The Seven Year Slip

“START WITH JAMES ASHTON’S article—the one in Eater,” Drew said as we hurried from work to the subway. It was pouring rain, so we had to dodge large puddles as we descended into the station. “I don’t think the proposal really strikes at what he’s good at.”

“You still want to convince him to write a memoir?” I asked as we swiped our Metro cards.

“More than anything—but I’ll take a cookbook first if I can get it!” she replied, and waved as she and Fiona hurried off to catch their train.

I headed for the other side of the station, wringing out my hair as I waited for the uptown train. New York was miserable when it rained—but especially when you were caught in it without an umbrella.

I managed to get a seat on the Q and settled in, trying to ignore the strangers touching me from all sides. This was another reason I always worked late—I didn’t have to contend with rush hour and all the people. Trying to ignore the tourist manspreading to my right, I pulled out my phone and opened the article Drew had sent me a month and a half ago.

Good Food, the article title read. By James Ashton

It was a lovely read—about how there is the art of food, and then there is the art of presentation. The voice was charming, tongue-in-cheek, like a friend telling you a secret over drinks named after dead poets.

At first, I found myself smiling—I could see why Drew loved his voice. It was infectious, his enthusiasm catching. I could do a lot with this, especially if this chef was as charismatic as his writing. The possibilities . . .

But halfway through the article, the strangest sensation began to creep down my spine.

The words felt familiar, like a coat someone pulled over my shoulders in the rain. They knitted together into pale gray eyes and auburn hair and a crooked half smile, and suddenly I was back in my aunt’s apartment, sitting across from Iwan at that yellow kitchen table, his voice warm and sure—

It is rarely the food that truly makes a meal, but the people we share it with. A family spaghetti recipe passed down from your grandma. The smell of dumplings clinging to a sweater you haven’t washed in years. A cardboard pizza across a yellow table. A friend, lost in a memory, but alive in the taste of a half-burnt brownie.

Love in a lemon pie.

The doors dinged and opened to my stop. My head was whirling from the words as I stepped out with the rush of people, scrolling down through the article again, sure I’d missed something. Surely I was mistaken—

And there at the top, a photo finally loaded.

A man in a professional kitchen, dressed in a white uniform, a familiar leather knife roll in his hands. He was older, crow’s feet around his pale eyes, but that smile was still so bright and so achingly familiar, it stole my breath away. I stood, staring at the vibrant, glossy photo of a man I used to know.

James Ashton.

No—

Iwan.

Someone shouldered their way up the escalator beside me, snapping me back to reality. It couldn’t be him. Couldn’t be. But when I got outside, there he was again, on a bus stop ad for a cooking competition, graffiti papered around him. The ad had been there a while. At least a few weeks. My heart rose into my throat as I quickly turned the corner, passing a magazine stand, his face there again on the front of one of them. Reality began to sink in. In disbelief, I went over and picked it up.

NEW YORK’S HOTTEST CULINARY STAR, the headline read.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I muttered.

I had been so focused on looking ahead, catapulting myself toward the next step in my plan, the rest of the world a blur so I didn’t get hurt—

I hadn’t looked around me. Hadn’t been part of the world. Part of anything, really. I’d just gone through it, head down, heart shuttered, like a traveler against a torrential rainstorm.

But when I finally stopped for a moment and looked around, he was—

Everywhere.