The Seven Year Slip

FOR THE REST OF the week, I wondered how I could’ve missed the signs.

Not that it was apparent. Thinking back on it, Iwan had said that Analea was a friend of his mom’s, but I’d never asked for her name. It made sense, when I thought about it, that my aunt would offer her empty apartment to someone’s child she knew. Not only knew, but knew intimately well. I doubted that Iwan knew his mom’s history with my aunt, just like I hadn’t—he would have brought it up.

Had the apartment known who Iwan was? Was that why it brought us together at these crossroads?

My fingers felt restless—so restless that I brought a tin of watercolors to work and sat over in Bryant Park at lunch and painted the crowds I saw. When I returned to work, I went to quickly wash the paint dried on my fingertips.

“I like that you’re painting again,” Fiona commented on Wednesday, as we lounged on the green grass in Bryant Park, on one of Drew’s blankets from her office, and I washed the Schwarzman Building in golds and creams in my travel guide’s Best Free Tourist Stops. “The yellows are pretty.”

“Almost lemony,” Drew agreed, lounging on the ground beside Fiona, her hands behind her head. “I’ve been meaning to ask for a while, but—what made you start painting again?”

I shrugged. “I dunno, I just picked it back up,” I replied, cleaning my brush out in a bottle cap of water, and choosing a rusty orange for the edges of the building, “and it makes me feel happy.”

Drew hummed in thought. “I can’t even remember what makes me feel happy . . .”

“Reading, babe—ooh,” Fiona held her belly, her face pinching. “Oh, that was interesting.”

Drew sat up straight in alarm. “Is everything okay? Something wrong?”

She waved her off. “I’m fine, I’m fine. It was just a weird feeling.”

I gave her a hesitant look. “Like baby-coming weird?”

“I’m not due for another week,” Fiona replied, as if that would stop it, but for the rest of the day she was fine—and she’d absolutely scoffed at the idea of starting her maternity leave early. (“What, and futz around the house all day? No, thank you, I’d go insane.”)

So when Thursday rolled around, I brought a dress to the office and changed in the stall after work, and together with Drew and Fiona we caught a cab to James’s new restaurant. It was a soft opening, reserved for invites-only, to celebrate the launch of hyacinth—all lowercase, by the way, in a loopy handwriting script.

We met Juliette outside, dressed in a stylish cream blouse tucked into baggy brown trousers, a belt at the waist. Her hair was done up into two buns, a knockoff Prada bag on her arm that looked so real I could almost believe it if she didn’t tell me exactly where to get one myself. Beside her, I looked . . . a little underdressed and casual, in a pale purple knee-length dress with a bow at the collar, and for the first time since my last date with Nate—

“Heels?” Juliette gasped. “Oh my god, you’re wearing heels! And you’re so tall in them.” She quickly dug out her phone and snapped a photo of them. “This is going right into my Stories! We have to remember this occasion.”

I groaned. “I wear heels sometimes!”

“When you want to impress someone,” Fiona noted.

“Our future author, obviously,” I volleyed back.

Drew put her hands on her hips and practiced her calm breathing. “Speaking of which, if any of you make me look bad tonight . . .”

Juliette said, with a salute, “We’ll be on our best behavior! Though someone might have to tell me which fork to use if there’s more than one . . .”

I looped my arms through Drew’s and Fiona’s and said, “Don’t worry, I’ll be wrong too.”

And together we opened the heavy wooden door and walked inside.

On the ride over, I imagined what his restaurant would look like—maybe it looked like the one he talked about over cold noodles. Long family-style tables and crimson-red walls, comfy and warm, the leather chairs broken in. Local artists would be on the walls, the chandeliers this amalgamation of sconces and candelabras.

A table set aside for a woman he met over some far-off weekends in a distant memory.

“Set aside for you every night—best table in the house,” I remember him saying.

A conversation I was sure he’d forgotten, even though I kept the same travel guide tucked into my purse as we stepped into his restaurant.

It was bright—that was the first thing I noticed—almost impeccably so, with polished white marble tables and off-white sconces with the slightest blue hue. The chairs were stools at best, the ceiling bare to new silver plumbing, somewhere between a warehouse and a half-finished department store. It felt like a place where if you made a mistake, it’d be on a pedestal for all to see. My heart sank a little because this wasn’t Iwan’s dream at all.

It was James’s.

The hostess quickly recognized Drew from a photo on her clipboard and ushered us to a special table. A few other familiar faces were already here—Benji and his fiancée, Parker and his wife, and two other editors who had been at the cooking class. We sat down at one of the larger tables, the chairs uncomfortable and cold, and I felt so out of place it made my skin itch.

Pretend like you belong here until you do, I thought to myself.

“This place is so fancy,” Fiona said, as our server brought out our menus—which were all the same, detailing a list of seven courses. Fiona had a special menu for her dietary restrictions as a pregnant person. Our server also brought us a bottle of wine—

“Compliments of the chef,” the server said, uncorked the red, and poured us each a glass.

When she was gone, Drew picked up her glass and held it up. “To a good evening, whether or not we get the book.”

The rest of us clinked our glasses to hers. The wine was dry and a little sour, and suddenly it felt like I was back at that first lunch at the Olive Branch, feeling out of place, swinging my arms wildly to find my footing.

My friends commented on the restaurant, the menu, the other people seated at the tables. I was half listening to Juliette talk about a new campaign she was putting together with the social media coordinator when a familiar face walked into hyacinth—Vera Ashton.

The hostess quickly took her to be seated at the best table in the restaurant, and she smiled as she sat down, and marveled at the décor. I excused myself from the table to go say hello.

“Oh, Clementine!” she cried, clasping her hands together. She was dressed in a sage-colored pantsuit, pearls in her ears. “It’s so unexpected to see you here. Lovely, isn’t this just lovely?”

“It is,” I replied in greeting. “How are you?”

“Good! Good. I thought this was a soft opening, what brings you here to Iwan’s—excuse me, James’s”—she said conspiratorially—“restaurant? He hates it when I call him Iwan in public. Something about his image. A bit silly, but he’ll figure it out.”

I wasn’t so sure, seeing this restaurant. “I actually work for one of the publishers he’s thinking about signing with.” I motioned back to my table. “I just wanted to come over and say hello.”

“Oh, what a treat! He’d be wrong not to choose you—Oh, there’s Lily and her husband,” she added, looking behind me, and I barely had time to look before a petite woman in a flowery dress, her auburn hair long and wild, came up to the table. It startled me how much she looked like Iwan, from her light-colored eyes to the freckles across her cheeks. She gave me a hesitant smile, as did her husband, and I quickly realized I was blocking the chair she was to sit in, and stepped out of the way. “Lily,” Vera said, motioning to me, “this is Clementine. Do you remember my stories about Analea? This is her niece.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Lily said pleasantly, as her husband sat down beside her. “Wasn’t Analea who Iwan stayed with that summer?”

“In her apartment, yes,” Vera confirmed. “I heard she was going abroad, so I phoned her up and asked if my son could stay there for the summer. He got a job at his grandfather’s favorite restaurant, and seven years later, look where we are! All because Analea let him stay there for free.” That I didn’t know. Vera laughed, shaking her head. “Isn’t it strange how the world works sometimes? It’s never a matter of time, but a matter of timing.”

It was, wasn’t it.

“I just sort of wish he had more comfortable chairs,” Lily said with a laugh. “Grandpa would’ve hated these.”

“I’m sure he would’ve appreciated the thought,” Vera replied amicably. “Clementine, would you like to join us? We have an extra chair.”

“Oh, no, I should get back to my table, but it was really great to see all of you—and to meet you, Lily. Have a good night,” I said in goodbye, and started back for my table.

The kitchen in the back was hidden behind frosted glass that shifted, a little, like an opal, depending on the light. Behind it, shadows went back and forth. I set my mouth into a thin line, looking at the perfect white marbled tables and the clean lines, and the dishes that came out to waiting tables, circles of white with small bite-sized pops of color on them. At the tables sat influencers and celebrities, people I knew of tangentially in the culinary world from researching James. Tastemakers. Critics. People he should be seen with. People he wanted to impress.

I returned to my table, but there was someone already in my seat. A man in a pristine chef’s uniform, broad shoulders and crisp hair, a whisk hidden behind the curls around his left ear.

James looked up at me as I approached, and gave me a perfect smile. “Ah, hello there. I was just here to welcome everyone to hyacinth.”

Juliette said, “It’s so bright, I should’ve brought sunglasses.”

“You’re going to give copy editors a heart attack with that name not capitalized,” I added.

“Maybe I’ll start a new trend, Clementine,” he said evenly with that perfect white smile of his. He stood and pulled out the chair for me. I sat, a hard lump forming in my throat. “It was a pleasure seeing all of you again—and meeting you, Juliette. Please enjoy your meal, and I hope it’s memorable—perhaps even perfect.”

Then he left for the next table, and my friends began to talk about the dishes on the menu—almost all of them were iterations of recipes in his proposal but heightened to fit this elevated space.

Around me, the gossip from other tables talked about how he’d earned a Michelin star for the Olive Branch, how he won the James Beard Emerging Chef award. They talked about his presentation, his dishes, his attention to detail, how he was hungry—always hungry—for more. How that made him a rising talent.

How people were excited—starved—for more.

As much as my heart ached, it was hard not to be proud of him.

Even though his closest friends, Isa and Miguel, were nowhere to be found.

Our server began to bring out our plates.

The first thing was a fish soup—black bass in flower blossoms. They were all bite-sized, though that was what a tasting menu was, a bunch of smaller plates, enough for a mouthful and an evocative conversation about the flavor of the caviar.

There was trout liver with fresh apples and fatty, caramelized butter.

Duck ragù.

Amaranth toast with smoked roe and tartar sauce.

A single cornbread hush puppy with a smoky yolk and nobs of pickled corn.

Pig’s-blood flatbread.

Yogurt with marshmallows.

Ice cream with caramel drizzle.

And finally, there was a whisk of lemon-flavored meringue on a crumbly graham cracker. It was supposed to be his new rendition of a lemon pie, but as I ate it, all I could think about was the dessert Iwan and I shared at my aunt’s kitchen table.

He had said meringue was his downfall—he couldn’t be good at everything, he’d be boring if he was perfect—and yet the bite I took was good. The graham cracker crumbled in my mouth.

I didn’t realize I had tears in my eyes until Drew asked, “Is everything okay?”

Yes, it should have been. Yes, because this dinner was excellent in every way that it needed to be to impress every publishing team here. Every celebrity, every influencer. It was delicious.

Perfect, even.

And yet I couldn’t get the photo I had seen on Vera’s wall out of my head, of Iwan and his grandfather in a too-tiny kitchen, wearing mismatching aprons, with flour on their cheeks and that crooked, terribly perfect smile. Perfect because it wasn’t perfect.

Perfect because it wasn’t trying to be. He was just himself.

“Excuse me,” I told my table, wiping my mouth, and quickly left for the restroom. The door was locked when I got there. I cursed under my breath and stood outside, waiting. The sign above the door was in the same lowercase loopy handwriting.

My chest felt tight.

My aunt had quit her career because she was afraid she’d never be better than who she’d been in The Heart Mattered, and Iwan was the opposite. He kept trying to be better, to earn everyone’s respect, to impress people with perfect—or nothing.

Did he realize what he’d given up, though?

I should have been proud of him—I was proud of him—but . . .

“So, how was it?”

Startled, I spun around, and Chef James Ashton stood behind me, fresh out of the kitchen where his team worked like a well-oiled machine. I caught glimpses of them through the circular window in the door, faces pinched, working toward the kind of perfection I didn’t understand.

“It’s . . . quite a restaurant,” I told him, motioning out toward the dining area.

His perfect grin grew tight. “You don’t like it.”

I swallowed the knot in my throat. Oh, no. “I didn’t say that.”

“I can see it on your face.”

I glanced back toward the dining area, the clanking of silverware and the murmuring of voices, the gasp as plates came, sighing dry ice off them. We were secluded in our own little world back here.

“I’m sorry, James,” I said quietly.

His face didn’t give anything away, but he asked, “Why don’t you ever call me Iwan?”

It was a question I really didn’t know how to answer until just then, looking up into those guarded gray eyes, pools of shale that only needed a single layer. I stepped up to him, and placed a hand on his solid, warm chest. I wanted to kiss him, and I wanted to shake him, and I wanted to bring out the man I sometimes saw between the cracks, but I couldn’t. All I could do was give him the truth.

“I used to have lovely dinners with a man named Iwan, who told me that you could find romance in a piece of chocolate and love in a lemon pie,” I began, and confusion crossed his brow.

“Those dishes wouldn’t have impressed anyone, Lemon. I was a dishwasher then. I didn’t know better.”

“I know, and the food was delicious tonight. The—um—the fish thing? It was really great. I’m sorry, I don’t know the actual name of it,” I added quickly, hoping it didn’t annoy him. “It was very good. Are you happy with it all?” I asked, waving my hand toward his new restaurant, and all of its sharp edges and blank white walls. The way it tried to be something new, and ended up being nothing at all.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” he replied, and there was an edge of frustration in his voice. “Of course I am.” He gestured toward the dining area. “Everyone out there looks like they’re enjoying themselves—they’re having excellent food.”

“Then close your eyes—what do you hear?”

“I’m not going to do that.”

“Please.”

“Lemon—”

“Please.”

He breathed out through his nose, but then he closed his eyes. “I hear utensils on plates. I hear conversations. The AC squeaking—I need to fix that. There, are you happy?”

“Just keep listening,” I told him, and to my surprise, he did. After a moment, I asked, “Do you hear anyone laughing?”

“I hope they aren’t.”

“I don’t mean at you, I mean with each other.” I glanced out again at the restaurant, strangers on uncomfortable chairs, shifting awkwardly as they took photos of their food and sipped wine or champagne as they scrolled through their socials.

Slowly, he opened his eyes, and looked out toward the dining area, too, a strange look on his face, searching across the tables as if he could prove me wrong. And when he couldn’t, he said, “I’m doing something new here. Something inventive. Something people want to see—something they will talk about.” He pursed his lips and darted his gaze back to me. “I’m giving people a perfect meal—you know this is my dream. This is what I’ve worked for.”

“I know,” I tried to explain, but I was quickly losing him. “I’m just asking you not to lose who you are—”

“Who I was,” he volleyed back, and I winced. “What do you want from me, Clementine?”

To be the man who smiled at me with that crooked mouth over frozen cardboard pizza. The kind of guy who told jokes across cold noodles. The person who told me about his grandfather’s lemon pies, how they were never the same twice. “You’re so out of touch with everything you were,” I said. “I mean dry ice for pasta?”

His nose scrunched. “Cold noodles.”

Like he made for me the other week. I tried again, “A deconstructed lemon pie?”

“Every bite tastes a little different.”

Like the kind of pie his grandfather made. “But they’re not the same—they’re things that made you who you are,” I tried to reason. “They made you—”

“And if I was still that dishwasher, would you be here? Competing for my cookbook? No. No one out there would be here.”

The realization was like a bucket of ice water. My throat felt tight. I looked away.

“I’m still me, Clementine,” he said. “I’m still trying to make my granddad proud, to make the perfect meal—and I know how to now. I studied under the man who made it. I know exactly what made it perfect—”

“It was your grandpa, Iwan,” I interrupted, and the sharp look froze, and then slowly slipped off his face, until he looked like he’d lost his grandfather all over again. I reached up to try and take his face in my hands, but he moved away.

My throat stung as tears came to my eyes.

“I’m sorry—”

“Change isn’t always bad, Clementine,” he said, his voice solid but stoic. His jaw worked as he tried to find the right words. “Perhaps instead of wanting me to stay the exact same person you met in that apartment, you should let yourself change a little, too.”

I drew my hand back quickly. “I . . .”

Behind him, the silver doors to the kitchen swung open, but instead of a server coming out with another round of intricately styled plates, it was—Miguel? His hair slicked back, in a maroon suit, a glass of champagne in one hand.

He was here, after all?

Miguel said, smiling, “I was wondering where you’d gone off to! Isa’s about to get into that 2002 Salon Blanc back there—Lemon! Hey! Iwan, you didn’t tell me she’d be here.”

James pursed his lips together, and I looked away, trying to find some excuse to leave, because I had misjudged him, apparently. More than I thought.

Suddenly, shouts came from the dining area. We glanced back toward the mounting chaos, and I paled when I realized that it was coming from my table. Drew was helping Fiona to her feet. Juliette was in a sheer panic, as she searched the restaurant for me, her phone in her hand, calling an Uber. She found me and held up her phone.

“IT’S COMING!” Juliette cried.

It . . . ?

James didn’t understand. “Coming? What’s coming?” he asked, and I realized a second before he did. “Did her water break?”

“I have to go,” I muttered, and he didn’t stop me. As I hurried back toward my table, I felt something warm slide down my cheeks, and I wiped my tears away.

I grabbed the phone out of Juliette’s hand and my own purse as we left. “The Uber’s five minutes away.”

“I’ll flag it down!” Juliette announced and hurried out the door.

“We really don’t have to go that quickly . . .” Fiona was saying, but no one listened. Drew was clearing the way as she led her wife out of the restaurant.

I glanced back one last time at James, and the rest of the unfamiliar faces, and that itch under my skin was so bad now it burned. I didn’t want to be here—because he was right about one thing. Clementine West, a senior publicist at Strauss & Adder, wouldn’t have noticed Iwan at all if he’d just been a dishwasher. She wouldn’t have chased after him so hard if accolades hadn’t peppered his résumé. She was good at her job, and she was looking for a talented chef to fill a space in her imprint’s roster. She was Rhonda Adder’s second-in-command, and that came above all else. Someone steadfast. Someone solid.

But Lemon, overworked and exhausted Lemon, loved that crooked-mouthed dishwasher she’d met displaced in time, and she came to work with watercolors under her nails on accident, and she took travel guides from the free bookshelves near the elevators, and she had an itch under her skin, and a passport full of stamps, and a wild heart.

And in figuring out who I wanted to be, I thought I ruined Drew’s chances of getting this book. I ruined a lot of things, it seemed, while I tried to be something permanent—but in the end, I was the one who left, out of the heavy wooden door and onto the sidewalk, where Juliette had flagged down the black SUV.

“You chose the carpool option?” Drew accused her.

“I panicked!” Juliette cried.

We loaded into the SUV beside a flustered couple who looked to be going on a date themselves, and I didn’t look back as I closed the door, and we set off.