If he looked at me the way he looked at those onions, I’d promptly shrivel up and die.
“Not a fan?” I pointed to his discard pile and he shook his head. “My family, they have a Greek restaurant in New Jersey. I’m Greek, by the way. And Indian. Like the subcontinent, not the native peoples. Anyway. Everyone is conscripted into the workforce around the time they master walking and talking. For about two years, eighth and ninth grade, I think, I was stuck on pepper and onion prep. All I did, every afternoon, was chop. My entire life smelled like onions. The scent haunted me. Even when it was gone, I could still smell it. To this day, I can’t look at onions without wanting to wash my hands with vanilla extract.”
Sam wiped his hands on his napkin, laughing. “That sounds like child abuse.”
“Finally,” I cried. “Someone who sees it my way.”
We ate and talked, covering everything from college to local politics to regional accents to my issues with the garbanzo bean, but we never discussed last night. I wasdyingto talk about it. I knew my flirt game was hardcore, but I didn’t go around kissing dudes in bars. I didn’t wake up with them, half naked, either.
I wanted to know whether we were laughing it off as ‘oh my God, I can’t believe we got that drunk and kissed’ or giving each other the side eye like ‘oh my God, we kissed and we want to do it again.’
I craved that kind of structure. I preferred to organize relationships into clear boxes and know all the boundaries up front, but in every other part of my existence, I let life happen and didn’t worry too much about the details. If there was one thing I knew to be true it was that life would almost always go on.
After lingering at Rosemary and Sage, we traversed several neighborhoods, stopping at every event we encountered. We detoured to Whole Foods for an expertly selected bunch of grapes and ended up back in Cambridge that night, drinking beer, eating those grapes, and watching fireworks on the roof of my building. We sat shoulder to shoulder, gazing at the sky.
Sam turned to me and drummed his fingertips against my arm. “What’s your name mean?”
I waited, watching the reflection of the fireworks in his eyes and hoping his fingers wouldn’t stop. He didn’t stray far from my side today, but he never touched me without an invitation.
I’d yank him toward the fresh cannolis, then he’d slide his hand down my back.
I’d grab his hand and twirl around, then he’d grip my hips.
I’d lean against him in a crowd, then he’d shift toward me.
I couldn’t tell whether he was waiting for me to spell out my attraction to him, or he was very polite and very tolerant of my grabby hands but wasn’t into me at all. I just needed some direction from him, and I knew I was going to be rubbing all over him until he asked me to stop.
“My mother took the Greek name Theola—which means something like friendly with gods or divinity or whatever—and twisted the soul out of it until she was left with Tiel. She’s quite skilled at twisting the soul out of most things, actually.” I tipped my beer back and edged closer to Sam, my head pillowed against his shoulder. “Everyone in my family has a monstrously Greek name. Like, they couldn’t possibly exist without putting it out there, a giant fucking sign that screams ‘Everything about me is defined by my lineage and I can’t possibly have an identity unless it explicitly ties me to my ancestors.’ And it’s fine if that’s who you are, but it’s not me. I’m still stuck with a horrendously strange name, I know—”
“It’s not. I like it. It suits you.” He shook his head. “You’re pure wild. You’re something I’d find on an obscure trail in the middle of an ancient forest, in a special pocket of nature, and that’s . . . amazing.”
It shouldn’t have mattered so much that he said those words, that he could sweep all of my not-quite-this-but-not-quite-that-either away. It gave me the odd sense that I wasn’t a complete outlier and I might belong somewhere.
But that didn’t mean Sam belonged with me. I wasn’t sure where he belonged—aside from a Ralph Lauren ad—and it didn’t seem like he knew either. “What’s your story, Freckle Twin?”
He took a sip of his beer and eyed me over the bottle. “I’m fond of vegetables,” he said. “You already know my gin preferences. I bought an old firehouse, and I spend most of my time fixing it up. I draw things and call it architecture. And I enjoy camping.”
“How does one come to live in a firehouse?”
He reached for another bottle from the six pack, and popped it open with a churchkey. There was something to be said for a man who kept one of those on his key ring. “One sees the state refusing to add a two-hundred-year-old landmark to its historical sites, which basically opens it up for demolition. One then throws down some cash, moves in, and starts restoring it.”
I wasn’t sure what sparked more questions: the idea of living in a firehouse, the process of restoring that firehouse, or tossing money around. “Does it have a pole?”
“Of course,” he said. “We’ve been renovating for almost four years now, and we haven’t had the heart to remove the pole. I can’t see why we would.”
“‘We’?”
“My brother Riley moved in about two years ago,” Sam said. “The original agreement was that he’d only stay the summer, but he’s handy and he likes projects. I keep him busy.”
“So you have family aroundallthe time?” My words came out too sharp and Sam shrugged, giving me a wary glance. “And camping? Like, outdoors? On the ground? Isn’t that unpleasant?”
“I don’t consider it unpleasant,” he said. “I go to Maine a lot. Vermont, too. My sister, Erin, and I went up there last May. It’s good to be alone, get away from things.”
“So you’re close with your sister.”
I didn’t intend for my tone to be so severe, nor did I intend my words to snap like an accusation, but they sprang from a sore spot.
“Not really. It was the first time I’d seen her in years. I don’t hear from her much,” he said. “She lives in Europe now. She’s researching volcanoes, and it seems there are a number of them in Europe. I doubt she’ll ever come back permanently.”
