‘Well, to be fair, it started as an education in an area where you were severely lacking!’
Then what is it now?
I wanted to know if he watched TV with Vic like this. Or Kevin. Was it a boyfriend thing, too, or just a friend thing? Or was it just amething?
I yawned for the eighth time in the past five minutes, only this time I didn’t stifle it. ‘I should probably get to bed before I fall asleep like you did when we watched the episode where Leslie forced Ron to let the Parks and Rec women go on the hunting trip.’
‘Hunting is boring, Thomas!’
I laughed. ‘You working tomorrow?’
‘No, Saturday. You?’
‘Tomorrow and Sunday brunch.’
‘Two ships passing, huh?’
It was a theme for us, after all. ‘Good night, Gabe.’ He said good night and I hung up. But I didn’t go to bed yet – I went into the kitchen and unwrapped a turkey leg from its tinfoil. I stood at the kitchen sink and started picking at it.
The Thanksgiving when I was five, I snuck down to the kitchen after hearing noises. My dad was in there, my mom asleep on the couch. He had a glass of red wine sitting on the counter and he was standing at the sink, pulling at the turkey leg in his hand.
He jumped when he saw me at the doorway, then laughed and held out the turkey leg for me. I pulled off a piece, despite the fact that I didn’t like dark meat. Dad was the only one who liked it. He sat on the kitchen floor, letting me pull meat off the drumstick with him. I wish I remembered what else we talked about that night, but the only thing that stuck was how to eat a turkey drumstick.
They always have those cartilage spikes in the meat that make it impossible to bite right in. So it was best to just peel it apart with your fingers, bit by bit.
‘That’s why,’ he said, ‘I always wait till Mommy falls asleep and eat it standing over the kitchen sink. So she doesn’t have to see me looking like a vicious monster.’ He growled and ripped off another piece of turkey and scarfed it down, making gross snorting noises that made me laugh.
The next year, my mom fell asleep before I did, and while we were watching TV he said, ‘Pssst!’ then pointed at the kitchen and mimed eating a drumstick thewrongway. I nodded, and we shared the leftover drumstick again.
When I turned ten, I got my own drumstick, and I was finally tall enough to stand over the kitchen sink like he did. The last couple years before Dad died, we would talk about school and he’d ask if I liked any girls in my class and I would always say no and play it off like I just hadn’t met anyone. We talked about the baking my grammy was teaching me, his memories of her teaching him when he was a kid, and his favorite things that I had made recently and what he wanted me to make again. Sometimes he’d tell me stories about watching a professional chef make consommé or béarnaise sauce in the kitchen at La Mère.
Our last Thanksgiving, I fell asleep in the chair I had been watching TV in. He ate without me but put a sticky note on my forehead saying he’d left the last drumstick for me.
Now I always left the last one for him.
I sniffed and tried not to cry as I ate.
The following week I was at the ice rink where our high school’s hockey team plays. Lara Guthrie and I had scheduled the yearbook photo shoot at the absolute last possible minute. It was my job to get all the names of the players so it matched when we finalized the page layout.
The other athletic teams were easy; their photos could be done almost any day after school in the gymnasium or on one of the fields – though we did have to walk to the middle school on the other side of the football field for the swim team. Why they’d put the pool in the middle school when the middle school didn’t have a swim team, I will never know.
For the hockey team, we had to travel to Ice Works, and they had to be in uniform, so the shoot had to be either during practice or before a game. This would be the last home game of the season, so it was our last chance to schedule the photo. The coach was annoyed that we were taking time away from their warm-up practice, but that was his problem. Also, truth be told, I had kinda dropped the ball and forgotten to schedule it until late in the season.
I was still too distracted by Gabe, and by my La Mère application. Though recently Gabe had been more of a distraction than the application, which definitely wasn’t helpful, since I still had to write my personal essay and Natalie never said more than three to four words at a time when I was at work, so I had no idea where I stood on her letter of recommendation.
Gabe and I had been talking a little more regularly, and now when we watched something over the phone it was usually YouTube cooking channels like Food52 or Babish Culinary Universe instead of Netflix. He had great taste in chef personalities; all his favorites – Rick Martinez, Sohla El-Waylly and Claire Saffitz – were my favorites, too.
He also seemed to be getting more and more excited about the La Mère video, judging by the text I received while at the ice rink.
I can’t wait to show you my storyboards!!!!!
I smirked at my phone as Lara continued to adjust her camera to compensate for the harsh ice rink lighting. I didn’t really have an idea what storyboards were, but it still made my stomach tingle.
We were meeting tonight at the Blue Comet Diner so he could give me his ideas for the video. Ava was tagging along because she ‘wanted to watch our chemistry in action’. That was bullshit. She was just hoping that Kevin would be there, which, yes, she asked Gabe to invite him.
‘Tommy?’
I looked up to see Lara Guthrie looking at me expectantly. ‘Yeah, yeah, I’m ready.’ Lara and I wobbled on our ice skates out to the area where the goal usually sat. The hockey coach, Mr Garrity, had already moved it out of the way for the varsity team’s yearbook picture.
