Penny

Megan wants me to do this thing at dinner. To explain some part of the meal or my process. So, I wear my chef whites and explain how I make I make the egg yolk ravioli and answer questions.

All while trying not to dwell on the fact that Simon isn’t here.

His setting is empty. His plate clean. His wineglass untouched.

Part of me understands this to be just a thing that is true. And part of me understands it to be a thing that is always true.

I spent my childhood getting my hopes raised only to have them dropped from the highest possible distance.

I have been conditioned over so many years to not be bothered by this — a man not showing up.

But I am bothered. Mostly because I’ve been thinking about it for too much of the day. How seeing Simon would be a reward for all the interviews I did. The old lies I told with all the conviction I could muster. Which isn’t much.

Every lie shaved off a piece of me and now I am raw. And uncertain.

Penny McConnell was a person I made up because I needed her. But now…now I don’t know what I need.

And that Simon isn’t at dinner makes me feel like a fool for needing anything.

The only thing to ever make the disappointment better is to stop hoping. Or destroy the hope before it can get too high. To drag it down and rub it in the dirt, so that I never feel it’s loss.

I’ve cleaned up the kitchen, shed the chef jacket, and taken Simon’s dinner and put it on a plate for Megan — ravioli and spring salad with fresh herbs. Lemon panna cotta for dessert.

She’ll be working late and will have forgotten to eat, so I tell myself it works out that Simon wasn’t here.

But it’s a lie

I take the steps to the second floor and head down the wing with the office at the end and nearly run into Simon coming from that direction.

He steadies me with a hand on my elbow when I step away from him so fast I nearly trip.

“Hi,” he says, and I refuse to look at his hair, which is doing some kind of mad swoop thing over his forehead like he spent the day with his hands in it.

“Simon.” I smile, politely. “I was just going to see Megan.”

“She’s gone, actually. Left a little bit ago.”

“How do you know that?”

“I was with her in the office talking about my foundation using the inn for a fundraiser. It got late and she had to go.”

How cozy.

“That wouldn’t happen to be my dinner, would it?” he asks, sheepishly. “I had some emergencies with work and couldn’t get away. Looks amazing.”

Emergencies with work explains the hair.

“It is. And you’re lucky — I was about to give it to Megan. So it’s yours again.” I hand him the plate. “Bon appetite.”

I turn and start to walk down the stairs. He falls into step beside me.

“How were the interviews?” he asks.

“Fine. Well, as fine as they can be. Look, Simon —”

“Eat with me,” he says, cutting off what was going to be my good night.

“I’ve already eaten.”

“Keep me company then.”

I try to remember my disappointment. I try to remember how foolish it would be to get, in any way, attached to him. I try to remember how I’m the one who put the kibosh on anything happening between us.

I try to remember all my sound and rational reasons why.

But all I can remember is his finger against my wrist and the way I thought I might fly up to the ceiling.

And he was working. I can’t fault a guy for that.

“Sure,” I say. “But we’re sitting outside and I’m not talking about myself. I’ve done too much of that today.”

“Got it,” he says, that half-grin lighting up the hallway. I feel like a schoolgirl, blushing and looking away.

The moon is full and the sky is clear so it’s nearly bright as day and I lead him through the kitchen to grab a half-full bottle of white wine I served with dinner and two glasses.

Outside between the parking lot and the garden is a picnic table.

“Is this a hidden dining room?” he asks.

“No,” I say. “But that’s not a bad idea. We could do more outdoor dining around here.”

We both sit at the splintered, weathered table.

“This was our first furniture,” I tell Simon. “When Megan and I first started work, this was pretty much our office.”

“Well, it’s a good view,” he says looking up at the moon-splashed sky.

I am wearing a black tank top so I sit here with my sleeves of ink revealed. I feel more than a little naked. How long, I wonder, has it been since I’ve sat this bare in front of someone?

Ages.

The tattoos are not connected to Penny McConnell. They are pure Tina Andreas and it occurs to me that even sitting here in a tank top with a man as clever and intuitive as Simon might be revealing too much.

But I don’t put on the flannel shirt I have tied around my waist.

I do nothing to cover myself up.

Why am I courting disaster like this?

“What’s this one?” he asks, running his fingers over the top of my arm, the tattoo is a black-and-white picture of a girl holding a match. It’s shadows and light and one of the very first tattoos I ever got.

“You know the story of the Little Match Girl?’ I ask, rubbing my hand over the ink, as if to erase the sensation of his finger on my arm. It’s impossible but I try anyway.

“The girl who dies of starvation and exposure while selling matches in London.”

“Yes. That’s part of it.”

“What’s the other part?” he asks with a laugh.

“The part where she watches the family through the window. And the ghost of her dead grandmother comes and takes her away.”

“That’s not cheerful either,” he says.

“I didn’t say it was cheerful. But it’s a story I related to when I was a kid.”

He makes no comment about the unlikeliness of an Iowa farm girl from a big family feeling left out and alone.

“I like this one,” he says, pointing to a rather elegant diagram of a pig with all its parts labeled in Greek on my forearm.

“Thanks. I got a lot of these from an old Greek cookbook my mom had.” I twist my arm to show him a chef’s knife and a sprig of parsley. A drawing of a lamb’s ear. A culinary map of Greece. The bleeding heart of a tomato. They’re stunning in their hand-drawn complexity. “I loved the illustrations.”

“You have ties to Greece?”

“My mom.”

“McConnell is your father’s name?”

“Yes,” I say and now I’ve gone too far. I feel the fear of having revealed too much and I stand up and untie my shirt so I can pull it on.

He cuts into his dinner.

“There’s an egg in this ravioli!” he cries like I’m just blowing his mind all the time. It’s exceedingly flattering.

“You don’t get out much, do you?” I ask him.

“No.” He laughs. “I really don’t. Half the time it’s protein bars and airport food.”

“Gross.”

“I know.”

“Do you like travelling?” I ask, sitting on the wooden bench.

“I don’t really think about liking it.” He takes another bite of the ravioli and closes his eyes.

“That’s too bad,” I say. “I couldn’t do so much of something I didn’t like.”

He watches me and swallows. “Have you always wanted to be a chef?”

I nod and remember the script. The thing I’m supposed to say about learning how to make pie at my mother’s elbow. I said it about five times today, and maybe that’s why I can’t say it again. I can’t force the words out.

“My grandfather used to kill a pig every spring and he’d roast it and invite every person he knew. Family. Friends. Neighbors. Some enemies. Our house would be full with people. And there would be wine and singing and fights sometimes, kissing all the time. And I was just a kid so I didn’t know I wanted to be a chef, but I knew I wanted THAT.”

“Who wouldn’t want that?” His smile is crooked, endearing. Sweetest thing I’ve seen.

“Right?”

“And you’ve found it here?”

“I love this farm,” I say unable to hide my smile, my pride. My happiness. “It’s exactly what I hoped it would be.” His silence and attention make me again feel naked. Like I’ve exposed too much of myself. All my simplicity. “But, I’m not talking about me right now. I did that all day. Tell me what’s your favorite place from all your travels?”

“Currently, it’s my bed in my condo in Los Angeles.”

“Very exotic.”

“It feels that way.”

He takes another bite of the dinner I’ve made and I sip my wine and the quiet is…soft. Kind. Taking care of each other with it. The night is a beautiful blanket we’re wrapped up in.

It’s a whole different kind of intimacy being silent with another person. And normally I feel terribly compelled to fill silence. To yammer away. To push this level of intimacy away, because it’s so freaking honest.

But this is different.

Simon is different.

“The people almost always are the best and worst things about any of the places I’ve been,” he says like he’s been thinking of it all this time. “And sunsets. Sunsets are stunning all over the globe. I forget that, a lot.”

“Sunsets?”

“That people can be beautiful. Mostly, I just see the bad stuff. The disaster. The shit bad people do to good people. Or strong people do to weak people. But that’s not all there is in the world. It’s good to be reminded of that.”

“I forget that, too,” I say. “My mother raised me to see people as stepping stones or road blocks. Something I can use or something I have to get out of my way.”

“My parents saw friends in everybody. Even my father, who experienced brutal racism in his day, saw people as generally good. I think about it now and I don’t know how he managed to do that. To stay so kind.”

“That’s a nice way to grow up.”

“It was. It really…was.”

His plate is empty and we both take a sip of our wine as if to slow ourselves down. Like we were hurtling towards something.

“I know you don’t want to talk about you,” he says. “But it sounds like you had two different childhoods.”

My stomach drops. How careless was I? How reckless with the truth?

“Pig roasts with your grandfather and a mother who was manipulative. They don’t quite add up.”

“I guess they don’t.” I say. “We lived with my grandparents on the farm until I was seven.”

“They died?”

I nod instead of telling the truth, which was that my mother moved us to San Francisco on the whim of a man who was, in all probability, setting her up to take a fall for him.

Mom was a better person around her parents. Her scheming was minor, her disappointments manageable. Once we were funded by my father’s millions, her appetite for displeasure was endless.

“I need to go,” I say. And I do, tomorrow is a big day. All the days are big.

But the words sound like a lie

Because I don’t want to go.

I want more of this intimacy.

“Where do you live here?” he asks.

I tilt my head, wondering if he’s coming onto me.

“It’s just a question,” he says, his hands up. But his smile says otherwise. And the smile combined with this silence we’ve shared, this intimate dinner, these little truths. Well…it’s dangerous. My heart beats hard and begins to race. I suddenly don’t know what to do with my hands.

“We have trailers down the road,” I say. “Some staff are using them until they get apartments in town. Megan moved out of hers and lives in Piru.”

“But you’ve stayed in the trailers?”

“Very glamourous, I know.”

He laughs, low in his throat. “You don’t know the places I’ve lived. A nice trailer wins, hands down.”

“It suits me.”

His eyes touch mine and I can’t look away. I don’t want to look away.

I imagine him in far-flung places. I imagine him the son of two people raising him right. I imagine him a boy of a hopeful father. A firebrand mother and I want to kiss him so badly it’s hard to stop myself.

He’s looking at my mouth like he’s thinking the same thing.

“I need to go,” I whisper.

“I know.”

And still we don’t move. His hand comes up and strokes my cheek. It’s like being brushed with fire and my skin rises in goosebumps. I feel every callous on his long elegant fingers.

“I want to kiss you,” he says and my lips part as I gasp for air. “The only thing stopping me is you said no.”

I did. I said no.

And I said no for good reasons that seem totally distant now.

“Good night,” I say. “Leave your dishes. I’ll handle them in the morning.” And I leave him there in the moonlight on the old picnic table.

I don’t know if this makes me brave or a coward.

Maybe both.

Thoughts of him follow me all the way home.