22. Ash
ASH
Flour is everywhere, dusting the butcher-block island and my sleeves, with a faint white handprint stamped across the front of Kael’s black shirt that I absolutely did not put there on purpose.
Three couples stand at three individual workstations inside Roberta’s Kitchen, a narrow Oakland storefront that smells like garlic and warm dough.
Copper pans hang above a long prep counter.
Glass jars of dried peppers and ingredients I don’t recognize line the shelves.
Somewhere behind us, sauce simmers with a low, steady blurp-blurb-blurp that makes my stomach growl.
Kael notices and grins.
The grin alone is enough to confirm I made the right call.
If I ever get the chance to know Jamal better, I owe him a thank-you. His question told me exactly what Kael was afraid of, and it confirmed what I already suspected: the fancy dinner reservation was wrong.
In my head, Rich Table makes a good impression. But watching Kael light up when he met Roberta, compliment the framed menu from her first pop-up, and immediately ask whether the basil on the counter was Genovese or Thai made it obvious I chose better.
I got to surprise him, and I got to surprise myself. As it turns out, calling myself a terrible cook oversold my ability as much as my one line about the workout tracker undersold that masterpiece. I am catastrophically bad at this. Which seems to delight Kael.
That’s why the night already feels like a win. I’m starting to understand how much I like making him happy.
“Now,” Roberta says to the six of us in front of her, “use the flat edge of your bench scraper to gather all that loose, stray flour back into the center of your well.”
She carries the calm authority of someone who has watched a thousand adults ruin what she’s trying to teach us but still believes, against all evidence, we can be saved.
“You want to do this one?” Kael whispers, handing me what must be the bench scraper.
“Uh. Okay. Just… right into the well.”
He uses his fingers to hollow out a deep hole in the middle, creating a thick wall of flour around the edges before pointing at it and bumping my shoulder.
“I thought this class was for beginners,” I whisper back, stealing a glance at the couple next to us to make sure I dump the excess flour the right way.
“We’re basically making spaghetti.”
“Tagliatelle’s nothing like spaghetti,” Roberta says, sending Kael’s blush up like a flare I’m too busy admiring to save him from. “Spaghetti is long and thin. No eggs. Completely different sauce.”
“Psh,” I say. “Come on, Kael. Everyone knows that.”
“No, no, no,” Roberta says, rushing over to take the scraper thing from my hand. “You’re going to fling the egg everywhere. Like this.”
She demonstrates a small, precise motion I miss entirely because Kael’s still blushing.
When he catches me staring, he smiles, and it takes all my self-control to stay standing here instead of doing the one thing I promised myself I wouldn’t.
He seems into it, which I’m starting to suspect is Kael’s default setting for anything messy, tactile, or bad for my self-control. I’m the one who made the damn rule.
“I’ll try,” Kael says, scooting me aside to take the scraper Roberta’s wagging. “I don’t think Ash has ever made pasta before.”
“Well,” I say, because honesty, “that’s true. But whenever I’ve seen other people make it, it usually looks like this.”
I mime cracking sticks of dry pasta and dropping them into a bowl.
Roberta shrieks, slapping her own forehead as she abandons our station to help someone else.
After that, Kael takes custody of the dough.
He keeps offering me pieces of the process like rolling it thinner, dusting it with flour, folding it into a loose log, or slicing it into ribbons.
He gets flour on his wrist and the edge of his glasses, and every time Roberta corrects him, he looks delighted instead of embarrassed.
“The less I do, the better our odds of eating tonight,” I say.
“You sure?”
“I think I’m more valuable as conversational support and wine-pourer.”
I reach for his glass, but he’s barely touched it.
Either he’s keeping pace with the one glass I’m allowing myself because I have to drive us back or he’s too absorbed in the class to remember the wine exists.
Both possibilities settle low in my body, inconvenient and impossible to spreadsheet away.
He glances over while dropping our pasta into the boiling water. “You didn’t have to do this just for me.”
“I have a confession,” I say, watching him toss and loosen the last strands. “You remember that post-retirement list that wouldn’t load?”
“How could I forget?” His eyes go wide, smile carving those beautiful dimples deeper. “Are we doing one of your post-retirement dreams right now? Before you retire?”
“Not exactly. But number eighteen is learning how to actually cook, and this seemed like a step.”
He leans back, fist to his heart. “I think I’m honored to have pulled a tiny bit of happiness into your present-day life.”
He has no idea.
I’m moving too fast. The tightness in my chest belongs to a category of feeling no rational person should trust after this little time.
That’s the reason for the rule. If I can sit beside him, talk to him, watch him laugh over a pile of flour and eggs, and still want him this badly after sex is off the table, then maybe what happened between us wasn’t only adrenaline.
Maybe it means something.
And if he keeps smiling like that, I’m going to have all the proof I need.
The only part of our date that I’ve been dreading arrives when I pull up outside his apartment.
“Well that was delicious,” Kael says.
“And only partly misshapen. Thanks to you.”
His smile goes soft, and the band that’s been tightening across my ribs all night pulls tighter.
“You want honesty?” he asks. “I’m surprised how much fun I had.”
“Me too,” I say, though it’s less a surprise than the confirmation I’d been hoping for.
It’s just one date, but it at least means “circling yes” hadn’t been completely baseless.
Kael turns the takeout container slowly in his hands, smiling at it like we made art instead of pasta.
The car’s too small for this silence, and my fucking rule is the loudest thing in it.
He looks up at the dark second-floor windows of his building, then back at me. “Okay then. So, I guess I’ll see you—”
“Could I come up?” I blurt, bracing against the steering wheel.
“Ash, I—”
His hesitation deflates the momentary confidence that rose up against my will, and I bury it under excuses.
“I don’t have to. Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked. I—”
“I was saying,” he says slowly, “if you come upstairs, I don’t think I have the kind of self-control your rule requires, and I—” He sighs, like he can’t believe what he’s saying or like he’s exhausted from holding back. “I don’t want to mess this up.”
I grip the steering wheel. “I made the rule because I didn’t want tonight to be only about wanting you.”
“And?”
I look at him, really look, at the flour on his shirt and the nervous tilt of his mouth and his place waiting above us with a locked door he’s willing to open.
“And now I know it isn’t.”
His breath catches.
So much for the rule.
I lean across the tiny console, slower than I want to, giving either of us every chance to stop me.
Kael meets me halfway, one hand catching the front of my blazer, and the first press of his mouth quenches a thirst the wine only made stronger.
Because now I know. I know how he laughs when we’re not hiking for our lives.
I’ve seen his sweetness sand down a cooking class instructor’s stern direction.
I’ve seen his joy at doing something new when there’s no desperate fear.
When Kael groans into my mouth, my self-control goes straight to hell.
I cup the back of his neck and kiss him deeper, crowded between the steering wheel, the gearshift, and the ridiculous glowing floorboards. His fingers slide into my hair, and the car becomes a dare no pair of adult men should attempt.
“I just want to give us a chance,” I say, still trying to defend my decision against my own brain.
“Yeah,” he says, tilting my chin up to nip at my neck.
“Like, we deserve that.”
“Uh-huh.”
“After everything we went through.”
“Ash.” He stops moving, and I look down to find him smiling. “Do you want to have sex? Because if you do, I’m going to need more space than this Micro Machine.”
I laugh, breathless and busted. “Yes.”
“Then come upstairs.”
He hurries us upward like he’s afraid one of us will come to our senses if we take the steps at a normal pace. His fingers stay hooked in mine as he tugs me up a narrow stairwell, and by the time we reach his door, I’m breathing hard for reasons that have nothing to do with the few flights.
He fumbles the key.
When the door opens, I barely get an impression of the apartment before Kael’s mouth is back on mine. There’s high windows and concrete floors, an impossible space for an artist in San Francisco.
My asshole brain supplies the math automatically. Alistair’s money.
Kael shoves my blazer off my shoulders, and the thought burns away.
Whatever paid for this place, nothing in it belongs to anyone but him.
The apartment is clean with white walls, warm wood shelves, and a low couch that looks expensive in a way mine never will.
Like taste instead of money. Track lights are aimed at an easel.
Canvases lean three-deep along one wall, but even they’re arranged by size.
Brushes stand bristle-up in glass jars by the sink.
Drop cloths are folded. Paint tubes are capped.
I expected chaos, but my stomach ties into knots when I compare the tidiness of Kael’s place to mine.
A little painted rock sits on the windowsill like a security guard in a tie.
“This is it,” he says, breathless and pretending this is a tour. “Kitchen. Little outdoor patio. Bathroom’s over there.” He points to a half-cracked door across the apartment.
“Why don’t you tell me about each of these paintings?”