30. Senhora Carter #3
“Renata!” All I could do was laugh, because what could I say to all of that?
I sat there with my hair right and a year of standing appointments in an envelope in my lap, trying to picture Julian, who had a company and countless people who'd run any errand he named, walking into this loud, packed salon, and not leaving until there was room for me.
The laugh went out of me somewhere. I had to look up at the ceiling and breathe through my nose, to fight back the tears. Renata reached for a comb she didn't need, turning away, letting me compose myself.
By the time I got to my car I'd stopped trying to keep the day at arm's length. It had gotten all the way in. I sat there a minute before I started the engine, my face a wreck with emotions in the visor mirror, and I let it be.
Julian knocked at seven fifty-eight on the dot.
Charcoal suit, white shirt open at the throat, nothing done but a shower, and still he looked like a man who walked into rooms. He stepped in, set his keys in the dish on the entry table because his keys had lived in that dish for two months, and came to me.
Hand at the side of my face. One slow kiss.
“I missed you.”
“I missed you, baby.”
He drove with Elmiene’s Light Work playing low, his hand on my thigh, and a cologne I didn’t know on him, darker, something with smoke in it.
“This is new.”
“Mm.”
I knew it before he answered. “Bibliothèque.” The one I’d told him was my favorite, the night we danced. “You remembered.”
He pulled into Solé, the Italian place on Maple. Came around, opened my door, walked me in with his hand at the small of my back. The ma?tre d’ greeted him by name and walked us to an alcove at the back, the light softer than the rest of the room. He pulled out my chair. There was no menu.
“Julian. There’s no menu.”
“I took the liberty.”
A waiter appeared with a white wine, poured and left.
Julian raised his glass, paused and cocked his head to the side thinking. “I had something. It's gone. Just — happy Valentine's, Lyss.”
The first course came out twelve minutes later, and my body went still before my mind caught up. White ceramic. A round of injera at the base. A square of bacalhau over it, golden-crusted. Piri-piri around the rim, that specific red.
I knew that plating. I’d eaten off that plating for the better part of a decade. I looked up at the kitchen door, and Chef Marcos was standing at the side of the table.
“Chef!”
He smiled. “Senhora Carter.”
I was on my feet before I knew it. He hugged me, brief and warm.
“How—”
“Mr. Wade flew me down this morning. Me and the wife.” He smiled and nodded at Julian who nodded back. “Go back and sit. Eat your food while it’s hot, Senhora. Enjoy.”
He gave Julian another small nod and went back to the kitchen, and I sat down and looked at the man across from me, who had his hands folded on the table and a smile he wasn’t even trying to hide.
“You flew him from Newark to North Carolina to cook me dinner?”
“I did.”
“Julian.” I was stunned. I looked at the bacalhau. I looked at Julian.
“You flew him here,” I said again, still in shock.
“Eat, Lyss.”
I picked up my fork, and the first bite was exactly the way I remembered it — the crackle of the bacalhau, the give of the injera, the heat coming up slow at the back of my mouth half a second late. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them he was watching me.
“Is it the way you remember?”
“It’s exactly the way I remember it.”
“Good.”
He picked up his own fork. Took a bite.
His eyebrows lifted slightly.
“This is good.”
“I told you.”
“You did.”
The doro wat came after, then a little kitfo. I sat back and looked at Julian.
“Dessert is coming.”
I shook my head and reached across the table and took his hand.
The pastéis came out twenty minutes later. Six of them on a small plate, the tops caramelized the way Marcos caramelized them, with a dusting of cardamom and a small cup of Ethiopian coffee on the side.
I bit into one.
The cardamom hit first. Then the cream. Then the burnt sugar. Then the smell of the coffee.
I set the rest of the pastéis down.
I sat back in my chair and looked at the man across the table. “This is the best Valentine’s Day — hell, any date — I’ve ever been on. I want you to hear me say it.”
“I’m glad. That is the point. I just want you to be happy, Lyss.”
“I am happy. Beyond happy.”
He nodded.
Marcos came out as we were finishing. Sat with us for five minutes. Asked about my mother. Asked about my work. Said one warm thing in Portuguese to me that I caught half of. Shook Julian's hand, they thanked each other. Then he went back.
“My belly is full. My heart is happy.” I reached across the table and took his hand. “Thank you for this day.”
He turned my hand over in his and didn’t say anything for a second, and whatever moved across his face, he let me see it.
Then he leaned in to my ear. “I’m hungry.”
“We just ate.”
He looked at me seriously, until I processed it. “Oh. Okay.”
“You gonna feed me?”
“Yes. I am.”
He kissed the corner of my mouth, then my neck. “Mine or yours.”
“Mine,” I said, thinking about the new lingerie waiting in my drawer.