Penny McConnell

On my seventh birthday, I started a fire.

This is kind of the most important thing about me. This fire. It explains a lot.

I don’t remember the details, though it is a tale my mother used to trot out at every possible occasion. Any time a friend wanted to tell a story about an ungrateful or unruly child; “Oh,” my mother would say, “you think that’s bad?”

And out would come the seventh-birthday party and the fire I started in the kitchen.

Mom framed it as an act of rebellion. An indicator of later personality clashes. A fuck-you to my martyred mother who’d worked so hard to make the fairy princess birthday party — a fairy princess extravaganza.

There’d been tulle and glitter and crowns. And it all got ruined by the sprinkler system.

I don’t remember all that.

What I remember is we’d just moved to the States from Yaya’s house in the mountains of Greece. And I was homesick for the goats and the sunshine and Papa’s voice.

But my own father was in San Francisco and that made Mama so happy.

“Now,” she’d said on the plane, stroking my hair, “Now he’ll take care of us.”

For the party my mom invited every girl in my new class. Every girl in our new fancy building with the doorman out front and the foyer with a real fountain.

Basically every girl we knew and I didn’t understand it then, but I do now, my mom had been bribing them into liking me. Throwing an extravagant party so they’d be kind to her oddball daughter.

Classic Mom.

And it might have worked if I hadn’t ruined it all.

When the girls showed up they were so nice. They really were. They complimented my dress. And my hair, which Mom had curled and teased and worked into an elaborate, grown-up style. They didn’t stare at my birthmark because Mom had covered it up with makeup.

They asked to see my room and they squeed over the doll house Papa had made with his hands.

It was great. Awesome even. The most beautiful birthday party I’d ever had.

It was all a seven-year-old girl could want.

And it made me sick with anxiety.

And the better it got, the sicker I got. The more worried I got. I began to imagine all the ways it would go wrong.

My father, the angry, distant stranger I barely knew, could show up early and demand everyone leave. Or he could not show up later when he was supposed to and make my mom cry and rage.

Or Mom could open the bottle of wine in the fridge and drink the whole thing.

Or one of the girls could ask a question about my mom and dad I didn’t know how to answer. Or was told I couldn’t answer. Or one of the other moms might say something that offended my mom and Mom would stand up and start swearing in Greek and kick them all out of our new apartment.

All of those things could happen and the more I thought about them, the more it seemed that they would. That they were inevitable.

And I knew I couldn’t tell my mom that I wanted everyone to leave — it would break her heart. She’d worked so hard and she was so happy here in this new life. And she didn’t like it that I was so unhappy.

I considered getting in a fight with one of the girls. Calling them a name. Maybe punching one in the nose like my mom taught me to punch the boys back in Greece. But they were all so sweet. So nice.

So, I got sicker and sicker until I ran into the bathroom and threw up, getting puke on my pretty, rainbow tulle skirt. Messing up the makeup my mother insisted I wear even though I told her that all the other little girls wouldn’t be wearing makeup. To which she’d replied, “Those other little girls don’t look like you.”

It wasn’t a compliment.

I went to the kitchen to find a towel to clean up my skirt. And in the kitchen the birthday cake sat on the glass cake stand that had been Yaya’s. It came out every year for my birthday and this year instead of one of Yaya’s homemade cakes with the lemons and the flowers, my cake was a big rainbow thing that Mom bought at the fancy bakery down the street.

“We have plenty of money now,” Mom said. “We don’t need to make our own cakes. Or our own clothes. We don’t need to milk goats and grow vegetables.”

I didn’t know what that meant except that Yaya didn’t make my cakes anymore. And I missed it. And at that moment I missed it so much it hurt.

But next to the cake on the pretty table with all the presents, there was the lighter Mom would use to light the candles. It was the long one that lit the barbecue out on the small back porch.

Nauseous and near tears, smelling of vomit and my mother’s perfume, I picked up the lighter and thought…this will get everyone to leave.

It worked.

I ruined everything so no one and nothing else could.

Tonight, the fundraiser dinner is arguably the best night of my life. Certainly of my spotty career.

And all I can think of is that birthday party.

Because when things are too good, when I’m too happy, I find myself looking for a lighter, so I can burn it all down.

And the man behind the kitchen tonight…he’d been a very good lighter.

Fuck, I think, walking back from the Dumpster through the bright moonlight. I wish I could just cut him out of the night, like an ex-boyfriend out of a good picture.

But he’s coloring everything.

And I am trying not to be ashamed. I am trying…and failing. Because of all the things I should be thinking about tonight, all the successes, the only thing I can think of is that man’s hand down my pants. His other over my mouth and I absolutely burn… I am ignited in shame and delight.

I don’t even know his name.

This is so like me; I can’t stand it.

The most important night of my life and I’m all but begging some man to make me come.

My cheeks are hot, my eyes burn.

It’s hard to believe that nothing else went wrong.

I mean, things got pretty messed up during dinner service, but it wasn’t a disaster. And in my life, if things aren’t literally on fire, it’s a win.

Still, I spent the whole night just waiting for everything to fall apart. Because that’s my gift. My curse. There’s a good chance just about everything I touch will crash and burn.

But it never happened. Not tonight.

Jeff showed up stoned and I was like, “Here we go.”

But everyone rallied. Even Evi on the grill, that could have been a mess, but she rose to the occasion like a total champ.

And then kicking Jeff out? Punching him? The jerk deserved it, but still. Right after dessert? With an inn full of guests about to leave? It could have blown up in my face.

But it didn’t. Against all the odds and every lesson of my past, it didn’t blow up. So, of course I had to give it a little nudge and get raunchy with a stranger behind a kitchen.

Because that’s how normal people behave.

But, there was no cosmic crushing. No karmic retribution.

I let a man put one hand down my pants and the other over my mouth and I came so hard I saw stars, and the roof didn’t fall in.

The night just carried on being epic.

I stare out the back window of the kitchen, up at the mountain and the stars, set so deep in an indigo sky and I wish, in the back of my mind where all the wishes I can’t say out loud are kept, that my mother was here to see it.

To see me making something of myself.

And then I wish she’d care.

“Chef?”

I jump, startled. I thought I was alone in the kitchen, service long since over. Guests who weren’t spending the night had left. Even the bar is closing down.

“I’m just finishing up,” Brandi, one of our youngest prep cooks, says.

“Looks good, Brandi.” I walk away from the sink, along the prep stations and past the stoves and ovens. Everything gleaming. Everything perfect. “You’ve done great.”

“Thank you, Chef,” Brandi says, tipping all the cutting boards up to balance against the stainless-steel racks.

Everyone else is gone. It’s a little ridiculous that Brandi is still here, but that’s Brandi for you.

A keener.

I’m not a fan of keeners. There is something so desperate about them. Something that screams, “Love me.”

I know this because I used to be the most desperate of the keeners.

“It was a good night, Chef,” she says.

“Yes, it was,” I say with a smile, because I meant what I said to Jeff: we’re family. My staff. This kitchen. The inn. I want this to be the home I never had and in the home I never had, you’re nice to everyone. Even the annoying family members. You don’t punish the keeners for wanting to be liked. To be appreciated. Noticed.

Wanting to be loved is not weak.

Not in the home I’m making now.

“You did a good job. Head on home.”

Brandi nods, her cheeks flushed either from the night or the work or the compliment, hard to say with her. The girl is a blusher.

And then she is gone and the kitchen is dark and still and I try to stop myself, to keep the memories away, to, instead, focus on anything but my body. My to-do list, things that can be improved upon — the fondant potatoes for one. But my whole body buzzes so loud, I can’t hear my thoughts over my body’s instance to be heard.

Between my legs there is an ache and a want.

It’s been years since I’ve let the rush of a good night end in ill-advised hook-up. And I’m a freaking business owner now. But the nameless man at the bar with the dark eyes and the thick, jet-black hair — if a man could have flirtatious hair, he had it. How was a girl supposed to resist that hair?

How seductive was it that he’d known exactly what I’d been feeling? Like he knew intimately the high-octane emotions after service, after a night like that, after breaking a man’s nose, after Jeff called me a bad lay.

Like the only thing for that awful intersection of events is orgasms.

My body is lush with the memory.

And I should be celebrating everything that happened tonight, but I’m stupidly hung up on this.

Someone pushes open the service entrance to the kitchen and light floods the shadowed room. I jump away from the counter feeling like I’ve been caught with my hand down my pants.

“What. A. Fucking. Night,” a voice cries out and I smile.

It’s Megan. My business partner. My truly better half.

My better half who would flip her lid if she knew that I had fooled around with a patron. Not just because it puts the reputation of the business in jeopardy, but because she loves me.

And she knows I have a thing for self-sabotage.

I won’t tell her and I’ll just add it to the pile of things I’m not telling her. One more lie won’t matter.

He’s gone, I tell myself. He is just a thing that happened and now he’s gone and life goes on the way it should.

“Back here,” I say, pulling my jacket straight. Megan says I don’t have to wear the jacket, I don’t have to cover up the ink. She says this place is the place where we should be entirely ourselves.

But I’ve been entirely myself most of my life and failed, fucked up, ruined things. So, we’re going to go with the opposite for a while. Just to see if it works better than being me.

Megan appears in the prep area and I feel better just seeing her.

“I told you,” she says with a wry smile. A twinkle in her eye.

“You told me,” I concede with a laugh. I knew this was coming. And I’ve actually been looking forward to it. My words that I am about to eat, they are going to be delicious.

“Say it.”

“Megan —”

“Say it, Pen. For real.”

“I am not cursed.”

“And?”

“I do not have to self-sabotage.” I say the words but I’m lying. Because what was irresistible hair guy if not a little self-sabotage?

“And?”

“I deserve nice things.” This is a lie, too, but Megan doesn’t know me as anyone but Penny. The kid who grew up poor in Iowa. She doesn’t know that I’ve had nice things all my life, and it isn’t the nice things I don’t deserve.

It’s the happiness the nice things bring.

That is the shit that is out of my reach.

But it makes Megan happy to hear me say it.

And it is probably good for me to say it, but I just don’t believe it. You grow up like I did and it is going to take more than a good soft-opening to change my mind.

Megan’s red dress still looks flawless, so does her hair, but she is barefoot and in one hand she has a bottle of Maker’s Mark and in the other she has two glasses.

It’s celebration time.

My friend puts everything on the stainless-steel counter and faces me with her hands on her hips. A stance that makes me nervous. Last time she stood like that in her bare feet in my kitchen with a bottle of the good stuff beside her, she said, “My family has this old farm…”

And now look at us.

“I know you’re not a hugger,” Megan says and I nod, my eyes narrowed. “But I am. And after a night like tonight —”

Before she can finish, I put my arms around her, pulling her close. And Megan collapses into me and we’re not hugging so much as holding each other up.

“We did it,” I breathe, the words still not real. The night still feels like a box of out-of-control puppies.

“We totally did it.”

“Pour us a drink.”

Megan leans back, wiping under her eyes.

I don’t give her a hard time for being such a crier. But I still can’t quite understand how I ended up in business with a hugger AND a crier. It’s my worst nightmare…kind of.

Though, I realize with a start, tonight I was a hugger and a crier.

Honestly, what is going on?

“Dinner was exquisite,” Megan says.

“Thank you. Service was impeccable. Those tables, Meg. It was beautiful.”

“Thank you. I wish you would have taken more credit. Everyone is asking about the chef —”

I lift my hands. “Not interested,” I say and take a long drink of the bourbon that goes down like burning honey. “And you know that.”

“But celebrity chefs —”

“It’s a team back here,” I say. “Just like it is up front. One of us gets a compliment, we all do. I’m not interested in being a celebrity chef. I’m interested in running a high-end farm-to-table restaurant and inn.”

Megan opens her eyes, drops her jaw. “Oh, my God,” she says. “We’re doing it. We’re actually…that’s what we’re doing!”

I understand her wonder. Sometimes it catches me off guard, too. That the last two years of ridiculous work has actually paid off.

I tap my glass against Megan’s and we both drink.

“I fired Jeff,” I say. “And before you get wound up, it wasn’t sabotage. I had to.”

“What? Why?” Megan gasped.

“He showed up high.”

“No!”

I rotate the glass against the stainless-steel counter in quarter turns. Like a screw I am turning tighter and tighter.

“I broke his nose.”

Megan blinks. “You punched him?”

I start to laugh. Because it is ridiculous. Any night it would be ridiculous. But on this night? It is surreal. “There was blood. Like, a lot of it.”

“Did anyone see?”

Just the stranger, but we are not talking about him. I shake my head no.

“Oh, my God!” Megan howls and suddenly it’s the funniest, craziest thing in the world and we’re both laughing. The pressure of the night making this funnier than it really is.

“He deserved it.”

“He totally deserved it.”

“I would have fired him ages ago,” Megan says. “Sometimes I wonder why you’re so loyal to people.”

“Why are we loyal to anyone?” I ask and take another sip.

“Oh, listen, Freud.” Megan scowls. “I’m not going to let you get all existential on me. Tonight is a night for celebrating. We did it.”

“We did it,” I say and it’s another cheers, and another swallow.

“Excuse me?” a voice says from the doorway. A very familiar masculine voice and my stomach drops just as my skin ignites.

It’s him. My stranger. He’s supposed to be gone.

“Hello?”

Megan leans down slightly to glimpse under a shelf at the doorway. She’s going to get rid of him, I know it. And I’m ready to let her handle this. I’ll hide in the kitchen.

It’s what I’m good at.

“Mr. Quadir,” she says. “We’re back here.”

“What are you doing?” I whisper.

“He’s nice,” she whispers back. “And very pretty to look at.”

I know. I know all of this. But that doesn’t explain why Megan is bringing him in here.

“You’re cut off,” I breathe and pull the bottle away from her, which only makes her roll her eyes.

I can hear Mr. Quadir making his way toward us and I run my hand down my coat, making sure every button is done up. Alarmed all over again that he managed, in such little time, to undo me so completely.

Mystery man with the hair steps around the stainless-steel counter and if he was handsome in a tux, he is devastating with the jacket gone and the shirt unbuttoned, the tie hanging loose around his neck.

He is utterly and completely masculine. Beautiful to look at and I’m suddenly aware of how I must look. Skin flushed, hair sweaty and messy. No makeup. No…beauty. Megan, beside me, shines like a diamond.

He must look at me and wonder what the hell he was thinking. He must look at me and be…embarrassed.

I am.

“Here’s the party,” he says with that utterly charming half-smile.

“Not much of a party,” Megan answers. “But we do what we can.”

I lift my glass to take a sip, to keep my body busy, but my glass is empty and so I am, somehow, left watching him. Staring really.

Those hands, they touched me.

Those lips, they kissed me.

And his grin, the ease of it, the…charm of it makes my whole body clench like it wishes it could hold onto him.

Charming men are not my style. They don’t like women like me, rough and blunt. We don’t fit.

Though we did fit pretty well tonight.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, I was just…well, I was looking for a drink.” He gestures aimlessly at the bottle on the counter between us. “I thought the bar might still be open.”

“Bar closes at midnight,” Megan says. A time we’d argued over at some length.

“I didn’t realize it is so late.”

I don’t even know what time it is and the sight of 12:30 on my watch makes me start. I need to go home and get some sleep if I’m going to be back in time for the breakfast service. I’ve been up since before dawn for what seems like years. And dawn comes earlier every day.

But somehow…I don’t leave.

“You’re celebrating a successful night,” he says, his hands in his pockets. His hair flopped over his forehead.

So flirty that hair. It’s like he’s teasing me with it.

“We are,” Megan says and I expect her to say something polite but firm, sending Mr. Quadir, with the hands and the mouth and the knowledge of my clit and just how it likes to be touched, on his way.

But instead, to my shock, Megan says; “Join us.”