Something to Talk About(90)

Jo’s kitchen was huge, opening into an equally huge living room. Emma hadn’t seen this part of the house when she’d been there before, had turned down a hallway to get to Jo’s room before making it this far inside. There was an enormous refrigerator, two ovens, and a big farm sink set into the counter.

“God, Avery would kill for this kitchen,” Emma said, eyes wide. “How do you even have time to use it?”

“I don’t have enough, certainly,” Jo said.

She let go of Emma’s hand to pull out a cutting board from behind some ceramic jars labeled flour and sugar. She set the flowers on the cutting board and pulled a knife from a knife block.

“Cut these while I find a vase?”

Emma was happy to have a task.

“I cook most weekends,” Jo continued, answering Emma’s earlier question. “I keep trying to get Avery to give me her recipe for chocolate babka so I can try it out myself.”

She set a vase beside the cutting board Emma was using.

“Good luck,” Emma said. “She changed something from the recipe our mom gave her for it, and she didn’t even tell our mom what the change was for, like, three years. She guards recipes with her life.”

“Maybe once I meet your mom, I’ll charm it out of her instead.”

Emma stopped cutting the stems, just for a moment, took a breath, and smiled to herself. Sure, they had talked about Jo meeting her parents during Hanukkah, it was just—it was hard to believe she was standing in Jo’s kitchen while Jo talked about charming family recipes out of her mother.

“Or,” Jo said, standing sideways next to Emma and leaning her hip against the counter. “Can I charm the recipe out of you?”

Emma grinned at her. “I hate to break it to you, but I don’t have it.”

Jo laughed. “How do you not have a family recipe?”

“Because I don’t make things right, apparently,” Emma said. “Even though I always follow recipes exactly, nothing ever turns out quite right. Avery says I don’t have the touch.”

“Following recipes exactly is your first mistake,” Jo said. “Everyone knows the recipe is just a suggestion.”

“No!” Emma huffed at her. “People put effort into making a cookbook! There are recipe testers and everything. The recipe is literally tested so you can re-create what they’ve made. How is it a suggestion?”

Jo got a wooden spoon full of the sauce that was simmering on one of the gas burners. She held it to Emma’s lips.

“The original recipe for this called for one clove of garlic, which is ridiculous,” Jo said. “I used three tonight.”

Emma mmmed around the burst of flavor on her tongue.

“Do you think I should’ve followed the recipe instead?” Jo asked.

“No, boss,” Emma said, then froze.

Jo raised her eyebrows at her, smirking.

“I’m going to go die in a hole now,” Emma said, burying her hands in her face, and Jo broke into laughter.

“Come on,” Jo said. “It was cute!”

She tried to tug Emma’s hands away from her face. Emma only put up a little fight before relenting.

“It was not cute,” she said. “You’re not my boss anymore. You’re my—my—”

She panicked then, unsure what she was supposed to call this. Her family called Jo her girlfriend, sure, but they hadn’t said it to each other.

Jo smirked at her again, and Emma turned even redder. She put the daffodils in the vase on the counter.

“You can call me your girlfriend,” Jo said quietly. “If that’s something you want to do.”

“Yeah,” Emma said, maybe too quickly. She tried to tone down her eagerness. “Yeah, like, I think that’d be nice.”

Jo smiled at her, and Emma definitely wanted to call her her girlfriend.

For dinner, Jo had made her salmon with a lemon butter sauce and roasted butternut squash on the side. It was delicious, and Emma told her so at least three times as they ate. Their nerves had settled now, and conversation flowed easily.

Emma insisted on helping clean up afterward. She loaded the dishwasher while Jo washed the pans. It felt, somewhat embarrassingly, like work felt over the summer, just the two of them, getting things done, occasionally making each other laugh. Emma understood a bit more about why Avery bet on her love life. This felt like an inevitable conclusion to the year, even as it was also the start of something completely new.

They moved to the couch once the dishes were done. There were still almost two hours until midnight, but Jo turned on a New Year’s Eve show anyway. She sat right up against Emma on the couch, their whole sides together, and even this far into the night, it was surreal to touch Jo like this. Emma paid no attention to the TV. She couldn’t pull her eyes away from Jo’s face.

Jo smiled when she noticed Emma looking, gave her a half roll of her eyes. But then she didn’t look away, either. Emma leaned in.

They kissed slowly. Gently. Like they couldn’t believe they were allowed to. That was how Emma felt, anyway. This felt off-limits. It was like Avery teaching her to drive in an empty grocery store parking lot when she was fourteen. She hadn’t gone over fifteen miles per hour that first time, but it still felt like flying. That was what this felt like, exhilarating and terrifying and easy to crash.