20. Toro Belly
TORO BELLY
*slice against the grain, not with. It needs a challenge to stay together.
T he rest of our time in Japan passed quickly.
I prepared Lucas’s meals, he attended his meetings, and we maintained the polite dance of client and personal chef, employer and employee, seeing each other for only brief moments in the morning before he was gone.
That was during the day.
At night, we both seemed to stop being Mr. Lyons and Chef Zola. As if drawn by some invisible force, we found ourselves at the onsen as the stars came out. There, we were just Marie and Lucas. We were friends.
I thought.
It always happened in the same way. I would slip into the spring first, eager to soothe my aching feet after a full day of cooking, shopping, and exploring the Japanese countryside with my driver (a venture that took me a little farther every day, I was always proud to report).
Lucas would call out his presence well before he reached the pagoda, and I would grin and cover my eyes—always tempted to peek, though I hadn’t since that first night.
We never mentioned the kiss in the rice paddies. It was as if it hadn’t happened at all, no matter that my lips tingled for days.
Instead, we talked about everything else.
Lucas shared memories of his childhood summers in the Catskills, boarding school in DC, and how going to Harvard at sixteen was both the best and worst thing that ever happened to him.
I told him about Nonna teaching me to make pasta when I was seven and how I used to mark my side of the bedroom from Joni’s with painter’s tape because she was such a slob.
We commiserated about bratty younger siblings, dreams about leaving New York, and fears of the unknown.
Eventually, one of us (was it me? Or was it him?) crossed the onsen so we sat on the same bench. There was still ten feet between us, but each night, we edged a little closer. It was just easier to talk that way.
Each night, too, I left having to remind myself firmly that I was desperately in love with Daniel Lyons, not Lucas.
Each night, I failed a little more.
Our last night in Japan felt different the moment I dipped my toes into the mineral waters.
The air was cooler, with the first gusts of autumn beginning to assert themselves among the maples that were starting to turn shades of yellow and orange in the mountains.
The steam rising from the spring seemed denser, like a curtain, and the ryokan lanterns created pockets of light through the settling shadows of fall.
Lucas was already there when I arrived, sitting on our stone bench, but closer to the center as he lay back, head tilted up to look at the stars.
“Good evening,” I called out as I toed off my sandals.
He turned, and a spark landed between us as his gaze traveled up my bare calves and seared through my robe. Just as quickly, he closed his eyes and draped a hand over them, giving me the privacy to disrobe and enter the pool. I took my seat on the bench a good five feet from him.
“How was your day?” he asked.
“Busy. Oh , this feels good.”
I closed my eyes as I sank into the water up to my neck. When I re-opened them, Lucas was watching me with a pained expression that quickly disappeared behind his usual courtesy.
“I finished packing up the kitchen for Robbie this morning,” I told him. “And then visited the Shinto shrine Tanaka-san told us about.”
“You went without me?” His tone was joking. “How was it?”
I smiled, thinking of the complex of old buildings positioned on the edge of a nearby lake. “Peaceful. A lot of space to think.”
“Sounds like heaven. Tokyo was a madhouse, as always.”
I edged closer, finding that I wanted to lean my head on his shoulder, to offer whatever comfort I could.
Lucas, I had discovered over the week, didn’t actually like the city, despite having to work there almost every day.
He preferred the quiet of the countryside when he could get it, or at least spaces like Prideview that afforded some access to nature.
Like me, he was easily overstimulated by people and had learned to take the space he needed to recharge.
Robbie was wrong. Lucas’s choice to stay at the ryokan over a fancy Tokyo flat had nothing to do with me and everything to do with his own need to decompress.
“You would have liked it,” I told him. “We traveled all around the lake, and I saw a heron and two types of eagles, according to the guide. How was your day?”
“Long.”
Lucas rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck back and forth. I curbed the offer to massage out the tension, though the idea felt as natural as breathing. I couldn’t explain why.
“Three presentations, two conference calls with New York, and a dinner meeting that ran until nine.” He gave me a smirk.
“I barely ate after that bento you packed. I knew you were making seared toro tonight with the miso duck, and goddamn, it was worth the wait.” He made a motion like he was patting his flat belly under the water. “Three servings. I’m stuffed.”
I grinned. Among other things I had learned about Lucas on this trip was that, despite his insistence that he had no favorite foods, anything duck-related guaranteed a cleared plate with requests for seconds or even thirds. It even trumped steak.
I only served it on “cheat” nights, also per request.
I had also discovered that Lucas didn’t really enjoy talking about his work, to the point where I was starting to think he kind of hated his job.
The business meetings were too dull for a mind as quick as his.
Every conversation and presentation felt trite and practiced, all of it part of the overstimulation he sought to escape once he was back at the ryokan.
It was a tragedy, really, that someone this brilliant was forced to while away his days in a position that was so unsatisfying.
“Can I ask you something?” I wondered.
“Of course.”
“What would you do if you didn’t run Lyons Corp?”
He stiffened, mid-rub of his neck, then dropped his hand into the water with a heavy splash. “I haven’t really ever thought about it.”
I tipped my head, scooting closer without even thinking. “Lucas.”
He turned, gray eyes sparking. “Marie.”
“I know that’s not true.”
One side of his mouth curved with humor. “Do you now?”
“Yes,” I insisted. “I’ve sat naked in this spring for over a week listening to you tell me all about your childhood, your memories of your mother, your predictable life, and how controlled everything was for you, even when you had to take over the company at twenty-one.
I do not for one second believe that ridiculously quick mind has never considered a life where you do something that doesn’t make you miserable every day. ”
His eyes flashed when I said the word “naked” but returned to thoughtfulness as soon as I finished my little diatribe.
“Do I seem miserable now?” he asked.
“Well—no,” I had to admit. “Not now. But when you come home, you seem relieved to be here.”
It felt a little funny to call what was fundamentally a fancy hotel “home,” but I didn’t know what else to say. The ryokan was our home base in Japan, just like the penthouse had been in S?o Paulo. And part of my job was to make it as homelike as possible for Lucas’s well-being.
“Maybe I’m just happy to see you,” he said.
I didn’t know if it was another joke or not, but I couldn’t deny the quiver of joy the idea brought me. “Maybe. But I don’t think that’s all it is. You’re avoiding the question.”
He was quiet for a few more moments, and I was content to wait while I leaned back into the spring, gazing at the stars. If there was one thing I understood, it was the need to give a person space to think.
“Plants,” he declared finally.
I turned. “What, like a plant shop?”
“No, like a lab.” He leaned back on the slab with his hands behind his head like a pillow.
“I took an intro to plant biology course at Harvard and wanted to pursue a double major of study in biosciences. I managed to get three more classes to satisfy my science and elective credits, but my father wouldn’t allow me to lengthen my time at university.
He wanted me at Wharton as soon as I could get there. ”
I propped my head up on one hand against the bench, more interested in digging into this fascinating revelation about Lucas Lyons than in keeping the water all the way to my neck. “Color me shocked. Why plants, though?”
Lucas glanced my way, his eyes lingering on the sudden expanse of clavicle that greeted him, but kept talking. “Did you know that flowers basically just appeared one day, and no one knows why?”
I frowned. “Well, we know why we have them. Granted, I never went to college, but flowers are reproductive organs, right?”
“Hmm. Yes. Darwin, though, called them his ‘abominable mystery.’”
I snorted. “That sounds like how a lot of men think of female anatomy.”
Lucas chuckled. “He was just pissed because his theory of gradualism didn’t explain their sudden appearance, and some of his peers took it as a sign of divine intervention.
To this day, no one has really figured out why, during the Cretaceous period, flowers became the dominant mode of plant reproduction. ”
I laid my head on my hand and listened to him talk, using completely foreign terms like dicotyledons and angiosperms and phylogenetics. I didn’t know what any of them meant, but I loved the light in Lucas’s eyes when he talked about them.
“It’s a genuine mystery,” he concluded. “One that I think would be fun to solve. More fun than reading yet another cost-benefit analysis of moving production to China over Vietnam or listening to yet another AI pitch.” He turned his head, like he’d just remembered I was there. “Sorry. Now I’m the boring one.”
“You’re not,” I told him. “I was just thinking…you look happy when you talk about flowers. You’re handsome when you smile, Lucas.”
His mouth quirked, like he wanted to smile again, but wouldn’t out of principle. “I thought we weren’t supposed to say that anymore.”