“I don’t bake at all,” I admit. It’s not one of my skills, although, like my mother, I excel at burning things. Mom might be a master of mixing perfume, but she dislikes anything to do with combining ingredients for dinner.
“Good thing you know me, then.” Ana wiggles the lid off the ice cream container as I take out two bowls. “I can do three things well in the kitchen. These lovely snackies, sugar pie, and a chocolate chip cookie you bake in a saucepan. It’s as big as your head.”
“What’s sugar pie?” The deliberately light conversation is enough to almost relax me.
“Like a fruit pie, but the filling is a mix of sugar, butter, and maple syrup. Sort of like a gigantic butter tart.”
“What about those cheese breads you brought to work last week?” I ask.
“That was my mother. She and my sisters are kitchen goddesses.” Her light dims for a moment before she shrugs. “I beat them all at cookies, though. They always tell me I only need to try and I’ll make some man a good wife one day.”
She rolls her eyes before she slathers ice cream between two cookies and hands the stack to me. The cookies are warm, despite Ana trekking them through the winter cold and then doing a floor-by-floor sniff-vestigation to find me.
God, these are good. That sugar pie Ana mentioned must be amazing. How have I never used the earthy sugariness of maple syrup in a perfume? Sugar and fire, with a line of icy water running through the fragrance to reference the spring sap. Or perhaps I would focus on the sugar shack, as the sap reduces in big copper pots standing over wood fires and the walls breathe out the scent of saunas.
“I know that face,” says Ana. We haven’t bothered to sit. I glance down to see crumbs littering my sweater, and move to the sink to dust myself off, careful not to get any on the counter. “That’s your thinkingface.”
“I don’t have a thinking face.”
“Uh, yes, you do and that’s it.” She gives me a faint smile. “We work together, Lucy. I know you better than you think.”
Before I can react to this remarkably inaccurate statement—Ana knows nothing about me—she pulls over a bowl and layers cookies along the bottom. “I’m not going to ask you how you are or what happened back home unless you want me to. Do you?”
I shake my head.
“Got it. Did I tell you about my new fosters?”
She talks about her latest kittens, bonded tabbies named Houdini and Dietrich, as she covers the cookies with ice cream, which is then topped with the dulce de leche sauce she pulls with a flourish out of one of her bags.
We pour out generous amounts of chocolate chips and I uncork a bottle of red before we move over to the couch. Dimming the lights makes the shadows from my candle flicker across the wall like a dancer’s hands.
“I went on a dating thing last night.” Ana’s stack of Bakelite bracelets clack as she shoves up her sleeve.
I nod to indicate interest and take another bite. The chocolate chips have hardened from the ice cream and crunch between my teeth.
She frowns at her bowl. “I don’t seem to be getting anywhere with Jayne, so I figured I’d try something new, you know?”
Living on the periphery of people’s lives for years has made me an expert in drawing them out while keeping my own secrets close. In the end, most people like to talk about themselves more than they like to hear about others. Even sweethearts like Ana.
“How did it go?” I asked.
“It was kind of strange,” she says, tucking her feet up on the couch. “The event was like a maze. In each room, you picked a game to playthat eventually led you through one of two doors.”
“Like an Asian death-match game show?”
“Not gonna lie, I made that exact joke but no one laughed. That should have been my first clue I wasn’t going to find my true love there.”
“What happens when you finish all the games?”
“You find yourself in a room with the people who made the same choices.” She trades in her ice cream for wine. “At least you could talk about the game, which made it less awkward to be in a room with people actively looking for ways to get someone to stick things in their orifices. Eventually, I mean—not there. It wasn’t an orgy.”
“That was not a visual I needed.”
“It’s the visual you get.” She sighs. “In the end, none of them were Jayne.”
“What’s going on with her?” I should have considered a backup career as a therapist.
“I don’t think she’s interested,” Ana says, stuffing her toes down the crack between the couch cushions. “We’ve been talking for a month already.”
