“Because I want you,” she says.
“Because I love you. Because I am done being dishonest about that.”
There are several responses a graceful man might give. I have never claimed to be graceful. I close my eyes. The kitchen is silent around me.
“I love you,” I say.
The words are plain. As they should be. On the other end, Serena is quiet. I hear her breath catch, and the sound does something to me I will never be able to turn into technique, timing, or sense.
She says, “I know.”
I laugh once, low and helpless.
“That’s my line.”
“You’ve used it enough. I’m borrowing it now.”
“You’re impossible,” I say.
“But you’ve missed me,” she replies.
“Yes,” I say. “I have.”
Then we talk the way we always have when we stop protecting ourselves from the conversation. She tells me about the trial structure, her apartment, the pieces she has filed since returning to New York. I tell her about Claire nearly achieving spiritual transcendence through controlled panic, and about Julien reading the review in my office and somehow surviving the act, about the reservation list becoming obscene by lunch.
She laughs in the right places. She challenges one thing I say about the carrot course from across an ocean. I correct her. She tells me I’m wrong. For several minutes, the distance becomes irrelevant because the shape of us is still exactly itself.
“When are you coming?” I ask.
“I’ll give you the exact date when I have it,” she responds.
“That’s not an answer,” I quip.
“It’s the truth,” she says.
“The truth can be unsatisfying,” I say.
“It often is,” she says.
After the call ends, I remain at the kitchen island with the phone in my hand until the screen goes dark. Paris is late evening outside the windows, the city shifting toward blue and black, the river carrying light away in broken pieces.
I open three cabinets without purpose. Then I close them. I move to the refrigerator and I take out eggs, butter, herbs, mushrooms, and a small piece of cheese because apparently even certainty requires mise en place. I start cooking something I don’t have a plan for, which is what I do with things I don’t have words for yet. The pan warms. Butter melts. Mushrooms give up their water. The smell rises, earthy and warm, filling the kitchen that has been too quiet for six weeks.
She’s coming back. Because shewantsto.
I add herbs at the end and plate the dish for no one. It is simple, almost severe, and better than it has any reason to be. I place it on the kitchen island and look at it for a moment, aware of the absurdity of cooking for an empty room and the precision of why I have done it.
I’ve never built anything—not a restaurant, not a kitchen, not a menu—that I wasn’t certain of before I started.
I am most definitely certain of this.
I pick up the plate, taste one bite, and know exactly what Serena would say about the salt. Then I set it down and look toward the dark hallway, toward the room with the desk I installed when I was still pretending logistics were not a confession.
I’ll leave it where it is.
Epilogue
Serena
