5. JAMIE
JAMIE
The eggs are the problem.
Jackson's refrigerator had three of them — exactly three — which meant a frittata was out, scrambled was too plain for what I wanted to do with the half-block of gruyère I'd also found, and an omelet required more finesse than I was willing to demand of a pan that probably hadn't been seasoned.
I stood in front of his stove at six-forty in the morning in his t-shirt and my underwear, holding three eggs and reassessing.
What his kitchen actually had: gruyère, one shallot, a garlic bulb that still had four cloves left, half a stick of butter, heavy cream that was two days from its date but smelled fine, a box of dried pasta, some olive oil, and — tucked behind a bag of rice — a small jar of truffle salt that was still sealed, which I chose not to think too hard about because Jackson does not strike me as a man who impulse-buys truffle salt, and whatever that story is, it belongs to a previous version of his life.
I made a cream sauce with the gruyère, shallot, and garlic, soft and glossy, cooked it down until it coated the back of a spoon, then tossed it with the pasta.
The three eggs became a crustless quiche in a coffee mug — single portion, baked in the oven — with the last of the gruyère rinds floated on top.
I toasted bread, sliced the last two apples in his fruit bowl thin and fanned them on a plate with a drizzle of the olive oil and a pinch of the truffle salt, because if you have truffle salt, you use it, you don't let it die of neglect on a shelf behind a bag of rice.
The table looks disproportionate when I step back to survey it. One small dining table, two chairs, three dishes that probably constitute more effort than this kitchen has ever seen in a single morning.
Jackson comes out of the bedroom when I'm pouring coffee — already dressed, hair damp from the shower, which means he was quieter than I gave him credit for because I didn't hear the water run.
He stops in the doorway between the hallway and the kitchen, and he looks at the table.
He doesn't say anything for a moment. His jaw shifts. His eyes move from the toasted bread to the quiche to the apple plate and then to me, and there's a quality to the pause that I recognize the way you recognize the moment meringue catches and stiffens — fast, irreversible, something changed.
"I worked with three eggs," I tell him. "I'm not a miracle worker."
He pulls out his chair and sits down.
"It smells like a restaurant in here," he says, and picks up a fork.
That's it. That's the whole review. I sit across from him and decide it's the best review I've ever received.
He tries the pasta first. I watch him from behind my coffee mug, which is cowardly but effective, and his expression does the thing where it stays mostly neutral but the line between his brows eases, which I'm beginning to understand is Jackson-language for this is good.
He doesn't offer compliments the way other people do — in a rush, to fill silence, to be kind.
When he says something, he means it, so the absence of commentary while he eats is, paradoxically, the most encouraging sign I can imagine.
"The quiche is better hot," I tell him. "I timed it wrong. I didn't know when you'd wake up."
"It's fine."
"Hot would have been better."
"Jamie." He looks up. "It's fine."
I eat my apple slices and accept this. Outside, the morning is gray-edged light, the distant sound of traffic waking up, someone's recycling bins hitting the curb. The apartment feels suspended from all of that. Separate.
He refills his coffee without being asked. Then, almost as an afterthought, refills mine.
"The salt on the apples." He nods at the plate. "What is that?"
"Truffle salt. Which you mysteriously own."
He picks up another apple slice. "Someone left it."
"Someone," I repeat.
"Mm."
"That's a full sentence."
The corner of his mouth does something. "It was a gift from my boss."
"The sealed-and-never-opened kind of gift."
"I don't cook."
I look at him across the table — the plate of pasta he's nearly finished, the quiche he's eaten half of, the apple slices disappearing one by one — and I say, "You're eating pretty well for a man who doesn't cook."
He meets my eyes. "Yeah," he says. "I am."
The thing about that lands somewhere in my sternum and sits there, warm and entirely too comfortable, and I stare at my coffee until I can look at him normally again.
The pasta plate is almost empty when he asks — not in a tell me your hopes and dreams way, more like he's following a thread he'd been pulling on for a while and finally got to the end of it — "Is that what you wanted to do with the school? Open a restaurant?"
"Food truck first," I say, and I hear it come out of my mouth and feel the small electric jolt of having said it to someone who isn't myself.
I've said it to the ceiling of my old bedroom. I've said it to my reflection in pastry school prep kitchen window at seven in the morning. I've never said it to a person at a table.
Jackson sets down his fork. He's looking at me. Not waiting for me to continue, which would add pressure — just looking.
"Food truck," he repeats. Not sarcastic. Processing.
"A restaurant is like — it's a lot of overhead, right?
You're signing a lease, you're committing to a location, you're betting everything on the neighborhood not turning over in two years and taking your customer base with it.
" I turn my coffee mug in my hands. "A food truck, you can move.
You can test locations. You set up in a spot for a few weeks, see what volume you do, see who's coming and what they order and how far they're driving for it.
If a neighborhood isn't working, you leave.
You're not hemorrhaging rent money while you figure it out. "
"Startup cost," he says. "For the truck."
"Way less than a restaurant. A used truck, equipment, permits — you're looking at maybe forty to seventy thousand depending on what you buy, versus a restaurant build-out which can be three, four hundred thousand before you've served a single customer."
He's quiet for a second. "You've priced this."
"I've spreadsheetted this. Extensively. At two in the morning more times than I should admit."
Something shifts in his face. Not a smile, but adjacent to one. "What would you sell?"
Here is where I would normally say oh, it's just an idea or I haven't figured it all out yet or any of the seventeen different ways I've learned to make myself smaller so people don't have to take me seriously.
Instead I hear myself say: "Dessert versions of regular food.
Like, the whole concept is that you come to my truck expecting something savory — it looks savory, it's presented like it's savory — and it's entirely dessert. "
He doesn't say that's cute or interesting in the way that means I'm not interested. He says, "Show me."
"Okay, so." I push my plate to the side and lean forward.
"A dessert taco and a burrito maybe or even a slider.
The shell is a waffle cone, right, folded and crisped into a taco shape.
Inside, you've got a filling — could be chocolate mousse, could be whipped mascarpone, could be a pastry cream.
Then you garnish it exactly like a taco.
Shredded coconut looks like cheese. Mango salsa reads like pico de gallo.
A lime cream drizzled on top. You hand it to someone and their brain says taco, and then they bite into it and it's dessert. "
"Why does the brain trick matter?"
I open my mouth and close it, because that is — that is actually exactly the question, and the fact that he went there instead of asking about calories or whether coconut counts as cheese means he was paying attention to the thing underneath the thing.
"Because it's an experience," I say. "Regular desserts, you already know what you're getting.
You see a cupcake, you know it's sweet, you're prepared, you eat it.
There's no surprise. But if your brain is primed for savory and you get sweet — that moment of recalibration, that tiny cognitive hiccup — that's what makes it memorable.
That's the thing people tell their friends about. "
He picks up his coffee. Considers. "And the burrito."
"A crepe, wrapped. The tortilla is a very thin crepe — you can do it sweet or you can do it almost neutral, depends on the filling.
Inside is something that mimics a burrito's construction: there's a rice layer, but the 'rice' is arroz con leche.
There's a 'bean' layer, but the beans are a dark chocolate ganache with a slight salt hit.
Then whatever the feature filling is — could be a fruit compote, could be a custard, could be a brown butter whipped cream. "
"The salt in the chocolate."
"Right, the salt makes it savory-adjacent. Your tongue's confused. Your brain's happy."
"And the slider."
I stare at him. "Are you just listing everything I mentioned?"
"You mentioned three things. I asked about two. I'm asking about the third."
"You could've just said keep going."
"Keep going would have taken you longer to start talking.
" He meets my eyes over his coffee cup, completely straight-faced, and I sit there for a second before I start laughing, because he's right, I would have spent thirty seconds saying oh, should I?
are you sure? and performing reluctance, and he just skipped straight to the part where I tell him.
"The slider," I say, when I've recovered, "is a macaron.
But it's built like a slider — the top shell is slightly larger, there's a disc of ganache that mimics a patty, and then there are layers of micro-garnish: a thin strip of fruit leather for the 'lettuce,' a tiny piped dot of jam for the 'condiment,' a shaving of white chocolate for the 'cheese.
' Individually plated, served in a little paper basket the way a real slider would be. "
"How many do you sell per order?"
"I was thinking three, because that's how sliders work."
"Price point."