When We Collided(34)

I didn’t figure that out on my own, about my mom. My aunt has always been chatty and judgmental about my mom after a glass or two of wine. Because she’s not happy in her marriage and jealous that my mom isn’t tied down to anyone. That part, I figured out on my own.

I sit on the counter, swinging my legs as I watch Jonah work. It’s all so lovely, the easy rhythm as he slices peaches for a salad, the deftness of his hands in every movement between stove and island and sink. “This is really beautiful to watch, Jonah—I mean it. It’s like watching you speak a different language, you know? It’s like when you walk past two people speaking Spanish, and you don’t understand the meaning of each word, but the sound of it is beautiful, and you can tell they understand each other. That’s how you are with food.”

He smiles, stirring at some kind of sauce. “It’s not that complicated.”

Well, only because he grew up speaking food.

“Hey, Jonah? What’s a reduction? Like, it’s on menus sometimes—a balsamic reduction or something.”

“Oh. It’s a technique for making a sauce. You heat ingredients in a pan until enough evaporates, reducing it. The remaining sauce is more flavorful. Sometimes thicker.”

“Hmm. Good to know.” From my seat on the counter, I’m eye level with him, which is new, so I grab him by the front of his shirt and tug him toward me. It’s the kind of kissing we sink into so fast, my hands drawn immediately to that gorgeous hair, tugging him in farther. I feel that moment where rational thought swishes out of me, and it’s like a lever that propels a train out of the station; I’m gone, there’s no stopping me, we’re riding this rail all the way to the end.

But he pulls his mouth away from mine, and I think he’s going to say something sexy to me, but instead he says, “The salmon’s going to burn.”

It takes a moment for me to get my bearings because my mind is so fogged over, levitating above us. You’d think this would hurt my feelings, that my kissing talent isn’t enough to distract him, like I can’t transport him far enough away from the reality of cooking. But I don’t want someone who makes it easy; I don’t want someone who follows every slapdash plan that I create in my mind. Jonah Daniels can be such an enigma. There are smudges of my red lipstick across his mouth, making him more delicious than any of the food in this kitchen.

I watch him carefully as he lifts the salmon from the oven. “Jonah?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you want to be a chef?”

“I think so.” He sets the pan down and lifts up the saucepan from the stove. When he drains the water into the sink, steam swarms the air. “I can’t really imagine doing anything else.”

“So you’ll go to culinary school, do you think?”

“I hope so. Eventually.” After he dumps what I now know to be red potatoes into a bowl, he adds a little milk and a cut of butter. I keep waiting for him to elaborate, but like I said, Jonah Daniels can be an enigma.

So I’ll prod him. I know we’re not in the most comfortable topical territory for Jonah, but it’s good for him to talk about his feelings and plans. “Would you take over Tony’s?”

Jonah frowns thoughtfully. He mashes the potatoes with a silver kitchen tool I don’t recognize, and the muscles in his arms flex as he does so. I sit on my hands so they’ll stop trying to reach over and unbutton his shirt. “No. I don’t think so. At least not for a long time. I love the restaurant, and I love Verona Cove . . . but I want to live in a bigger city.”

The scents carry across the air between us—faint garlic and melted butter and another earthy spice that I can’t place.

“There’s school for costume designing, right?” he asks. “Are those in big cities?

“New York and LA, mostly, I think. But I’m sure I can find an apprenticeship with some fabulous designer because I’m already a rather talented seamstress. Also, I want to go to Japan for at least a year. After that, I’ll probably live in California for work.” I consider this, opening my mind to the many possible visions I see of my life. “But maybe New York, doing TV or indie films. You know, people tend to think of costume design as, like, beautiful, accurately re-created gowns in period films. But there’s such an art to costume-designing for modern realism, like in TV shows. You have to study the character and know what choices he or she would make, and you help create the idea of the portrayal, you and the writers and the actor or actress and the hair and makeup team.”

“I can see you doing both,” Jonah says, smiling. He’s spooning the smashed red potatoes onto a bed of lettuce called arugula. I’m becoming very well-versed in vegetables tonight.

“You’re right—I’d love to do a current-day TV show, but I’d have to have at least one big, sweeping statement movie. Because, you know, clothes can be the difference between a movie scene and an iconic moment in film.”

“Oh yeah?” He looks amused by such a grandiose statement, but I’m right. I’m always right about costume design.

“Of course. Without the black scoop-back gown, the elbow gloves, and the statement necklace, Audrey Hepburn is just a random girl on a New York City street.”

“And the tiara.”

I blink at him a few times while I process this. “What?”