I WATCHED FROM MY perch on the barstool as Iwan made himself at home in my aunt’s kitchen. My aunt and I usually ate TV dinners or went out, and for the last week since I moved in, I’d gotten takeout from my favorite Thai place. The kitchen was a foreign battlefield to me, somewhere I just cautiously passed through on the way to the bedroom or to get another glass of wine. I could cook the essentials—my mom made sure of that before I left for college, she wasn’t going to let her only daughter starve—but I’d never been very interested in the art of it all. Iwan, on the other hand, seemed to fit so well there, like he already knew where everything was. He’d taken a worn leather knife roll from his duffel bag, which he put back into the bedroom, and set the knives down on the counter.
“So,” I asked, nursing a cheap glass of rosé my aunt had bought before she left for the summer, “you’re a chef or something?”
He retrieved a brown bag of vegetables from the refrigerator. I hadn’t even realized he had stocked it full of food. The fridge hadn’t seen anything besides takeout and leftovers for a week at least. He gestured toward his knife roll. “Did my knives give it away?”
“A little. You know, context clues. Also, please say yes. The alternative is that you’re actually Hannibal and I am in grave danger.”
He pointed to himself. “Do I seem like the kind of person who would ruin his perfectly acceptable palate with a cut of human tenderloin?”
“I don’t know, I barely know you.”
“Oh, well, that’s easy to fix,” he said, planting his hands on either side of the cutting board in front of him, and leaning against the counter. There was a tattoo on the inside of his right arm, a country road weaving through pine trees. “I went to UNC Chapel Hill on a scholarship, planning on heading to law school like my mom and sister, but I dropped out after three years.” He gave another one of those one-shoulder shrugs. “Worked in a few kitchens while I tried to figure out what I wanted to do, and it was the only place I really felt at home, you know? My grandpa practically raised me in a kitchen. So, I finally decided to go to CIA.”
“The Central . . .”
His mouth twitched into a grin. “Culinary Institute of America.”
“Ah, that was my second guess,” I replied, nodding.
“Got an associate’s from there in Culinary Arts, and here I am, looking for a job.”
“You’re chasing the moon,” I marveled, more to myself than to him, as I thought about my own career—four years in college for art history, and then seven working my way up, slowly, at Strauss & Adder.
“The moon?”
Embarrassed, I replied, “It’s something my aunt always says. It’s one of her cardinal rules—you know, like keep your passport renewed, always pair red wines with meats and whites with everything else . . .” I counted on my fingers. “Find fulfilling work, fall in love, and chase the moon.”
He bit in a grin, taking a sip of bourbon. “Sounds like good advice.”
“I guess. So, you’re, like, what?” I studied him for a beat. “Twenty-five?”
“Twenty-six.”
“Jeez. I feel old.”
“You can’t be much older than I am.”
“Twenty-nine, almost thirty,” I replied grimly. “One foot’s already in the grave. I found a gray hair the other day. I debated whether to bleach my entire head.”
He barked a laugh. “I don’t know what I’ll do once I start going white—I won’t go gray. My grandpa didn’t. Maybe I’ll shave my head.”
“I think you’d look refined with a bit of white,” I mused.
“Refined,” he echoed, liking how that sounded. “I’ll tell my grandpa you said that. And anyway, my track record for sticking things out hasn’t been very steady. When I said I wanted to go to CIA, my mom was beside herself at first—I was one year away from a business degree—but I just couldn’t see myself sitting at a desk all day. So instead, I’m here.” He flourished his hands like it was a magic trick, but there was a sparkle in his eyes as he said, “There’s an opening at a pretty famous restaurant, and I want to get in.”
“As a chef . . . ?”
He was completely serious as he said, “As a dishwasher.”
I almost choked on my wine. “I’m sorry—you’re kidding?”
“Once I get in, I can climb the ranks,” he replied with another one-shouldered shrug, and dug into the paper bag for the first vegetable. He took out a tomato, and the large chef’s knife from the worn knife roll, the blade sharp, and started to dice it. His cuts were quick, without hesitation, the silver of his blade flashing against the yellowish-white light of the god-awful multicolored chandelier my aunt had “reclaimed” off the street.
“So,” he went on as he worked, “now that you know all about me, what about you?”
I blew out a breath through my lips. “Oof, what about me? Grew up in the Hudson Valley, and then Long Island, and I’ve been in the city half my life. Went to NYU for art history, then got a job in book publishing, and now I’m here.”
“Have you always wanted to work in book publishing?”
“No, but I like where I am now.” I took another sip of my rosé, debating whether or not to tell him the other things about me—the trips abroad, the passport filled with so many stamps it’d impress any lifelong traveler, but every time I showed it to someone they’d get this idea about me. That I was some child of chaos with a wild heart, when, in reality, I was just a scared girl hanging on to my aunt’s blue coattails as she spirited me across the world. I sort of only wanted him to see the real me—the me who never left the city, not even to visit her parents on Long Island anymore, the me who went to work and came home and watched Survivor reruns on the weekend and couldn’t even set aside a few hours to go to her ex-boyfriend’s art show.
So I decided not to, and said, “Well, that’s me in a nutshell. An art-history-major-turned-book-publicist.”
He gave me a weighted look and pursed his lips. He had a freckle on the left side of his bottom lip, and it was almost impossible not to look at it. “Somehow, I feel like you’re selling yourself a little short.”
“Oh?”
“It’s a feeling,” he said, grabbing another tomato from the paper bag, and gave another one-shouldered shrug. “I’m pretty great at reading people.”
“Oh?”
“In fact, I’m pretty sure I’m halfway to figuring out your favorite color.”
“It’s—”
“No!” he cried, holding the knife up to me. “No. I’m going to guess it.”
That amused me. I looked pointedly at the tip of his knife until he realized he had it angled at me, and then he quickly returned it to the cutting board. “Are you, now.”
“It’s my one superpower, let me impress you with it.”
“Fine, fine,” I said, because I was sure he wasn’t going to guess it—after all, it was one of the most surprising things about me—and watched him slide the diced tomatoes to the side of the board and then take out an onion to peel it. He was very deft with his hands, mesmerizing in a way I could watch for hours.
“Well?” I asked. “What’s my favorite color?”
“Oh, I’m not going to guess it now,” he replied coyly. “I barely know you yet.”
“There’s not much to know.” I gave a shrug, watching him dice the onion. “I’m pretty boring. My aunt was the one with all the cool stories.”
“Are you and your aunt close?” he asked.
I glanced up from his hands, having not heard the last question. “Hmm?”
He lifted his gaze to meet mine. His eyes were the loveliest pale gray, darker at the center than the edges, so slight you had to get very close to see. “You and your aunt, you two seem close.”
The present tense sent a shiver down my spine. It was unexpected and startling, like a douse of cold water to the face. Right, in his time she’s still alive, somewhere in Norway with me, being chased by a walrus on the beach. It made me feel, for a moment, like she really was still here. Flesh and blood. Like she could waltz into the apartment at any moment and pull me into one of her bone-crushing hugs, and I’d breathe her in—Marlboro cigarettes and Red perfume and hints of lavender from the laundry detergent. My darling Clementine, she would say. What a lovely surprise!
I swallowed the knot forming in my throat. “I . . . guess we are close.”
As he put the chopped onions into a separate bowl, he glanced at me and frowned. “That look again.”
I blinked, tearing myself out of my thoughts, and purposefully made my face blank. “What look?”
“Like you’re tasting something sour—you had that look before.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I replied, mortified, and pressed my hands to my face. “How do I look?”
He laughed, soft and gentle, and put down his knife. “Your eyebrows crinkle. May I?”
“Uh—sure?”
He reached over the counter and pressed his thumb in the center of my eyebrows, and smoothed the skin out. “Here. Like you’re surprised that you want to cry.”
I stared at him, a blush rising on my cheeks. I quickly leaned back. “They—they do not,” I said, mortified. “You’re just seeing things.”
He picked up his knife again and began to gut a bell pepper. “Whatever you say, Lemon.”
I shot him a glare. “It’s Clementine.”
“Clllllllemontine.”
“I suddenly hate you.”
He mock gasped, dropping his knife, and slammed his hands against his chest. “Lemon, already? At least wait until you taste my food first!”
“Am I getting a fancy dinner tonight?”
He sucked in a breath between his teeth. “Oof, sorry. I didn’t bring my fine china. Only my fine knives.” And he picked up his chef’s knife again. “This one is Bertha.”
I arched an eyebrow. “You name your knives?”
“All of them.” Then he pointed over to his other knives rolled out on the counter and introduced them. “Rochester, Jane, Sophie, Adele . . .”
“Those are just Jane Eyre characters.”
“They’re my grandfather’s,” he replied, as if that explained everything.
I looked at the one he was using. The handle, now that he mentioned it, did look a bit worn, and the sheen of silver a little dull—but they were clearly well loved, and well taken care of. “Was he a chef?”
“No. But he wanted to be,” he replied quietly, and I sensed that it was a tough topic. Was his grandfather still alive? Or had he inherited those knives like I had this apartment?
Though I was sure his knives weren’t of the time-traveling variety.
“Well,” I said, finishing my wine, “it’s such a pity that with no fine china, I guess I’ll be uncultured for the rest of my life.”
He tsked. “A few of my friends would argue that you can’t be uncultured in food because the idea of cultured food derives from the gentrification of recipes in general.”
The way he said those words, and the severity with which he said them, was incredibly attractive. My stomach dropped as I briefly wondered, If he is that good at words, how good is he at—
“So, I am cultured?” I asked, distracting myself.
“You are who you are, and you like what you like,” he replied, and there was no sarcasm in his voice. “You are you, and that’s a lovely person to be.”
“You barely know me.”
He clicked his tongue to the roof of his mouth, studying me for a moment, his eyes a shade darker than they had been before. “I think your favorite color is yellow,” he guessed, and watched as the surprise trickled across my face. “But not a bright yellow—more of a golden yellow. The color of sunflowers. That might even be your favorite flower.”
My mouth fell open.
“I take it I’m close?” he asked in a soft rumble, and the smugness made my toes curl.
“Lucky guess,” I replied, and he smiled so wide, his eyes glittered. “Well, what’s yours?”
That crooked grin curled across his lips. He tsked again, clicking his tongue to the roof of his mouth. “That’d be cheating, Lemon,” he purred. “You’ll have to guess.”
Then he pushed himself off the counter and returned to cooking. And just like that, the moment of tension burst like a bubble, even though I still felt heady from how close he’d been.
I grabbed the bottle of rosé and poured myself another glass—I’d need it. I think I’d bitten off more than I could chew tonight. If he was twenty-six now, he’d be . . . thirty-three in my time? Probably renting somewhere in Williamsburg, if he stayed in the city, with a partner and a dog at least. (He seemed like a dog person.)
He didn’t have a ring on, but a lot happened in seven years.
A lot could happen.
My aunt’s story was raw in my memory. First rule, always take your shoes off by the door.
Second, never fall in love in this apartment.
I wasn’t all too worried about that.
He grabbed a frying pan from the rack and spun it around in his hand—almost clocking himself in the temple in the process. He tried to act like he hadn’t just almost knocked himself out as he set the pan down on the front left eye of the stove. “I didn’t ask,” he said, “but you okay with fajitas tonight? It’s my friend’s recipe.”
I pretended to be aghast, and clutched my imaginary pearls. “What, no split-pea soup for my delicate taste buds?”
“Fuck split-pea soup.” Then, quieter, he added, “That’s tomorrow night.”
