This is an activity I perform well and rarely — the kitchen is functional but largely ceremonial, because most evenings I eat simple meals standing at the counter while reviewing course data, and the idea of cooking for someone implies a domestic intimacy that I have not practiced since Saskia.
Tonight I make pasta. A simple cacio e pepe because it requires technique rather than ingredients — the emulsion of cheese and pasta water, the timing of the pepper, the wrist motion that brings the sauce together. It's a dish that rewards patience and punishes rushing, which feels thematically appropriate given the woman sitting at my kitchen island watching me work.
Tala is perched on a stool with her bare feet hooked around the legs, wearing a white T-shirt and loose shorts, her hair still damp from the shower she took after I gave her a towel and pointed at the guest bathroom and she said "guest bathroom?" with an expression that made clear she had opinions about the wordguestthat she was choosing not to voice.
She's watching my hands.
I can feel the observation. It has a specific weight — not the clinical attention of a physical therapist or the morbid curiosity of someone remembering the clip. She watches my hands the way she watches the flight of a ball she's struck well. With satisfaction. With ownership.
"What?" I say, grating Pecorino.
"Your hands. I keep thinking about them."
"Most people think about them because of the clip. The six putts."
"I think about them because of what they did to me in Singapore."
I set down the grater. Turn.
She's looking at me from the kitchen island with the direct, unfiltered honesty that I am learning is not performance. Talaperforms many things — confidence, indifference, ease. But when she says something that costs her, the performance drops and what remains is a woman who means exactly what she's said and is prepared to defend it.
"I'm falling in love with you."
The sentence enters the kitchen like a change in air pressure. I feel it in my chest before I process the words.
"I know it's been three weeks," she continues. "I know Keoni told you I'm impressive for about three weeks and then the patterns come back. I know you're counting the days, waiting for me to prove him right."
"I'm not waiting for you to fail."
"What are you waiting for?"
The question is precise. It is also a trap — not a malicious one, but the kind of trap that demands honesty because any lesser response will be immediately identified as evasion.
"For the version of you that stays after the excitement fades," I say. "The version that listens when we've been together long enough that my advice feels routine instead of novel. The version that disagrees with me at tournament six the same way she disagrees at tournament two — with respect rather than contempt."
Tala absorbs this. She doesn't flinch. She doesn't argue.
"That's fair."
"It's cautious."
"Those aren't mutually exclusive." She picks up a piece of Pecorino from the cutting board and eats it. "I know my reputation. I know what Keoni told you. He's not wrong — historically. The pattern is real. I get something I want and I stop wanting it and I move to the next thing."
"And this is different because?"
"Because the wanting isn't going away." She looks at me. Gold-brown eyes, steady, unperforming. "Usually by now I'vestarted cataloguing exit routes. What will I say when it ends? How will I frame the breakup? What story will I tell Bisi? I'm always building the departure before the arrival is complete."
"And now?"
"Now I'm sitting in your kitchen watching you make pasta and I'm not thinking about how to leave. I'm thinking about what this kitchen looks like at Christmas."
The pasta water is boiling. I should attend to it. The timing of cacio e pepe is unforgiving — the cheese must meet the water at the right temperature or it seizes, and I've never served a seized sauce to anyone and I don't intend to start.
I turn back to the stove. Drain the pasta. Reserve the water. Begin the emulsion. My hands work — tossing, adding water, folding cheese into the hot starch — and they're steady and precise and I am making dinner for a woman who just told me she's falling in love with me and I am responding by perfecting a sauce because the alternative is responding with words, and the words I have are too large for this kitchen.
We eat at the table. I set two places, which requires retrieving a second placemat from a drawer I haven't opened in months. Tala sits across from me. The marsh light through the windows turns the room amber. The pasta is good. The wine is a white Burgundy I've been saving for an occasion I couldn't define until now.
"Tell me about Wales," she says.
