They’re probably right under my nose.”
I thought about the travel guides in my aunt’s study. He had no idea. I cocked my head. “You know, it’s weird. Today was the first time I’ve painted in . . . half a year? Yeah, that seems right.”
He whistled. “That’s a long time. Why did you stop?”
I felt my body tense. “Someone broke my heart,” I said softly.
“Oh . . . I’m sorry, Lemon.”
I shrugged, and tried to play it off. “It’s okay. My last boyfriend tried to get me to paint again, but I just didn’t have it in me. I didn’t have it in me to do a lot of things with him, to be honest. He said I was too closed-off.” I put the words in air quotes. “I didn’t even cry when we broke up.”
“That doesn’t mean you didn’t love him.”
“It was three months,” I replied, dismissing his idea. “I’m sure I didn’t. My aunt always said you know the moment you fall.”
He studied me for a moment. “Maybe you do.”
“Have you ever been in love?” And then I asked, trying to joke with him, “Is that why you’re really in the city? To chase after someone? It’s okay,” I added conspiratorially, “you can admit it to me. I won’t tell a soul.”
To which he smiled, crooked and charming, as if he was about to tell me a secret he’d never told anyone else in the world. He leaned toward me. “And if I have?”
I sat up a little straighter. “Do they know?”
“Sadly, yes,” he replied. “But alas, pommes frites are a cruel beast, and my body rejects them with . . . heartburn!” He dramatically clutched his chest, and I rolled my eyes.
“Okay, I guess I deserved that.”
“Mm-hmm.” He took my hand and pulled me to stand. “And if you have time to plot out my fictitious love life,” he said, pulling me into the kitchen, “you have time to—”
“Please don’t say dance.”
“—to whip some cream for me while I take the pie out of the oven and chill it for a bit.”
The dread quickly turned into relief. “Oh, that.” Then I realized what he’d said. “Wait, I’m helping you?”
“It’ll be easy, I promise.”
Somehow, I didn’t believe him. I ruined SpaghettiOs in the microwave, so I didn’t have a lot of confidence that I could whip anything. He grabbed my aunt’s hummingbird oven mitts and took the pie out of the oven. The scent of lemons exploded into the apartment, warm and gooey and citrusy. He popped it in the quick-freeze and pulled me over to a bowl, and dashed in the ingredients in rapid succession—he had everything premeasured in the refrigerator and chilled, and told me to keep whisking the ingredients until stiff peaks formed. I just nodded and did as I was told, and apparently my whipped cream peaks were beautiful.
“I have no idea what that means,” I replied, my arms feeling like Jell-O, as he checked on the pie in the quick-freeze, and he took out the cream, spreading it over the pie.
He grinned, “It means you’re a natural.”
“At whipping? Or the cream?”
“What is that, a sense of humor?”
I laughed and elbowed him in the side. “Shut up.”
But he just kept grinning as he took the pie over to the table, and I followed with two plates from the cabinet and two forks. We sat down and I handed him one, and we clinked them together in a sort of cheers.
“You first,” he decided, motioning to the pie. “The suspense is killing me. In this recipe, I substitute meringue with whipped cream. It’s a twist on key lime, with lemons obviously, with a graham-cracker crust. Simple, really. Arguably too simple, especially without the meringue.”
“Why no meringue?”
He shrugged. “The whipped cream has hints of lemon. It’s close enough.”
“. . . Can you not make meringue?”
“Alas,” he sighed, and set his head on his hand, “my only enemy. To be fair, I didn’t make the whipped cream, either. You did.”
“So, you aren’t perfect?” I mock gasped, reeling away.
He rolled his eyes. “I’d be boring if I was perfect. I’ve always been bad at meringue, ever since culinary school. The peaks never peaked and I’m wholly impatient. My biggest downfall.”
“That’s your biggest downfall?”
He honest-to-god thought about it for a moment before nodding. “Yes. Yes, it is.”
“Huh.” Because I was very sure if he found out the laundry list of my flaws, he’d be running for the hills. I twirled my fork around in my fingers and stabbed it into the pie.
Then I scooped up a forkful and tasted it. The warm, gooey acidity of the pie, along with the grittiness of the graham cracker, the sweetness of the whipped cream, with a pinch of lemon zest—it was such a lovely bouquet of flavors and textures. It reminded me of a lemon grove.
He waited patiently. Then, as if true to his word, a bit impatiently. He drummed his fingers on the table.
Shifted in his seat.
Gave a huff.
Finally, he asked, “. . . Well?”
I bit the tines of the fork between my teeth, looking from him to the pie, and then to him again. He really was impatient, wasn’t he?
His face fell. “It’s terrible, isn’t it? I messed up. I forgot an ingredient. I—”
“You should be ashamed,” I interrupted, pointing my fork at him.
In alarm, he grabbed it and took a bite.
“We ate pizza when we could have been having this the whole time?” I finished, as he chewed and sank back into his chair, swallowing his bite. “For future reference, I am perfectly okay with dessert for dinner.”
He gave me a morose look. “You really had me going there, Lemon.” He sighed in relief, and then realized—“So you’ll have dinner with me again? In the future?”
“Of course. I’m still waiting for that split-pea soup,” I replied nobly, and took another bite. “Why were you so nervous this wouldn’t be good?”
“It was my grandfather’s recipe—which isn’t really a recipe at all,” he replied, handing the fork back to me, “so it’s a bit different every time.”
A bit different every time.
Like Vera’s fettuccine.
The phrase was like a gut punch—a reminder of my aunt’s second rule. Never fall in love in this apartment.
“He always says food brings people together, and that’s really what I love about it.” He smiled a little at the memory, though there was this distant look in his eyes. Was that how I looked whenever I talked about my aunt? “How it can be a language all its own,” he went on, putting his elbows on the table, his head perched on his hands. “I’ve had entire conversations with people I’ve never spoken a word to. You can say things with food that you can’t quite with words sometimes.”
And there he went again, his passion for this art I had taken for granted turned into poetry. I would read encyclopedias if he wrote them with this sort of wonderlust.
Taking another bite, the sweetness of the cream dancing with the tart lemon, making my teeth curl in delight, I said, “Ah, you’re talking about a perfect meal again.”
“It all comes full circle,” he replied, the edges of his mouth twisting up in a smile. “Universal truths in butter. Secrets folded into the dough. Poetry in the spices. Romance in a chocolate. Love in a lemon pie.”
I set my elbows on the table, my head propped on my hands, mirroring him. “Truth be told, I’ve always found my lovers in a good cheese.”
“Asiago is very sassy.”
“A nice cheddar’s never let me down.”
“You go with cheddar? That’s so . . . like you, honestly.”
I gave a gasp. “You mean boring, don’t you!”
“I didn’t say that, you said that.”
“I’ll have you know, cheddar is a very respectable cheese. And versatile, too! You can put cheddar on anything. Not like some of those other fancier cheeses, like—like gouda or mozzarella or rock—rocke—”
He tilted his head toward me and whispered, “Roquefort.”
“Yes, that one!” I said, pointing my fork at him. “Or chèvre. Or gouda . . .”
“You already said that one.”
His face hovered so close to mine as he leaned over the table, I could smell the aftershave on his skin. My stomach was burning. “Or”—My brain struggled to think of another one.—“Parmesan . . .”
“I’ve always liked cheddar,” he finally said. This close, his eyes were more blue and green than gray, growing darker and stormier the longer I stared. I wondered if I could see his future in his eyes, what kind of man he’d be in seven years—but all I saw was a twenty-something a little lost in a new city, waiting to be the person he’d become.
If he liked cheddar, then did he like safe and boring, too? Me? No, I was getting carried away. Of course that wasn’t what he meant, but he was still so close, and my skin prickled from the heat I felt from his body. His eyes dropped to my lips again, as if debating on whether to take the chance.
And then he asked, his voice barely above a whisper, a secret, “May I kiss you?”
I sucked in a breath. I wanted to and I shouldn’t and it was probably the worst decision in the world and—
I nodded.
He leaned over the table and pressed his lips to mine. Then we broke away—just for a moment, a sharp intake of breath—and crushed our mouths together again. I curled my fingers around the front of his dress shirt and tugged at his already loose tie. He cupped my face with his hands, and drank me in. I melted into him faster than ice cream on a hot sidewalk. He kissed like he wanted to savor me.
“I fear I have, indeed, gotten the wrong idea,” he murmured when we finally broke away, his words hot against my lips, voice deep and hoarse. “Despite my best efforts.”
I felt starved—the wild girl I wanted to be but never quite was, the kind who yearned to devour the world, one sensation at a time. The softness of his lips, the hunger there. I wrapped his tie around my hand, drawing him closer to me, and he made a noise in his throat as I pulled him near.
“We both might’ve gotten the wrong idea,” I agreed. “I like it, though. We could try it again?”
His eyes darkened like a hurricane on the horizon, and as I tugged him toward me, he came willingly, and kissed me harder on the mouth, threading his fingers into my hair. His tongue played along my bottom lip, teasing, and he tasted like lemon pie, sweet and summery. My belly burned, ached, as his thumb slid along my jawline, slowly tracing it down toward my neck. His touch was light and soft, the callouses on his fingertips rough against my skin, summoning goose bumps. I shivered. And he smelled amazing—like aftershave and laundry detergent and graham-cracker crust.
I didn’t realize how hungry I was for touch, for something good, something warm and sweet, until I got a taste.
“Don’t fall in love in this apartment,” my aunt had warned, but this wasn’t love. It wasn’t, it wasn’t, it wasn’t—
The way he kissed me, so thoroughly I felt it in my toes, the way I pulled him to me, my hand wrapped around his tie, the way I thought about if he was so good with his tongue now, how much better would he be in a few years—
No, this wasn’t love.
After all, I didn’t know what love—romantic love, toe-curling love—felt like. So how could I fall for it?
This wasn’t it. It couldn’t be.
“You kiss like you dance,” he murmured against my mouth.
I broke away, suddenly appalled. “Terribly?”
He laughed, but it was low and deep in his throat, half a growl, as he stole another kiss again. “Like someone waiting to be asked. You can just dance, Lemon. You can take the lead.”
“And you’ll follow?”
“To the moon and back,” he replied, and I leaned forward, my hands pressed against his hard chest, and kissed him again. Harder. Over the lemon pie. My insides felt like Pop Rocks, fizzy and bright. He made a noise against my mouth, a growl that rumbled through his chest as his long, long fingers curled further into my hair, his teeth nibbling on my bottom lip—
Suddenly, he pushed the lemon pie aside, wineglasses clattering as they bumped against the wall, and I put a knee on the table, halfway onto it, just to get a little closer. Just a little more. I wanted to press myself into him. I wanted to lose myself in his smell, in his calloused touch, in the way he painted words like poetry.
Romance wasn’t in chocolate, it was in the gasp of breath as we came up for air. It was in the way he cradled my face, the way I traced my finger over the crescent-shaped birthmark on his collarbone. It was in the way he muttered how beautiful I was, the way it made my heart soar. It was in the way I wanted to know everything about him—his favorite songs, finally guess his favorite color. His mouth migrated toward my neck, feeling my pulse quick and loud at my throat. Pressing a kiss under my ear—
He will never stay, my darling Clementine, I heard my aunt say, crystal clear in my head. I could see her sitting in her wingback chair, remembering Vera. No one stays.
“Wait,” I gasped, breaking myself away from him. My heart was quick and loud in my head. “Wait—is this smart? Should we? This might be a bad idea.”
He froze. “What?”
“This—this might be a bad idea,” I repeated, letting my hand unwind from his tie. My lips felt tender, my cheeks flushed.
He blinked, tonguing his bottom lip, his gaze still drunk on our kisses. “You could never be a bad idea, Lemon.”
But what if you are? I thought, biting the inside of my lip. Because there I was, teetering on the precipice of something. I could tip over and never see the top again, or I could remain perfectly balanced where I was.
And then I looked into his grayish-blue eyes, and I knew exactly how I’d paint them—I’d paint them like the moon. Layers of white, gradually growing darker, with shadows of blue. Now, though, they were like storm clouds out at sea in the golden evening light—
And I was a fool.
“. . . Lemon? You have that look again,” he said in concern. I snapped out of my thoughts, embarrassment flooding my cheeks. He had come around the table, and knelt down in front of me, his hand on my knee, his thumb gently rubbing circles there. “Lemon?”
“Sorry.” I pressed my hands against my face. “I’m so sorry.”
“No, no, it’s okay.” Gently, he tugged my hands away from my face, looking up at me with nothing but concern. What a lovely man. I sank down against him, my face buried into his shoulder, where I—awfully—fit so perfectly. He was so warm and comfortable, and I hated that I loved it. “I’m sorry,” I repeated again, because I wasn’t sure how else to voice it—how much I wanted this, wanted him, but there were things my heart couldn’t handle anymore, still brittle and small, broken from something else that couldn’t stay.
I was broken, and I was alone, and I wished he had found me seven years ago, instead.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry . . .”
“Hey—hey, don’t apologize, don’t be sorry, there’s nothing to be sorry for,” he said, gently dislodging me from his shoulder so he could look at my face, pushing my hair behind my ear. He cradled my cheek in his warm hand. “It’s okay. It’s okay, really.”
This is where normal girls would have cried, because his voice was so gentle, so comforting. This is where they would have let their heart overflow, and bring down their walls, but my eyes didn’t even sting with tears. I think I had cried them all out in the last six months. I think I had run dry. Because as I looked down into his face and his lovely pale eyes, all I could feel was a hollow pit in the center of my stomach.
I wish I could tell you a story, I thought, and I wish you would believe it.
But he wouldn’t. I was old enough to know that for a fact. Because while he believed in romance, in chocolates, and love over lemon pies, the story of a girl seven years out of time sounded a bit too abstract, even for his ears, and I couldn’t bear the thought of the way he’d look at me once I told my story, half pitying, halfdisappointed, that I had to make up a lie about a time slip instead of telling him the truth.
Instead, I leaned my face against his hand and kissed his palm. “Can we finish our dessert? And talk some more?”
He stood and kissed my forehead. “Of course, Lemon. I would love nothing more.”
My heart clenched, because he was so lovely, and I was so relieved—happy, even—that he understood.
He returned to his chair, took his fork, and asked me about my favorite paintings. Why van Gogh? Where did I like to travel? What was my favorite snack? If I could have dinner with anyone, past or present, who would it be and why? And he made me laugh over the rest of the lemon pie, and we drank wine, still with the taste of his lips on my tongue, the memory of the kisses that, for all intents and purposes, never were.
