Page 45 of The Seven Year Slip

Someone shouldered their way up the escalator beside me, snapping me back to reality. It couldn’t be him. Couldn’t be. But when I got outside, there he was again, on a bus stop ad for a cooking competition, graffiti papered around him. The ad had been there a while. At least a few weeks. My heart rose into my throat as I quickly turned the corner, passing a magazine stand, his face there again on the front of one of them. Reality began to sink in. In disbelief, I went over and picked it up.

NEW YORK’S HOTTEST CULINARY STAR, the headline read.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I muttered.

I had been so focused on looking ahead, catapulting myself toward the next step in my plan, the rest of the world a blur so I didn’t get hurt—

I hadn’t looked around me. Hadn’t been part of the world. Part of anything, really. I’d just gone through it, head down, heart shuttered, like a traveler against a torrential rainstorm.

But when I finally stopped for a moment and looked around, he was—

Everywhere.

18

Another You

“He was right undermy nose,” I muttered to my new pothos plant, Helga, as I poured myself a glass of wine.

Here I was, sitting on the floor in front of my coffee table in my aunt’s apartment, furiously clicking on every link about a man who was seven years older, seven years farther away, seven years stranger, than the one who had kissed me over a lemon pie.

“Onlynowhe’s so far out of my league I barely even recognize him. He doesn’t evengoby Iwan. He goes byJames Ashton. I would never have guessed Ashton,” I added, a little morosely, and sank back against the couch, clutching the bottle of wine to my chest. When I’d gotten Helga a few weeks ago, my mom told me that if I talked to it, it’d grow better, but Helga just looked sort of wilty. Probably because I dumped all my emotional trauma on her. “At least he made it, right? He made it. And I found him...”

It was a relief, because he wasn’t dead, he hadn’t gone back home. He’dmadesomething of himself, exactly as he said hewanted to, and the more I scrolled through his life, digitally generated across Google, the more I began to wish I’d seen it all first-hand.

In the last seven years, he had been a dishwasher for only a month and a half before he graduated to line cook, where two-time Michelin-starred chef Albert Gauthier took him under his wing. Gauthier... wasn’t that the chef he’d talked about over dinner? A year later, he was sous chef, being recognized as a rising star, a talent to watch, gathering accolades like some people collected bottle caps. His career trajectory was astronomical. One critic loved his food, and all of a sudden his popularity exploded, and two years ago Albert Gauthier retired and handed over the reins of the restaurant Iwan had started at as a dishwasher. That restaurant?

The Olive Branch.

I remember the broad chest I’d run into on the way out the door.

I bit my thumbnail, skimming the different links and articles detailing his life in a messy, imperfect timeline—

Now that I knew he didn’t go byIwan, I found him rather easily on the alumni page of CIA—as a notable chef. With his recognition at the Olive Branch, he’d made quite a name for himself in the culinary world. James guest starred onChef’s Tableand some Food Network shows; he’d been a frequent guest on travel food shows. And now he was opening up a restaurant all his own at the end of the summer, and I was sure that was going to coincide with this book proposal of his. The name of the restaurant hadn’t been announced yet, but I was sure it’d be something about his grandpa, maybe? Pommes Frites?

I smiled a little at the idea.

Somehow, he’d become even more handsome, aged like ahandle of fine bourbon. In the videos online, he was magnetic and polished. If Drewdidget him, he wouldn’t need much media training, which made my job easier.

I thought about that sweet, crooked-mouthed man with a taste for his grandpa’s lemon pies that were never quite the same twice, and I decided yes—this was good. This was okay.

I finished my glass of wine, opened his cookbook proposal, and started to make a plan. I was good at plans, good at my job, good at what I did. This was the one thing I excelled in, the one thing I could bury myself under and feel safe with—especially against this one awful thought in my head:

He couldn’t remember me, because if he did... wouldn’t he have tried to find me?

And I wasn’t sure I wanted to know that answer.

And, as luck wouldhave it, I ran late to the meeting the next morning.

To be clear: it was five minutes until 10:00 a.m., when the meeting was supposed to start, but by the sound of voices on the other side of the conference room door, I was about to be the last one inside. I smoothed down my black skirt, thinking that maybe I should’ve worn pants. Something that made me look cleverer, bolder. Maybe a different blouse, too—why did I always chooseyellow? At least no one noticed the stain on the bow from my coffee this morning.

My heart beat quick and sick in my throat. Why was Inervous?

You’ve done this a hundred times before, I told myself.You’re good at this.

I closed my eyes. Took a deep breath.

And opened the door with a smile.

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