When she returns to take our order, George looks to me.
“Let’s see what you’ve got,” I tell him.
“Frankie will have the All Spruced Up cocktail,” George says, ordering the exact one I would have. “And I’ll have a Drunk Pilots Shouldn’t Fly.” It’s one of the nonalcoholic options.
“Sweet,” Gerry says.
“For dinner, she’ll have the roasted lingcod with spot prawns, the sprout farm quail, and the…” He squints at me. “The tart for dessert.”
Damn, he’s good.
“Of course.”
“So?” George says after he’s put in his order.
“It’s freakish,” I tell him. “Truly unsettling. You even got the drink order right. I was eyeing that cocktail.”
“Mezcal? Spruce Aperol? Of course you were.”
Gerry follows our conversation like it’s a ping-pong match, a mystified smile on her face.
“We’ll also have scallops and two world-famous humdogs,” I tell her. I want to try as much as possible, including the grilled squid on miniature hot dog buns.
“Right on,” Gerry says. “I respect a woman with an appetite. Hope you can keep up,” she says to George.
“Believe me, I can’t.”
We eat every single thing. Dessert is a chocolate tart called the Enchanted Forest with rocks made of meringue and edible soil. It’s one of the best meals I’ve had in a long time. It concludes with our server offering us square boxes of shells, through which we “forage” for sweets. It’s the kind of thing that could come off as pretentious, but instead it feels like a wink from the chef. It’s fun; exuberant in its creativity. It’s a far cry from slow-cooker macaroni.
By the end of the evening, I’m so full and tired—and so whiny about how full and tired I am—that George gives me a piggyback ride from the restaurant to the car, and then again from the parking lot at the resort back to our villa, like he used to when we were coming home from the bar.
“I might fall asleep right here,” I say into his neck as he opens the door and steps inside.
He sets me down. “I don’t think that would work for either of us,” he says. But then he scoops me into his arms and carries me, bride-over-the-threshold style, up to the second floor. The room has been turned down for the evening. The fireplace is on, there’s twinkling music coming from speakers, and the bed is covered with a fresh sprinkling of rose petals. George sets me among them.
I’m a little tipsy from the cocktail, and I grab his hand, tugging him down to the mattress. I lie on my back, my feet still planted on the floor, but he doesn’t flop beside me. He sits on the end of the bed, watching me.
“Remember when I first started cooking?”
“Sure,” he says. “You were obsessed with onions. All the ways they could be sliced, diced, chopped, and grated. Whether a dish was better if you sweated them out first or browned them. How long they took to caramelize.”
“Always longer than what a recipe says,” I add. “I was so excited back then. I used to be so…I don’t know…hungry?”
His smile is wistful. “You were utterly desperate for an adventure.”
I can’t help but laugh. “Yes. For adventure and fun and food and…life. I think that’s why Brie’s text bothered me. I’ve lost that feeling. Two months ago, I was so fucking smug. I thought I had it all figured out. Now look at me.”
George lies back and we stare at each other.
“I’m looking.”
He holds my gaze for a moment, but then his eyes roam my face. “Do you want to know what I see?”
I nod.
“I see someone with so much talent and creativity and passion. I see the person who got me through some of the darkest times of my life. I see the strongest, most stubborn, most frustrating woman I know.”
I feel my cheeks heat.
