Page 32 of The Seven Year Slip

“Oh, this is dessert,” he replied, motioning to the lemons on the counter. “How do you feel about pizza tonight?”

“I think there’s a number for delivery on the fridge...”

“I meant frozen.”

I let out a laugh, though it sounded hollow to my ears. “Are you sure you’re a chef?”

“I’m full of surprises, Lemon,” he replied, teasing me with another grin, and we were back to before. It was silly to feel disappointed that he hadn’t kissed me. This wasn’t me at all. And, apparently, it wasn’t him, either. “And besides,” he added with a wink and shot me charming and—admittedly cringey—finger guns, “I’m making you a dessert tonight, instead.”

12

The Moon and More

The frozen pizza wasexactly 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 Ithink the interview went well! I was one of twenty-three applicants who made it to the final round.”

“For adishwashinggig?”

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 madefrom scratchin 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 reasonnotto 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 becauseotherpeople 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.”

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