Not even an hour later, the kitchen is loud in the best way.
I’m at the stove tending pasta while Celeste leans against the island, a glass of wine in her hand—the one she brought because I was so focused on food, I forgot booze. The steaks are resting on the cutting board. The bruschetta is demolished. Celeste ate four pieces and then accused me of secretly being Italian, which is the highest compliment she’s ever given me.
“I don’t think my mom or dad ever cooked in this kitchen,” she says, and she says it with the slight disbelief of someone who has walked into a house she expected to find in renovation chaos and instead found a man doing very domestic things. “We ate so much takeout growing up.”
“Like regular-people takeout—McDonald’s, Taco Bell, KFC? Or rich-people takeout?”
She narrows her eyes. “Why does that matter?”
“Being raised on cheap, greasy questionable meat, hurled at you through drive-thru windows paints a very different picture than bags of gourmet meals from high-end restaurants. One a little pathetic, the other a little pretentious.”
“So either way, I can’t win?”
I laugh. “Let me take a guess.”
“Okay, fine. We were a little pretentious. Not at the same echelon of Whit’s family or anything, but my parents were also consumed with appearances.”
“This is why I wanted to cook,” I say, sneaking a sly smile her way. “Because you would have brought something from a restaurant that costs sixty dollars a plate and comes with a foam I’d have to pretend to understand.”
“Foam is a legitimate culinary technique.”
“Foam is soap that freed itself from the sink and snuck its way onto a plate.”
Mum laughs from the kitchen table where she’s been watching us with the barely concealed delight of a woman attending a show she bought tickets for months ago. She’s settled into the chair I positioned specifically for her—good lumbar support, arms for leverage, close to the table but not boxed in.
“Well it must sound silly to eat out when you can cook like this. You guys are living the dream.”
“Oh no, dear, don’t be fooled,” Mum says. “We don’t eat like this every night. Most nights it’s whatever he can throw together before he falls asleep on the couch with his boots still on. He’s only trying to impress you.”
“Mum.”
“What? It’s charming. Let me enjoy this.”
Celeste sets down her wineglass. She looks at my mum with that specific attentiveness that misses nothing—and then she moves.
It’s not a big movement. She pushes off from the island, crosses the kitchen in four easy steps, and wraps her arms around my mother.
The hug is careful. Gentle. She minds the spine, the posture, the places where contact could mean pain. But it’s not tentative; it’s warm and deliberate, the hug of a woman who has made a decision about someone and is communicating it through her arms instead of her words.
“I’m so glad I got to meet you, Ada,” Celeste says.
Mum’s face does something I will remember for the rest of my life. Her eyes close. Her arms come up and squeeze back with a strength that tells me the hug landed somewhere deep. And she smiles. A real one where joy takes over and moves your muscles for you. The smile I’d move mountains for.
“It’s lovely to meet you too, darling. Saylor has told me absolutely nothing about you, which means you’re probably very important.”
Celeste laughs. It’s the unguarded laugh—the one from Tidewater House, the one from the caseworker visit when I told her I’d thought about burning the loveseat. The laugh that tells me she came here tonight, unarmed. Maybe as curious as I am.
I look at the two of them together and for the briefest, most reckless moment, I let myself imagine a life where this makes sense. Where this is permanent. Where Celeste comes home tothis kitchen every night and Mum sits at that table with her tea and I cook dinner and the baby is upstairs in the sage-green nursery and the tire swing is getting use and nobody is lying and nobody is leaving.
The moment lasts three seconds. I put it away before it can become a plan.
We eat on the deck. The steaks are good—better than good. The pasta is the recipe Mum taught me when I was fourteen, the one she learned from a neighbor in Wollongong who was actually Italian and actually knew what she was doing, unlike every other Aussie who claims their Bolognese is authentic. The wine Celeste brought is expensive and pairs perfectly, and I pretend to know what “notes of blackcurrant” means when she describes it because I’m learning that being with Celeste would mean learning an entirely new vocabulary.
The evening is warm for the season. The oak tree throws long shadows across the yard. The tire swing hangs motionless in the still air like it’s waiting.
“This property has incredible potential,” I say, leaning back in my chair. “The guesthouse could be expanded—add a second bedroom, update the bathroom, make it a proper studio or office space. You’d need permits, obviously. And the backyard—there’s plenty of room for an outdoor kitchen. Proper barbie, stone countertop, maybe a pizza oven if you’re feeling ambitious.”
“A pizza oven,” Celeste repeats, in the tone of a woman considering a concept from another planet.
