Ruin You

by Molly O'Keefe

“The chef thing?” I ask, because I think it’s hot, too.

  “The respect thing.”

  “It’s part of the job.”

  “Are you being humble again?”

  “No,” I laugh. Pulling out the ingredients I’ll need for an omelette. “It’s the tradition of kitchens. One boss and everyone knows it, otherwise it’s chaos.”

  “Will your family be coming out to see the place?”

  “Eventually,” I lie. “March maybe, before planting.”

  The problem with lies is belief. That’s how things fall apart in the end. When I stop believing the lies, it’s just a story. When I believe the lies, it’s as much truth as the actual truth.

  And this old lie, this childhood dream I made real when I was nineteen, when I met Megan. I’ve long since stopped believing it. And as far as stories go, it’s a bad one. The sappy, rose-colored dream of a kid with a broken heart.

  “And your brothers —” he asks.

  “Do you have any allergies?”

  “Mushrooms.”

  “You’re allergic to mushrooms?”

  “No, I just loathe them.”

  I crack open three eggs from the henhouse behind the garden.

  “I feel bad taking up your time when you must be so busy,” he says.

  “We’re not. Not now. We have a few dinner reservations for the week. A dinner we’re hosting for local suppliers Thursday night. But most guests don’t show up until Friday afternoon. Except…you, I guess.” I watch him out of the corner of my eye.

  “It’s so peaceful here,” he says. “I can’t imagine going back to the city just yet. Is it a problem that I’m staying?”

  “We’re an inn, Simon. Staying is the whole point.”

  I put a knob of butter in the pan and tilt it, spreading the butter around. “Do you live in Los Angeles?”

  “When I’m in the country. Yes.”

  “You travel a lot?”

  “Travel makes it sound like a vacation.” He rubs at his forehead. “Like I’m on a beach. Or visiting museums.”

  “What are you doing then?”

  He’s silent for a second and glances over. “War zones. Natural disasters. Refugee camps.”

  “Most of the people who run foundations don’t go into the field like that, do they?”

  “I don’t know what other people do,” he says, sounding weary. Sad.

  “You can stay as long as you like,” I tell him.

  “I’m sure I’ll get the nerve to head back home soon.”

  Those words and his wry smile squeeze my heart.

  “Where did you grow up?” I ask.

  “San Francisco.”

  Me, too, I almost say. Stopped, just in time, by my lie.

  “You mentioned your mother, is she still there?” I ask.

  “No, she died several years ago.”

  “And your father?”

  “He died four days after she did.”

  I turn to him, shocked. “I’m sorry. That must have been awful.”

  “It was. He…he killed himself.”

  “Simon!”

  “After mom died things were intense.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  He smiles a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “It’s all right. It was a long time ago.”

  “Nothing is a long time ago. Not when it comes to our parents.”

  He’s silent for so long I look up at him, only to find him staring at me.

  “I think,” he says, “that you’re exactly right.”

  “Are you alone?” I ask and then realize how bald that question is and quickly add, “I mean…do you have siblings?”

  “I grew up with a kid. Tommy. He’s like a brother.”

  Like a brother, how keenly I understand that. For a moment I wish I could say that to him. That I could tell him how well I understand gathering family. Choosing your people to love.

  But the McConnell family farm is the lie I picked eight years ago. It’s the lie I’m caught in. Like a snow globe of a corn field.

  “Toast?” I ask, already slicing some from the sourdough loaf wrapped in a towel at the bread station. If he doesn’t want it, I’ll eat it. I’m suddenly starving.

  “Who says no to toast?”

  “Lots of very skinny people,” I joke.

  “Your parents must be proud of you,” he says.

  No. She’s not very proud. My mother doesn’t like me much.

  I normally don’t think these things that are so close to the truth. They don’t even occur to me. Eight years of being Penny McConnell has burned most of Tina Andreas out of my brain.

  But there’s something about Simon that makes me…forget who I am. Or remember who I am.

  Or something.

  “Mostly she just wanted me to be different.” I give him a safer answer.

  “Than her?”

  “Than the way I am.”

  That slips out without thought. Words far closer to the truth than I’d ever said out loud before.

  “You’re too wild for an Iowa farm mom?”

  I was too needy for Marianne Andreas. Too plain. Too contrary. I wasn’t the doll she thought I was going to be. She couldn’t dress me up and put me away when she was done.

  I slide the omelette with home-smoked trout and crème fraiche onto a plate.

  “My God,” he says, looking at the plate like I’d made magic happen.

  “Eat,” I say, blushing a little at his wonder.

  “Have you eaten?” he asks. “I mean, I remember that about my mom when she’d host holidays for our neighbors and family. She’d forget to eat.”

  “I didn’t forget to eat,” I say. It was just several hours ago and as if on cue my stomach growls. “Nature of the business,” I say with a shrug. “Make beautiful food and your body craves beautiful food.”

  “Well, I understand craving beautiful things,” he says without leaning hard into the innuendo, like it is just a fact of nature that he would want me. And that I am beautiful. “Share this with me. It’s so much and too good to waste.”

  “I will,” I say. But I don’t sit down.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks.

  “You were lying about why you didn’t take me back to your room.”

  TWELVE

  Penny

  JESUS. I have NO IDEA why I’m saying this. What terrible recklessness is speaking?

  He puts down the fork, his eyes on mine.

  “I was,” he admits.

  “I don’t… I don’t understand why you’re flirting with me now,” I say, my voice rough because honesty hurts. “If you don’t want me.”

  “I want you. But last night you were drunk. I was drunk. And…you said you have a habit of ruining things and I didn’t want to be the tool you used to ruin last night.”

  My heart is pounding in my neck. My fingertips. I’m telling him a thousand lies, one after the other — the only true thing is my desire for him and my food. And yet, he just pulled me apart.

  Again.

  “Tonight is another night, isn’t it?” he says with that grin that makes me crazy.

  “I can’t,” I say. “I can’t fool around with a guest. I can’t be seen sneaking out of your room —”

  “I’ll sneak out of yours.”

  It’s sweet the way he says it. And exciting. But I promised Megan and it was the right promise to make.

  “The inn is too new,” I say. “I can’t jeopardize anything.”

  I’m trying so hard to be different.

  “I understand that,” he says. “I respect it.”

  “Thanks.”

  He touches my hand and I gasp. I actually gasp. It’s instant, the heat in me. The desire. Like everything before was just an act and this — this lust — is the only thing that really matters.

  I lick my lips and he groans in his throat.

  “What are we going to do about this?” His thumb strokes my knuckles and I feel it under my skin. In my bloodstream.

  “Ignor
e it?”

  “I don’t think I can, Penny.”

  It’s the nature of liars to believe that everyone is lying. But I believe him. I believe him because I want to.

  And that shouldn’t be so pleasing, but it is. It’s so fucking pleasing.

  “Well, we don’t have a choice, Simon. So put your mouth to use and eat before your omelette gets cold.”

  He stands and leans over to pull the spare stool from the corner right up to where he’s already sitting.

  “Only if you eat with me,” he says.

  I shouldn’t do it. It’s a bad decision and that’s probably why I sit on the stool. It’s why I pick up the second fork and share the omelette with him.

  After his first bite, he puts his fist down on the table with a thunk, closes his eyes and moans. After my first bite, I reach over for the flake salt and sprinkle some on.

  “Try it again,” I say and he takes another bite.

  “Why is that so much better?” he asks, wide-eyed. Again, like my cooking is magic, like he just can’t get his head around it.

  “It’s just salt, Simon. Calm down.” But inside I’m so pleased. So delighted to delight him.

  We dig in and he eats two thirds of the omelette while I eat the rest. Pulling out pieces of trout and pushing it over to his side when I notice how much he likes it.

  “Why did you become a chef?” he asks.

  “It’s a way to make people happy without having to talk to them.”

  He howls with laughter and I feel dangerous satisfaction. “Did you always want to manage your mother’s trust?”

  “No,” he says, the laugh draining away.

  “What did you want to do?”

  He blows out a long breath and shrugs. “Make her proud.”

  The words, the honesty of them, hit me in the stomach and I feel the truth of them so keenly because they are so much the truth for me, too.

  I just only ever wanted to make my mother proud and I…never could.

  “This is amazing,” he says, looking at the small bits of herbs and flakes of trout that are the only things left on the plate. “Like I’ve had versions of this, but this is so much better.”

  “It’s not that difficult. Local, fresh, handmade…that stuff matters with food.”

  “Well, not difficult for you, maybe.”

  “Do you cook for yourself?”

  “Does toast count?”

  “Nope.”

  “How about sandwiches?”

  “So, the answer is you don’t cook?”

  “I make Mutton Biryani,” he says suddenly. “I mean, when I’m home and have the time, which isn’t often. But…I make my father’s special recipe.”

  “What’s special about it?” Family heirloom recipes were priceless commodities in my business.

  “That it was my father’s,” he says softly, moving a piece of trout on the plate like he is going to pick it up, but doesn’t. “My dad came to the States from England. But his dad came from Pakistan. And we’ve lost a lot of the old things, you know? Old traditions. We don’t practice Islam. But that biryani…that’s the same.”

  “What was your father like?” I have an obsession with fathers, having spent a lot of my life without one. And then, once he was in my life, I spent a lot of time wishing he wasn’t.

  The longer he is silent the more I realize, I dove too deep into private waters. I mean, sex is easy in a way. Talking a million times harder. And talking about dads? Forget about it.

  “I shouldn’t have pried. You don’t have to answer —”

  “He was a very good man,” Simon says, nodding as if he offered himself his own confirmation. “He was a bookkeeper. Worked for a lot of local businesses in our neighborhood. Didn’t make a lot of money, but every Sunday he went through our building, to all the seniors who lived there, and balanced their check books. Answered their questions. My mom was lawyer. Legal aid. And she did wills for everyone. Made sure all the widows and widowers in the building were taken care of.”

  “They sound sweet.”

  “Ah…no one would call my mom sweet,” he says with a laugh. “Dad yes. A very sweet man. My mom…she was a firebrand. A shit disturber of the first class.”

  “And you took after your dad?” I ask, because he’s been so sweet. So nothing but sweet. Well, when it’s sexy time, he stops being sweet. But even that has its own sweetness.

  He coughs into his hand but, after a second, nods. “I do. Yes.”

  “How did the trust come about?” I ask, wondering how a bookkeeper and a legal aid lawyer made enough to donate money to charity, much less start a foundation and he just looks at me as if I’ve caught him off guard.

  “Your mom’s —”

  “Inheritance,” he answers. “My grandmother on my mom’s side. Lots of money.”

  “Penny!” Megan yells, coming into the kitchen with a commotion. And even though we aren’t touching or doing anything, I leap off the stool like we were.

  Like I am guilty. Because I always feel guilty.

  “Back here,” I yell and pull the plate with the omelette away to place it in the work sink, so Megan won’t see the evidence of our intimate little breakfast.

  “Hey, I know you say you don’t want to do interviews but the phone is literally ringing off the hook.” Megan turns the corner and catches sight of Simon, getting off his stool. “Well, good morning, Simon,” she says brightly, but I can hear the dark part of her tone. “I didn’t realize —”

  “I missed breakfast,” he says with a grimace. “And Penny made me some eggs. The best eggs I’ve ever had, I might add.”

  The look she gives me is so specifically blank, I can feel myself get angry. They were just some fucking eggs. I wasn’t fucking him in the walk-in.

  That I want to is irrelevant.

  “What’s up?” I ask. Megan glances at Simon, because this is the moment when most people would excuse themselves. But Simon is cleaning up the crumbs he’d left on the table.

  I wave Megan on because Simon is no threat. Not to the business anyway. My peace of mind is another story.

  “I’m overwhelmed. I know you said you wouldn’t do interviews, but…I’m underwater.”

  I want to say no. No is the right thing for me to say. Better for everyone. That Food and Wine interview was so disastrous Megan actually cringed when she read it. But the lies are so thick in my mouth now. Like rocks that I have to spit just to get them out.

  “You’re right,” Megan says, reading my silence. And maybe remembering the hard-and-fast rule I set out at the beginning of this venture. No. Interviews. “I can manage —”

  But I can see her stress, like smoke rising out of her hair from her overworked brain.

  “I’ll do some interviews,” I say. “No photos.”

  “Great,” she says with such a sigh of relief it’s obvious how underwater she really is. “I’ll forward you the emails.”

  Megan glances at Simon with a smile that does not reach her eyes. “Enjoy the rest of your day, Simon,” she says.

  “I will,” he says with that affable smile that makes me think he has no idea the tension that he’s causing Megan.

  That he’s causing me.

  Megan lifts her eyebrow at me and I want to tell her I’m a full-grown, adult woman. And I want to tell her that Simon isn’t like my other bad decisions. He, in fact, is so different, he doesn’t really feel like a bad decision.

  But Megan won’t see it that way.

  And I can’t blame her.

  “Why don’t you like doing the interviews?” Simon asks when Megan is gone.

  “I’m just…I guess I’m not that interesting. Or I don’t know how to be interesting.”

  On the inside of my wrist his finger finds my pulse and it pounds against his touch.

  “Simon,” I breathe.

  “I find you interesting,” he says. Both of us are looking at his hand on my wrist like we’re not sure what it’s going to do next. What we want it to do next.<
br />
  And then my phone, set on one of the stainless-steel shelves, starts to rattle and buzz with incoming emails.

  The interview requests.

  Breathing hard, I pull away. And his finger drops from my wrist and it seems outrageous the effect of just that finger against my skin. But it is real.

  And I don’t know what to do with myself.

  “I’ll see you tonight,” I say. “For dinner.”

  “See you then,” he says and leaves the kitchen and it’s a little like he’s torn a hole out of the space. Like there’s a Simon-shaped blank spot beside me.

  Ridiculous, I chastise myself. I’m too busy for this nonsense.

  I head to the office that I’m supposed to be sharing with Megan but don’t use nearly as much as she does. I’ll grab my other laptop, the newer one, and go work in the kitchen. I take the steps two at a time and, even though I don’t mean to, I still look at my watch.

  Eight hours until dinner.

  And I’m happy.

  THIRTEEN

  Penny

  MEGAN WANTS me to do this thing at dinner. To explain some part of the meal or my process. So, I wear my chef whites and explain how I make I make the egg yolk ravioli and answer questions.

  All while trying not to dwell on the fact that Simon isn’t here.

  His setting is empty. His plate clean. His wineglass untouched.

  Part of me understands this to be just a thing that is true. And part of me understands it to be a thing that is always true.

  I spent my childhood getting my hopes raised only to have them dropped from the highest possible distance.

  I have been conditioned over so many years to not be bothered by this — a man not showing up.

  But I am bothered. Mostly because I’ve been thinking about it for too much of the day. How seeing Simon would be a reward for all the interviews I did. The old lies I told with all the conviction I could muster. Which isn’t much.

  Every lie shaved off a piece of me and now I am raw. And uncertain.

  Penny McConnell was a person I made up because I needed her. But now…now I don’t know what I need.

  And that Simon isn’t at dinner makes me feel like a fool for needing anything.

  The only thing to ever make the disappointment better is to stop hoping. Or destroy the hope before it can get too high. To drag it down and rub it in the dirt, so that I never feel it’s loss.