Page 69 of Devotion
“I played a restaurant owner once. I did the research.” He cut another piece of chicken like the fact was unremarkable. “Most independents fail in the first year on margins, not on cooking. You’re betting the experience is worth the higher check.”
“...That’s exactly what I’m betting.”
“Then the menu has to carry it.”
“The menu,” I said, “is going to carry it.”
And I was off.
I told him about the dishes I'd been scribbling on the backs of receipts for weeks. The braised oxtail I'd been chasing since I was nineteen, falling off the bone over coconut rice. A whole snapper, scored and crisped, with a sofrito so bright it tasted like somewhere I'd never been. The empanadas I'd kept off theold menu because I was afraid they were too humble, too much mine, and had finally decided that humble and mine was the whole point.
“You’re describing your childhood,” he said.
“What?”
“It's not impressive food. It's comfort food made by someone with too much skill to leave it simple.” He turned the thought over, looking like he was examining the edges. “People won't come for the technique. They'll come because eating it feels like being taken care of.”
For a second I didn't say anything, because he'd just put words to the thing I'd been failing to explain for a year, and he'd done it between bites without appearing to try.
“You're annoyingly good at that,” I said.
“At what?”
“Seeing the thing underneath.”
“Occupational hazard.” But the corner of his mouth moved, and I caught it.
Somewhere along the way the lunch had stopped feeling like the assignment Trisha had put on his calendar. It had stopped feeling like anything but two people who liked talking to each other—him listening like there was nowhere he'd rather be, me talking faster than I had in months, and not wanting it to end, which I was self-aware enough to recognize as a problem.
So I kept going, into the dishes I'd never have had the nerve to put on a menu before. I was mid-sentence about a mango glaze when he said, “You didn’t have to do that.”
I stopped. “Do what?”
“Esmeralda. In the elevator.”
I stared at him. “How do you know about that?”
“The private elevator has cameras and live audio recording. It's for safety purposes.”
My face heated.Who watched the camera feed in the elevator in the first place?
“You defended me. No one has ever done that before,” he said. He was looking at me, his eyes intent. As though the concept was foreign and he was turning it over, examining it from different angles.
We were on the same side of the desk now, he’d moved his chair closer without me realizing it, and the space between us had compressed into something denser and warmer. His blue eyes were steady on mine and there was a warmth in them I hadn’t seen before.
Appreciation. Gratitude.
“You know,” I said, trying to lighten whatever was building between us because it was getting hard to breathe, “if you keep looking at me like that, I’m going to think this lunch was a date.”
“Would that be a problem?”
I looked away. “It would be confusing.”
“Why?” His brows lifted.
“Because we have rules.”
“I made those rules.”
