Sideways

by Lisa Hughey

  He pulled up. He’d been composing the dish in his head and mentally going through the necessary steps to prepare it. Visualization. He hadn’t even hesitated.

  A weird unsettled feeling stole his breath. This wasn’t like the soup where he’d been coerced into helping Phoebe. This was him, creating a dish, and actively thinking about cooking.

  Just like with the salad a few minutes ago.

  “You’re going to bake a cobbler?” The pleasure in her voice was hard to miss. She smiled ruefully. “Too bad I can’t eat it.”

  What? “You need to worry less about your weight. Life is meant to be lived, a banquet of tastes and textures and experiences.”

  “I have celiac disease. I can’t have gluten unless you want me in your bathroom for the next twenty-four hours.” She clapped a hand over her mouth as if appalled by what she’d just said.

  Celiac. So not just avoiding carbs but actively sick from the gluten in flour. The protein damaged the small intestine. He’d made assumptions without getting enough information. “I’m sorry I misjudged you.”

  “Not a big deal.” She smiled. “I do pay attention to what I eat so it was a logical conclusion. It was just incorrect.”

  Her smile washed away his remorse.

  His brain whirled with so many thoughts. He’d judged her the other day in the Speakeasy. He should know better. But one thought stood out. He was determined to make something she could eat. Considering and discarding different grain options while his brain worked out the cooking problem.

  She sighed. “I really do miss baked goods. My nanny used to make the most wonderful cinnamon rolls that I loved. Haven’t had them in so long I’ve forgotten what they taste like.”

  “I’ll come up with something you can eat.”

  “Oh.” Her face glowed with pleasure. “That would be…wonderful.”

  Maybe a fruit galette with buckwheat flour? Or a savory Pão de Queijo with tapioca flour?

  He wasn’t-well versed in all the different options for gluten-free cooking. He’d always just arrogantly used what he wanted and screw the customer. But now he found himself wanting to please her.

  11

  Tracy

  Tracy was halfway up a tree carefully picking apples from an ancient tree.

  The ladder had been just standing in the middle of a row in between the trees. Off to their left, some newer tree varieties with clusters of unripe fruit had been trained to grow flat on espaliers to maximize the available space. Bees buzzed in the warm late summer air searching for pollen, and birds chirped and sang songs flitting between the trees.

  Each section of the orchard had their own variety. The beginning of a section of trees was marked with a fancy wood plaque, engraved with wood burning script, stating the type of apple and when the trees had been planted.

  According to Colt different apples were good for different food because of sweetness, texture, and moisture content. Who knew?

  Colt wore a bandana over his hair, his skin bronzed from the day in the sun.

  His T-shirt read Choose Your Weapon with a row of kitchen utensils, only two of which Tracy recognized, the whisk and the knife. He’d cut the sleeves off the shirt, his bare arms showing off his biceps.

  He’d found bicycles in the shed behind the tiny cabin and they’d biked along the tire tracks and into the neighboring orchard. When he’d lifted her onto the bike, she had to wonder why they hadn’t just gone back to bed.

  Bed was nice. Lots of sex. Lots of intimacy.

  Instead she was up a ladder, getting hit in the face with leaves while she reached through branches, straining to grab an apple.

  “Going to the grocery store would be a lot easier,” she teasingly grumped.

  “But this is more fun.”

  “Your idea of fun is different than mine.” But she was kidding.

  He was next to her as she strained on her toes to grab a beautiful red apple that was slightly out of reach. “Let me get it.” He easily plucked the apple, his arm brushing hers. “That’s a gorgeous apple.”

  He rubbed the fruit on his T-shirt until it was shiny, then took a giant bite. The crunch was loud as he bit into the apple. He was smiling as he did it. Smiling!

  “Yum.” He finished chewing and then held it out to her. “Have a bite.”

  Tracy grabbed his wrist with one hand and held on. She leaned forward, her gaze not leaving his as she took a bite of his apple. She chewed the sweet and tart treat slowly, savoring the fresh fruit.

  When she was finished with her bite, she said, “I thought Eve gave Adam the apple.”

  “You want to sin with me?” Colt raised his eyebrow.

  “I thought we already did.”

  “Practice makes perfect,” Colt shot back.

  She laughed. She thought about how much fun they’d had in bed. She’d been able to let loose and be herself. “Anytime, Chef Man.”

  Colt studied the apple in his hand. “It’s believed that the fruit wasn’t really an apple. That it was a pomegranate.” He got a faraway look in his eyes. “I make a summer salad with arugula, pomegranate, goat cheese, and pulled pork with a ras el hanout spice rub that is out of this world.”

  “That sounds amazing.” She loved that he’d said I make, present tense, not I made, past tense as if he wouldn’t again. “What is ras el hanout?” She wanted to keep him talking about food. His face was pure joy when he was discussing cooking. He missed it. That was clear from the way he talked about it. But she knew better than to push him into cooking.

  “It’s a mix of spices—cinnamon, cardamom, cumin, paprika, clove, nutmeg, allspice, coriander, ginger, turmeric chili peppers—used in North African/Middle Eastern/Moroccan cooking. I make my own blend but it varies depending on what I can find.”

  “Yum.” She knew better than to push but she really hoped she got a chance to taste that dish. To distract him, she said, “I make a mean microwaved leftover of barbeque takeout.”

  “It really is appalling that you don’t know how to cook.”

  She could make excuses, but the truth was she hadn’t had time or the interest to learn. “Why learn when there are all these amazing chefs out there ready to ply me with their creations?”

  “Ply you?” He laughed as he helped her down the ladder. “You really are a princess.”

  “I don’t have a crown charm for nothing.” She shook her bracelet at him.

  They wandered through the orchard, the scent of sweet sap and flowers in the air. Bees swooped and buzzed in a lazy arch through the bright blue sky. Puffy white clouds floated like marshmallow fluff.

  “Look at those clouds.” Colt had stopped and was staring up at the sky. “Like a perfect Pavlova.”

  “Oh, I had one at Café Boulud in New York.” The sweet treat had dissolved on her tongue.

  “What do you see?” he prodded.

  She looked around. “Trees.”

  “In the sky.” Silly.

  “Not much. It hurts my neck.”

  “Then lie down.”

  “On the ground?”

  “Absolutely. We can watch the clouds go by.”

  He plopped on the ground and lay back, beckoning to her. Tracy studied the ground, studied him, noting the free and easy smile on his face. She didn’t want that happy, carefree look to disappear, so she dropped down next to him.

  “Didn’t you do this as a kid?” Colt said from beside her.

  “Get my clothes dirty and my hair mussed?” She shuddered. “Not unless I wanted to get yelled at.”

  “Okay. I promise not to yell at you if your hair is messy,” he teased. “Lie back.”

  “And do what?”

  “Just stare at the clouds. Watch the world go by. Dream. Do nothing.”

  That sounded both incredibly simple and incredibly hard all at the same time.

  Do nothing? Thayers were never idle. There were always new people to meet and causes to champion.

  She lay beside him, stiff and a little weirded out that she
was literally lying in dirt and grass.

  “Try to relax.”

  “It’s harder than you’d think.”

  “I was there once.” Colt threaded his fingers with hers. They lay side by side, their arms touching, his toes touching hers, partially shaded by the canopy of the largest apple tree but still able to see the sky. “But now I try to take in simpler pleasures.”

  She tried to relax. She loved listening to his voice, the nuances and the subtle emotions when he talked about experiencing life. She’d never met anyone as determined to just be present in his life without the push to always be doing more. It was incredibly appealing.

  “Are you happy?” She was truly curious. After all, at one time he’d been running a restaurant empire.

  He didn’t toss off a flip answer. He hesitated, as if he were really thinking about her question. “Not yet. But I’m getting there. Look, that one looks like a giant honey pot.”

  She didn’t see it. “I think that one looks like Lincoln’s top hat.” She pointed to another one.

  “Did you know when he was a lawyer he used to keep his papers inside the hat?”

  She laughed. “That’s an interesting thing to know.”

  “I had an excellent grade school history teacher.”

  They lay on their backs pointing at the clouds and saying what they thought each cloud looked like. Their answers were wildly divergent, but their amusement was joint.

  After a few more minutes, they got up and finished filling their baskets with fruit.

  Tracy could feel the slight warmth over her nose and cheeks.

  Getting outside had been the right call.

  Her heart was pumping from the exercise and full of gratitude for the beautiful day as they biked back with a basket overflowing with apples, sailing along the dirt tracks to Colt’s cabin. Where he might cook for her.

  He’d looked so shocked when he was talking about making the cobbler. Getting back into the kitchen again of his own accord was a big step.

  They made it back to the cabin without mishap even though it had been a long time since she’d been on a bike. She dropped the kickstand and grabbed her BPA-free water bottle, quenching her thirst from the sun and the exercise.

  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so free. She dropped the bottle and held out her arms, then whirled around with her head tilted toward the bright blue sky.

  “What are you doing?” He was laughing.

  “Making myself dizzy.” She stopped spinning and teetered in front of him. Her head continued to whirl, the sensation making her feel light and free. Tracy took one step and lurched to the right.

  Luckily Colt was there to catch her. “Whoa.”

  She laughed. “You caught me.”

  “I did,” he said softly.

  “Don’t drop the apples.” He had the basket looped over his forearm. The weight of the fruit flexed his muscles. She couldn’t say that she’d ever really considered arms sexy but when she studied his, she decided that they were totally sexy. “You have sexy forearms.”

  He flushed. “That’s not a thing.”

  “Sure it is.” Tracy said slyly, “I’m looking right at them. And they are seeexxxx-eee. Total arm porn.”

  He snorted. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were drunk.”

  “Ha-ha.” Tracy spun around again. Cee-Cee was feeling frisky and irreverent. “Drunk on life!” she shouted.

  As they headed toward the charming porch of the cabin, she realized she hadn’t reached for her phone in the past hour.

  Instead she reached for his hand. His palm was solid against hers and she swung their arms.

  “You twirl around like that often?” he asked curiously.

  “Nope. I never really had time to be a kid.” She’d been expected to be present regularly, especially during election years. Her parents trotted out the perfect family, the fairy-tale romance, the obedient and accomplished children. She was considered well rounded, she played the piano, had a mean doubles game, could tack a sailboat, and converse on world politics. She wasn’t sure when she’d started to hate the expectations but she had definitely soured over the past few years.

  She and her brother were very different. He’d loved the media attention. She’d learned to use it to her advantage, but she’d never enjoyed the need to always be on for the camera and the press and the voters.

  Fortunately, nowadays she was mainly in the background. Until all this hoopla with her matchmaking app. Normally, she worked in her father’s Boston office part-time. Worked at their family foundation part-time. And monitored her Fairy Tale business daily.

  His look was quizzical.

  “There were always obligations,” she shared reluctantly. Dinners, parties, photo ops. “My family was very active socially.”

  Colt shuddered.

  “It wasn’t all bad. I liked dressing up. And I loved meeting new people. Everyone is so different.”

  There had been good times. There’d also been plenty of times when she’d had to smile and pretend when inside her heart was breaking. Every fucking time someone brought up her parent’s marriage and their fairy-tale romance, the wealthy young scion who met and married a woman from a totally different background and how deliriously happy they seemed, she’d wanted to throw up. That part she had loved until she found out that the media story that her father and mother perpetuated was a lie and that her parents had been unfaithful for years.

  “So far you aren’t convincing me.”

  “I love learning about people’s stories. Where they came from. Where they are going. What they want out of life.” Finding ways to connect them. She shook off the memories. “What was growing up like at your house?”

  “Fairly typical. My dad worked in a friend’s small restaurant. My mom was an office manager during the day and she helped at the restaurant at night. It was loud, chaotic, happy.”

  “You got along with your siblings?”

  “Sure. I mean we fought over dumb stuff, of course. And mornings before school with three sisters was a nightmare.”

  “A nightmare?”

  “One of my sisters was really into makeup and fashion. We had two bathrooms for the eight of us.” He had a reminiscent smile on his face. “Man, she used to have cosmetic shit all over the place. Creams, and brushes, and tubes of color. And God forbid if we touched it. Or used it. That was cause for death.”

  Sisters and brothers and chaos. It sounded like fun. And so different from her very proper, very quiet upbringing. “Sounds lovely.”

  “I used to dream about living alone.” He had stared into the distance. “I still remember thinking that I would have made it if I had my own place. But when I finally got my own fancy apartment in the North End, I was never there to enjoy it. You’d think that after the chaos of the restaurant and the dance of working in a fully functioning busy kitchen that that quiet would be nice…but it was so quiet.”

  “Too quiet?”

  “Maybe.” Colt shrugged. “I was never home. And at the end I was usually drunk.”

  Oh. He was sharing, admitting that he’d had a problem. “You live alone now.”

  “True.” Colt nodded.

  It was invasive and none of her business. Tracy Thayer would never in a million years ask so personal a question, but Cee-Cee didn’t have a filter. “You still drinking?”

  “Gave it up.” Colt looked her straight in the eye, his gaze serious, intent. “I had to. It was killing me. It was all killing me. I will never go back to that life in the spotlight. It’s toxic.”

  His words struck like a knife to the heart. Today had been lovely. Every moment imbued with a beauty and serenity that had been missing in her life for far too long.

  But with that sentence she knew it was time. “I should go.”

  Colt

  Colt had screwed up.

  Today had been one of the best in recent memory. Last night’s sex had been amazing, The physical intimacy was easy to brush away. Maybe
it was because it had been a while. Over a year. But he didn’t think so.

  Before, he’d been so mired in his own head that sex hadn’t even been on his radar.

  But last night had been fun and healing and right now he was feeling great.

  Today had been a different kind of intimacy. The sheer wholesomeness of it. He felt as if he’d been living shrouded in mist and suddenly the fog had cleared and the sun had come out. That was all Cee-Cee.

  But something he’d said had upset her.

  He’d have to be blind to miss when her smile dimmed, and she abruptly decided to leave. He had wanted to argue. To cajole. But maybe she was right to head back to her motel.

  This connection between them was temporary. She didn’t live here. She had a life somewhere else.

  And he had no intention of leaving. He’d found a measure of peace in the country that he had no desire to give up.

  He wasn’t about to upset that balance.

  A few hours later, Colt was still thinking about her. He’d dropped her off at the motel. She hadn’t invited him in. Which was fine.

  Instead his brain had gone to their conversation this morning.

  He’d stopped by the Kwik Stop on the way home and to his surprise he found a section of Bob’s Red Mill products, including gluten-free flours.

  He had a basket full of apples and visions of different ideas dancing in his head. His palms itched with the desire to get back in the kitchen. He’d bought the flours and other cooking supplies…just in case.

  When he got back to the cabin, he put the baking goods away and pretended they didn’t exist.

  The next morning, after weeding the garden and then trying to spend a few hours editing his current freelance project, he gave up.

  His head and heart continued to wander and be distracted by the thoughts of flavors and textures dancing in his brain. Finally, he gave in to the longing to get back in the kitchen.

  He stood in the tiny kitchen of his cabin.

  There was a window over the sink flanked by upper cabinets that held the dishes and some pantry basics. He had no idea what supplies he had. He wasn’t even sure he had a cutting board. He didn’t cook. He scrambled the occasional egg and ate sandwiches and salads. That was it.