Page 71 of The Seven Year Slip

I took another handful of chips, and told his friends, “I’ve nowhere to be. Tell meeverything.”

Isa hummed excitedly and hopped to her feet. If James liked to talk with his hands, Isa liked to talk with her whole body. She moved when she spoke, I quickly found out, pacing back and forth, turning on her heels, like sitting still was the bane of her existence. “Well, you are looking at the three top chefs from CIA the year we graduated,” she began, motioning to the three of them. “And two of us almost didn’t graduate—but not from a lack of trying.”

James leaned in close to me and muttered, his voice low and a little playful, “I’ll let you guess which two.”

“Not you, surely,” I replied, and his mouth twitched into the barest grin.

Isa went on, “We sort of all gravitated toward each other, since we were some of the oldest there.”

James said, louder, though he didn’t lean away from me. Our shoulders brushed, and I felt like a teenager, my heart skipping up into my throat. “I think Iwasthe oldest in our class...”

“No, no.” Miguel waved his hand. “There was that retired accountant. What was her name? Beatrice? Bernadette?”

Isa snapped her fingers and pointed to him. “Bertie! She’s the reason we went abroad that summer, remember? When we catered for that nude colony on the coast of France?”

James had a far-off look in his eyes, as if he was recounting a war zone. “I wish I didn’t.”

Miguel went on, “Or the time we almost poisoned the Queen of England.”

“We didnot,” James corrected. “Not even remotely.”

But all I took out of that was “You cooked for thequeen?”

He shook his head. “God rest her soul. It wasn’t that big of a deal—”

“Hell yeah, it was! Listen, he never gets excited for anything. It was for a banquet, right? Some real fancy shit, and we’d gotten in on good recs. Though I don’t think you were working that kitchen, were you, Isa?”

“No, I was getting drunk down in Shoreditch.”

“Right, right.” Miguel nodded, remembering. “Well, if it wasn’t for that poison taster, no one would’ve caught it.”

“Paprika and ground chili pepper look similar, okay?” James massaged the bridge of his nose, and then said a little quieter, “And I was alittlehungover.”

“Oh my god,” I gasped. “You were almost an assassin?”

“Ground chili pepper would not have killed the queen,” he replied indignantly, knocking his shoulder against mine. Even through our clothes, he was warm, and this close, I could smell the hints of his aftershave—a woodsy cedar and rose. “Cayenne, on the other hand? Probably.”

“That’s not even thefunstory!” Miguel went on, a spark in his eyes. He waxed poetically about some other stories with James, stories of a one-night stand in Glasgow, a meet-cute with a mobster in Madrid that ended in a high-speed moped chase down the Gran Via, traveling as far and as wide as he’d said, far back in my aunt’s apartment, he hoped he would.

We talked until our cinnamon-sugar-crusted fingers hit the bottom of the chip bag, and it was a good night. The kind of good night that I hadn’t had in a while.

The kind of good that stuck to your bones, thick and warm, and coated your soul in golden light.

Good food with good friends.

By the end of all of it, James was laughing again, his smile easyas he talked about his early days as a line cook at the Olive Branch, and the meat vendor who tried to hook him up with his daughter.

“I think you actually went on a date, didn’t you?” Isa asked.

James ducked his head. “One. We quickly figured out we werenotcompatible. But she did have a baby goat she dressed up in welly boots. So damn cute,” he admitted.

Miguel asked, “Wasn’t that the fall after you came to NYC? When you got promoted to line at the Branch?” By then I was so invested I wanted every little dirty, embarrassing thing James Iwan Ashton had ever done or been a part of. “After you met that girl, right?”

Something changed in James’s posture then, as we leaned against each other. He went rigid. “Not this story.”

“Oh, come on.” Isa rolled her eyes, and told me, “He never shut up about her. Not once, not for a second. What was her name? It had something to do with a song, right?”

“Asong?” I both did and didn’t want to know.

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