Page 29 of A Recipe Called Home

Not turning to face her, Jules grabbed a mug from the cabinet and filled it with warm coffee from the pot her grandma had brewed.

“It was a perfectly pleasant night."

“That’s not the swagger of a woman who just had a ‘pleasant’ night."

“Since when do you use words like ‘swagger’?” Jules asked, trying to change the subject.

“Oh honey, my generation invented swagger, don’t flatter yourself. Are you planning to see more of Miles while you’re here? Looks like it’s doing you some good.”

“Maybe, but it’s not serious. Don’t get too excited. We’re just having a bit of fun while I’m here. Nothing more than that,” Jules explained, more to herself than to Rosa. She’d have to work on reminding herself, and him, of that if they were to see each other again. It would be too easy to get hurt again.

***

The following week, Jules cooked non-stop, taking food to the retirement community with Grandma Rosa’s friend Val almost every night. She was working her way through the recipes she’d organized a few days earlier and gaining more confidence in her cooking skills each meal.

After a while, Jules suggested tweaks and additions to her grandma’s recipes. To her surprise, Rosa encouraged her edits. It gave Jules the opportunity to hone her skills, making unique pasta sauces and sensing when and how to use anchovies to deepen a dish’s flavor profile. It felt like her own personal culinary school right there in her grandma’s familiar and well-loved kitchen.

While the mornings and afternoons flew by cooking and sharing stories with her grandma, Jules tried to make the evenings last as long as possible.

After that first night with Miles, he’d fallen into the habit of texting her each afternoon to see if she was free for the evening. Jules liked how he seemed nervous each time, making him hard to resist, even though she knew they were playing with fire. She found herself spending every night at Miles’ after she’d made sure her grandma settled in for the evening.

The pattern went like this: Miles picked her up around eight. They’d go back to his house, he’d play some music and inevitably, they’d make their way to his bed, forcing Sir-Toots-A-Lot to scratch at the closed door. Not much talking happened while they were together, which suited Jules just fine. Surface-level was all she could handle, and Miles somehow knew that. The time never felt right to bring up their past and she accepted that, grateful to not revisit painful memories.

Every so often, her thoughts would wander to the future and where this was leading, but the relentless cooking during the day kept her focused.

Thankfully, her grandma didn’t bring up the topic, either. She just nodded to her as she said goodbye each night, which was encouragement in itself. Rosa wasn’t known to stay quiet if she thought you were making a mistake.

For the first time in her adult life, Jules didn’t have her next move plotted and planned. She was living in the moment, enjoying the short reprieve from what she considered her real life back in D.C.

“You’re…glowing. Is it all the sex you’re having?” Winnie even asked at one point.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” She didn’t like to kiss and tell, but Winnie had a point. The sex was doing her some good.

They’d also been spending more time together, more in those two weeks than they had in the past five years combined. Almost every morning, Jules joined Winnie at the high school to help with play rehearsals. She couldn’t say the cast was good, but they certainly worked hard. But it didn’t matter. Jules enjoyed being around people who understood the compulsion to make art for the sake of it. It roused a part of her that had been suppressed for a long time.

About a week into her new routine, while stuffing artichokes with her grandma, her phone chimed with the tone reserved for her boss, Becca. Wiping her hands on the baby blue apron that her grandma had found for her in the back of the pantry, she tapped the screen.

Call me when you get this. Thx!

Jules groaned. She still owed Becca the signed papers for her new role, and she probably wanted to know what the holdup was. Too bad Jules didn’t know why she hadn’t signed them, either.

Excusing herself from the kitchen, she hurried to her room and closed the door behind her. She didn’t want to have this conversation in front of her grandma. Steeling her nerves for the awkwardness sure to follow, Jules hit the call button. There was no use delaying it. To her surprise and disappointment, Becca picked up on the first ring. A part of Jules hoped it would go to voicemail.

“Jules! Thank God you called back.” Becca sounded frazzled. Maybe this wasn’t about the papers after all.

“Hey, what’s going on? Everything alright?” she asked, taking a seat on the edge of her bed.

“Yes, yes, only Secretary Monahan needs to give testimony at a Senate hearing on Friday and wants you to work with him on his remarks and be there at the Capitol.”

“This Friday? As in two days from now?” Jules responded, doing some mental math.

“I know I promised not to bother you, but he specifically asked for you.” Becca lowered her voice. “Between you and me, he’s a bit rattled by the request to testify. It was very unexpected. If you catch a morning flight tomorrow, that will leave you plenty of time to work with him all day before Friday’s hearing. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

“Right, I know. I just—” Jules said, catching herself.She just what?Couldn’t come because she’d miss having sex with her high school sweetheart? Or because a few ladies at a retirement home were looking forward to her cooking?“Never mind. I’ll book the first flight out tomorrow.”

After their conversation, Jules sat in her room, paralyzed by the thought of packing, leaving her grandma, and losing a few days with her friends. Even though she knew Grandma Rosa would be fine on her own with Val checking up on her, Jules had zero motivation to step back into her real life right now.

Allowing herself to sit with the news, Jules took a few deep breaths to steady her thoughts and gather the energy this would require before grabbing her suitcase to fill it for a quick trip. She’d fly back Saturday on the earliest flight she could get.

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