Chapter 12 #3
"Oh, and this is Mia," Lark says. "She's a professional dancer and overall amazing human being. We're collaborating on a music video concept. We're all heading to LA together and got along so well we thought she should come out tonight."
Mia arrives with a megawatt smile that could probably be seen from space. She looks like sunshine in human form, with wild wavy hair and silver rings on every finger and an energy that makes you feel like you've had two coffees just by standing near her.
"The more the merrier," I say.
Mia skips the handshake entirely and pulls Isabelle into a hug, which catches Isabelle completely off guard for half a second before she gives in to it. Then Mia hugs me with the same enthusiasm.
"So nice to meet you both!" she says, stepping back and clasping her hands together. "Also, oh my God, you are stunning. You have hair like a shampoo commercial. I think we're going to get along wonderfully."
Isabelle laughs, looking surprised and a little flustered, and touches her hair self-consciously. "That might be the best compliment I've ever gotten."
"I mean every word," Mia says, and links her arm through Isabelle's like they've been friends for years. I get the impression Mia is one of those people who makes friends with everyone she meets within the first thirty seconds of conversation.
We finish loading everything into the SUV. The women climb into the back, and Lark immediately leans forward between the seats. "So tell me about the menu. Alex mentioned the halibut is one of his favorites."
"It’s one of mine too." Isabelle lights up, gesturing with both hands the way she does when she's excited about an ingredient. "We're doing this lemon, well I just changed it to yuzu, beurre blanc that I've been testing all week, and the balance is finally working."
"Oh my God, I love yuzu," Mia cuts in. "There's this place in LA that does a yuzu kosho vinaigrette that changed my life."
"Well now you’re going to have to tell me everything that’s in it," Isabelle says, and then they're off, the three of them talking over each other about food and restaurants and flavor profiles.
Lark mentions a place in Mexico City, Mia counters with somewhere in Boston, and Isabelle is nodding along, asking questions, laughing at something Mia says.
It's loud and chaotic and nothing like the distance Isabelle usually keeps from people she's just met. Jack catches my eye as we close up the trunk. He tips his sunglasses down and looks at me, then at Isabelle in the backseat laughing at something Mia just said, then back at me.
I shake my head. No.
He pushes the glasses back up and nods, but the smirk on his face says he's not buying a word of it.
We grab dinner in the Mission at a tiny Peruvian spot, cumbia music playing low through the speakers and a hand-chalked menu on the wall behind the bar in Spanish and English.
I can smell the aji amarillo and the char from the grill as the five of us crowd around a corner table.
The energy in here is exactly right. Not too loud, not trying too hard, just good food and good music and people enjoying themselves.
"So let me get this straight," Mia says after we order, leaning forward with her elbows on the table, looking between me and Isabelle.
"Her dad hired you to spy on her, you're supposed to be enemies or at least professional rivals, and instead you're here having dinner together in San Francisco on a Monday night.
" She shakes her head, rings catching the light.
"That is wild. It sounds like a comedy movie. "
"More like a horror movie, maybe," Isabelle says drily, taking a sip of her pisco sour.
"Complete with near alien abductions," I add, glancing at her, and she snorts into her drink hard enough that she has to set it down and cover her mouth with her hand.
Mia looks between us, delighted and confused. "Wait, what? Am I missing something?"
"Inside joke," I say, waving it off. "Long story. Involves a vineyard and the dark and our mutual conviction that extraterrestrial life is hiding in the Napa hills."
"It's a reasonable concern," Isabelle says primly, straightening in her chair like we're discussing something serious. "The silence out there at night is suspicious."
"Exactly," I say. "Too quiet. Something's going on."
Lark is shaking her head, laughing. "You two are ridiculous."
"Ridiculously right," Isabelle corrects.
The pisco sours keep coming and the food starts arriving in waves, each plate better than the last. Ceviche with a leche de tigre so bright and acidic it makes my eyes water.
Anticuchos with a charred aji panca glaze.
A causa layered with avocado and crab. Lomo saltado with beef seared so hard the edges are almost black, tossed with tomatoes and red onion and piled over fries that have gone soft and golden from the sauce.
Jack and Lark tell the story of how they got together—the fake dating PR scheme that turned real—and it's always a crowd pleaser since it's such an absurd way to fall in love.
We're all laughing and eating and talking over each other and I haven't had this much fun since the last time the whole family was together at Theo's place for Thanksgiving.
At some point the conversation turns to first kitchen disasters and Isabelle and I start competing for worst. She goes first with a crème br?lée incident from Le Cordon Bleu that involved a blowtorch, a smoke alarm, and an instructor who apparently didn't speak to her for a week.
It's a good story, well told, and everyone at the table is cracking up.
But I've got her beat.
"Thanksgiving when I was twenty-one," I say. "I was convinced I was ready to cook for the entire Midnight family. Full holiday spread, everything from scratch. Turkey, sides, desserts, the works."
"Oh no," Lark says, because she knows where this is going.
"My mom kept sugar and salt in these identical glass jars on the counter," I continue. "And I grabbed the wrong one and used it for everything. The mashed potatoes, the turkey brine, the gravy, the green beans. Every savory dish that called for salt got sugar instead."
Isabelle's eyes go wide. "No."
"Yes. And I kept tasting things and thinking, why is this weirdly sweet?
So I'd add more of what I thought was salt to balance it, which was actually more sugar, so then everything just got sweeter and I was twenty-one and panicking and somehow convinced myself that if I just kept cooking it the sugar would.
.. I don't know, transform into salt or something. "
Jack is already laughing, covering his face with his hands.
"Mom took one bite of the mashed potatoes and set her fork down and didn't speak for two hours.
Not a word. She just sat there in total silence while the rest of us were too terrified to stop eating, so we all kept shoveling down this disgusting food and smiling at each other like everything was fine. "
"Dominic ate three plates," I add. "Which I'm pretty sure was out of spite. He wanted to prove a point about not wasting food or something."
"How did you not taste it and realize sooner?" Isabelle asks.
"I was twenty-one and overconfident," I say. "I thought my palate was just off that day or something."
"Clearly," she says, and swats my arm, laughing. The feeling of her hand on my arm and the sound of her laugh buries itself deep in my chest and stays there.
This whole arrangement, the one-night thing, the possibility of a summer fling hidden from Jean-Pierre, a bit of fun I'd joked to Theo about before I left for Napa.
I'd agreed to her terms easily even though I liked her from the start.
But somewhere between the porch and this table, between sleeping together and right now, the liking has shifted into a different gear entirely.
I've had flings. Plenty of them. I know what they feel like, the easy come-and-go of it, the lack of weight.
None of them felt like this. Like I want to know what she's thinking all the time.
Like I want to see her face first thing every morning and cook her breakfast. Like the idea of her going back to New York and me going back to Dark River and this just ending feels wrong.
She said she doesn't do boyfriends. She said New York is the plan, that's where her life is, that's what she's working toward and nothing's going to change that. And I agreed, no complications, very casual, very mature, just a celebration of a good night.
The cumbia gets louder and the candle on our table burns down to a stub and nobody makes a move to leave even though we've been here for over two hours.
Isabelle leans into me to hear something Lark is saying across the table, her shoulder pressing warm against mine, and she doesn't move away after.
She just stays there, laughing at whatever Lark said, her weight settled against me like it belongs there.
It takes everything I have not to put my arm around her. To keep my hand on the table instead of sliding it to her knee or her back.
Mia is telling a story now about a show in Chicago that went sideways, something about a malfunctioning stage and a dancer who improvised an entire solo on the spot while the tech crew scrambled to fix the lights, and everyone is leaning in to listen.
Isabelle shifts slightly, her hand landing on my thigh under the table for balance, and she leaves it there for just a second too long before pulling away.
I'm so fucked.