: Chapter 40

“CLOSE YOUR EYES,” HE said as we got out of the Uber in front of his restaurant. The afternoon had sunken into a beautiful golden evening, and the light through the streets reflected off the windows of the restaurant, so I couldn’t see inside.

“Why? Are you going to kidnap me?” I replied, and he rolled his eyes and put his hands over my eyes so I wouldn’t look. “Do you need my safe word? It’s sassafras.”

“Walk forward—watch your step,” he added as I stepped over something, and into the restaurant. I heard the door close behind me. The restaurant was cold and quiet—we were the only ones in here, by the sound of our footsteps as he led me further inside.

“Is it a pony?” I asked. “Ooh—are you finally cooking me split-pea soup?”

“Can you just be serious for one minute? This is important. Stand there,” he added, placing me in an exact spot on the floor. I chewed on my bottom lip, trying not to smile too wide. “Okay,” he said, “three . . . two . . .”

He let out a deep breath.

“One.”

Then he took his hands away.

Soft rustic chandeliers hung from the ceiling, casting golden light down across the deep-mahogany tables, most of them small, where lovely bouquets of beautiful violet hyacinths sat in glass vases, interspersed with softly flickering candles. The walls were a verdant sage color—not crimson, but crimson didn’t really fit him anymore, anyway—peppered with a menagerie of art pieces, all hung in varying frames and in different sizes across the walls.

He hurried over to a chair and scooted it out. “It’ll take a bit to break them in,” he said as I sat down, and he pushed me in, “but I think we have the time.”

“Is this actual leather?”

“Pleather, but don’t tell the critics,” he added with a wink. Then he took a menu on the table, and handed it to me. It looked almost exactly like the menu I’d seen here nearly two weeks ago. Except there was one difference. Two, actually, and of course I said the one he wasn’t referring to: “You capitalized the name?”

He gave me a look and pointed down at the dessert. “I’m going to make the goddamn lemon pie. The dry ice noodles are staying, though,” he added, a little quieter.

The edges of my mouth twitched into a small smile. I liked the lighting in here now, it turned everything hazy and lovely. Romantic. “I think that’s a good trade,” I replied, still looking at the menu. Smiling at it, really. Because he’d also added another dish. Pommes frites. “Huh? What did you say?”

He knelt down beside me, a hand on my knee, so that we were eye level with each other. He was just so handsome, I wanted to trace the lines of his face, I wanted to sketch the sharpness of his jawbone, I wanted to paint the color of his hair. This scene would go in the section of the travel guide labeled “Scenic Spots” because I wouldn’t get tired of looking at his face for years—decades. I wanted to watch it age, I wanted to see what kind of wrinkles knitted into his smiles.

“Is this what you imagined?” he asked, turning his gaze across the restaurant. “After you reminded me that what made that meal perfect was my granddad, I looked around, and I started to wonder which parts of this restaurant were me.”

I shook my head. “It was all you, every second of the way. I was wrong.”

“Not completely,” he replied, and pulled me to my feet again. “The chairs were a bad idea—they were way too uncomfortable.”

“They were,” I admitted in relief.

“And the lighting was too bright and unforgiving—like I put everyone in a spotlight. But,” he added, “unlike the dishwasher seven years ago, I know that I like the idea of small tables—they’re intimate—but perhaps the white was a little too arrogant.” He pulled me into the middle of the restaurant and stood behind me, wrapping his arms around my middle, his chin on my shoulder, as he slowly turned me to a blank space on the wall in the middle of the restaurant. “It’s for you, if you ever find the inspiration to put something there.”

I pressed my fingers tightly around his at my waist, my lips pressed together as tears stung at my eyes. “Really?” I whispered, and felt him nod against my shoulder.

“Really. All my life, I’ve wanted to make a place that felt comfortable—it’s what I always worked toward. A place where people can come, and eat perfect meals with their granddads, and feel at home. This Hyacinth is me. Not the me from seven years ago, not the press release version of me—but me. And you helped me remember that, Lemon.”

I turned in his arms, and looked up at this lovely man, a blend of an idealistic dishwasher and an experienced chef de cuisine, part little boy whose perfect meal was a plate of French fries, and part man who made the most delicate lemon pies.

“And I love,” he went on, “how every piece of this restaurant now tells a story—how the ambiance is the narrator. And this story is about the past”—he pressed his forehead against mine—“meeting the present.”

“Or the present meeting the past,” I reminded.

He brought my hand up to his lips and kissed it. “And the present meeting the present.”

“And”—I smiled, reminded of that girl sitting in a shared taxi—“the past meeting the past.”

“I think I’m in love with you.”

I blinked. “W-what?”

“Clementine.” And the way he said my name just then felt like a promise, a vow against loneliness and heartache, and I could listen to the way his tongue wrapped around the letters of my name for the rest of my life, “I love you. You’re stubborn, and you worry a little too much, and you always get this crease between your eyebrows when you’re thinking, and you see parts of people they don’t see in themselves anymore, and I love the way you laugh, and the way you blush. I loved the woman I met in apartment B4, but I think I love you a little bit more.”

I swallowed the knot in my throat. My heart felt bright and terribly loud in my ears. “You do?”

He snagged my chin, turning my face up toward his, and whispered, “I do. I love you, Lemon.”

I felt like I could float right off into the sky. “I love you, too, Iwan.”

He leaned close, the smell of aftershave heady on his skin. “I’m going to kiss you now,” he rumbled.

“Please.”

And he kissed me there, in the stolen moments of a Wednesday evening, in a restaurant that felt like his soul, and his kiss tasted sharp and sweet, like the beginning of something new. I smiled against his mouth, and I whispered, “And here I thought you’d find romance in a piece of chocolate.”

He rumbled a laugh. “A girl I once met swore she’d had it in a good cheddar.” His hands sank down to my waist, and he began to sway me a little, back and forth, to the sound of some invisible song. “What would you like tonight, Lemon?”

I kissed him again. “You.”

“For dinner!” He laughed, throwing his head back, and then he said, a bit softer, “Then you can have me.”

“You won’t judge me?”

“Never.”

“I want a PB&J.”

He laughed again, bright and golden, and kissed me on the cheek. “Okay.” And he pulled me into the immaculate kitchen and made me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich from some leftover ends of a loaf of freshly baked bread, grape compote, and natural peanut butter. The bread was soft, and when I kissed him, he tasted like grape jelly, and he told me about the new chefs in his kitchen, and asked me, “What are you going to do with the rest of your life now, Lemon?”

I cocked my head and debated while he leaned over and took a bite of my sandwich. “I don’t know, but I think I should make sure my passport is good.”

“You’re going to travel?”

“I think I might. And, I don’t know, maybe chase the moon.”

He leaned over, since we were both sitting on the countertop, and kissed me gently on the lips. “I think that’s a great idea.”

I put the rest of my sandwich down, and curled my fingers around his collar, feeling the heat from his skin on my cold fingers. In all honesty, I was hungry for something else entirely. “Do you want to come back to my apartment?”

“Only,” he replied, as a crooked grin curved his lips, “if you can guess my favorite color.”

“Well, that’s easy,” I said, and leaned in close to whisper the answer in his ear.

He barked a laugh, his eyes glittering.

“Am I right, James Iwan Ashton?” I asked, already knowing that I was. At first, I hadn’t been all that sure what his favorite color was, but it turned out that he’d been saying it this entire time, repeating it, over and over, every time he called my name.

Because his favorite color was the same as mine.

THE MONROE WAS QUIET that evening. The sky was bright with the last dredges of sunlight, throwing pinks and blues across the horizon, as I led Iwan into the twelve-story building where stone creatures held up the eaves and neighbors played musicals on their violins. Earl was at the front desk, reading Agatha Christie, and he perked up with a wave, and returned to it as we hurried to the elevator.

“You have no idea how many times I walked past this building hoping I’d catch a glimpse of you,” he said as we slipped inside. “I was half afraid that man would recognize me eventually.”

“It’s a wonder we never bumped into each other after the taxi,” I agreed. “What would you have done?”

He bit his bottom lip. “Plenty of things that are probably frowned upon in polite society.”

“Oh, now I’m very interested—Look up,” I added, and when he did, I whispered to him, and my mirror-self whispered to his a halfsecond later, and his eyes widened at the words. He gave me a look as color crept up his collar and tinged his cheeks, making his freckles almost glow. I watched him run his tongue along his bottom teeth, mouth slightly parted.

“Really,” he mumbled.

I gave a shrug. The elevator door opened onto the fourth floor. “Maybe,” I said, smiling a secret sort of smile, and pulled him out of the elevator and down the hall. We passed rows and rows of crimson doors with lion-head door knockers. In front of the door to apartment B4, he pulled me close and wrapped me in his arms and pressed my back against it, and snagged my mouth with his. He kissed fervently, as if he’d been waiting for a drink for years.

“I never got over that,” he murmured, breaking away just long enough for a breath.

I slid my hands up his chest. “What?”

“How well you kiss. Over the last seven years,” he went on, resting his forehead against mine, “I went on so many dates, I kissed so many people, I tried to fall in love again and again, and all I could think about was you.”

I wasn’t sure what to say. “All seven years?”

“Two thousand five hundred and fifty-five days. Not that I was counting,” he added, because clearly he had been, and that made the butterflies in my stomach awfully happy. Seven years—seven whole years.

I whispered, “At least you don’t have to wait a day more.”

He smiled, wide and crooked. And he pressed his lips to mine again. Softly, savoring. “No,” he murmured against my lips, planting another kiss on the corner of my mouth. “But the wait was worth it, Lemon.”

“Say it again?” I murmured, because I still loved the way he said my nickname in his soft Southern drawl.

I felt him smile against my mouth, as his hand came up to cradle my face, and he kissed me again, as if he couldn’t get enough of it, and quite honestly I could spend the rest of my life being kissed by him. His mouth lingered against mine, deeper this time, hungrier. He leaned in, his hands traveling to my hips. I ran my fingers down the line of buttons on his shirt before I slipped them between two of them near his stomach, brushing my fingertips along his skin. I could get lost here in this moment, no travel guides, no itineraries.

Until I remembered—“We’re still in the hallway.”

“Are we?” He kissed my cheek.

“We are.”

Another kiss on my temple, on my nose, returning to hover against my mouth. “I guess we should get inside.”

“Probably.” And I pulled him in to kiss him again, and then I unlocked my apartment door, and we fell in, a mess of arms and limbs. We kicked off our shoes at the door as it closed behind us, and pushed each other down the hall. He slid his arms behind my back, and lifted me up. I wrapped my legs around his middle, pulling him closer. My fingers curled into his ginger hair. He was like a brandy I wanted to drink on a clear summer day, a golden afternoon I wanted to get lost in, an evening over cardboard pizza and lemon pie that was never the same twice—

He sat me up on the counter of the kitchen, trailing kisses down my neck.

“The plant’s new,” he murmured, glancing at the pothos on the counter.

“Her name’s Helga. She won’t mind.”

He laughed against my skin. “Good.” He nibbled my shoulder, his fingers slipping under my skirt, and unzipped it, tugging it off me, and then he undid the buttons of my blouse, and planted a kiss between my breasts.

I undid his buttons one by one, tracing the crescent-shaped birthmark on his collar before I kept going—and then I paused. Felt over a new tattoo I’d never seen before. My eyebrows furrowed. “When did you get this?”

He looked down at the tattoo, and then sheepishly back at me. “About seven years ago. It’s a bit faded now—”

“It’s a lemon flower.”

“Yes,” he replied, looking up into my eyes, searching them. He’d gotten a lemon flower tattooed over his heart.

“What do you tell people, when they ask about it?”

His shyness melted into a smile, warm and gooey like chocolate. “I tell them about a girl I fell in love with at the right place but the wrong time.”

A knot lodged in my throat. “And what are you going to tell them now?”

“That we finally got the timing right.”

“A matter of time,” I whispered.

“A matter of timing,” he proposed, and kissed me again, before his mouth trailed down my stomach to my underwear, until he pulled them down, and I curled my fingers around his auburn curls as he said soft devotions to me right there in my kitchen. He was so tender as he planted his hands against my thighs, and spread my legs wide, and, oh, I really loved this man. I loved this man as he kissed the rest of me, and carried me to my bedroom. As he took time to learn about the scars on my knees from when I fell as a kid, as he traced his fingers, calloused and warm, across the freckles on my back, and kissed the scar on my right eyebrow from a close call with a piece of glass. He pushed my hair back gently and kissed me so deeply I finally realized what my aunt meant when she said you always knew the exact moment you fell—

I did, too.

Sort of.

I fell for every kiss he planted on me, but I’d fallen days, weeks, months, before. I fell a little in that taxi ride with a stranger, and I fell a little more when I asked that stranger, seven years later, to stay. I kept falling, tumbling, not realizing I wasn’t on solid ground anymore, as we had dinner and laughed over wine and danced to violin musicals, as we ate late-night fajitas in the park and walked on glittery sidewalks made of recycled plastic, tripping headlong into something so deep and terrifying and wonderful I didn’t realize I had fallen at all until he came to sit beside me in front of a painting of a dead artist, and told me he loved me.

He meant it as his fingers memorized my body, as he discovered how we fit together again, and he was so much better at it all than he was seven years ago. Like, impeccable game, sir. I suddenly had no qualms with all the women I remembered from his Instagram. They were a lot of practice and I was absolutely reaping the benefits. He wrapped his hands around mine, and as we moved together, he said my name as if it meant something all its own—a spell. Maybe the start of a recipe. For disaster? No, I won’t even think it.

He nibbled the side of my neck, just under my ear, and I pressed myself up against him, trying to be closer than we ever could go. I wanted to enter into his bloodstream, meld into his bones, become a part of him with everything that I was—

“I have dreamed of this for years,” he murmured, kissing the dip of my neck. “I dreamed so much of you.”

“How’s reality?” I asked, myself around him, never wanting to let him go.

“Fuck, so much better.”

I laughed and kissed him, and then he moved faster as our heartbeats rose, and there was no more talking as we fell, harder and harder, toward each other, coming together in the right place at the right time in the right moment, and I loved him. I loved his scars and the cooking burns on his arms and the stupid whisk tattoo behind his ear. I loved how his auburn curls hugged my fingers, and I loved that he had three strands of gray hair.

Only three.

I was probably going to give him more.

And we laughed, and charted each other’s bodies down to our cores, maps of places that were familiar and yet new, and the night was good, and my heart was full, and I was happy, so happy, to fall in love on a night like this, where I felt like I had finally caught the moon, and more.