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“You wanted to see what my life is like. This is lunch.” He spreads his hands over the table, gesturing to the tiny breadsticks in a glass vase, the perfect orchid floating in a silver bowl, and the twin glasses of prosecco from the bottle our server brought us “on the house.”
“What does that even mean? Youhaveto eat tasting menus every day? Come on.”
He smiles ruefully and looks at the table. “I’m making myself sound like poor Eloise in the penthouse or something.”
“Just a little. Why can’t you eat a sandwich instead of sampling San Francisco’s most expensive molecular gastronomy?”
“No, I can. On a normal day. There just aren’t a lot of normal days. Getting the funding for the space project is a round-the-clock job, and I have to go to a lot of lunch meetings with venture capitalists and other investors. Plus, I speak at a lot of symposiums and things about climate change and technology. This is pretty standard fare.”
“Ah, okay. We have a seasonal tasting menu at Butter and Rosemary, but I mainly only eat there when we have events.”
His eyes light up like I’ve discovered a new chemical element. “So you see why I enjoyed your grilled cheese.”
I do see. He lifts his prosecco glass and takes a sip. Then he lifts the seashell from his plate and slurps down the little appetizer. I do the same, feeling my tastebuds come to life when the combination of flavors hits. “Wow, not gonna lie. That’s the bomb.”
Colin laughs and refills my glass of prosecco from the bottle in a silver bucket next to the table.
I like it, and I hate it at the same time. The luxury and sheer extravagance of the meal is fun as an excursion from real life, but when I think about Colin doing this all the time, I feel sad.
Knowing him the way I do now, I can see it doesn’t suit him, and I can’t believe he has so little agency over his life and his free time that he can’t even enjoy it most of the time.
“I get why you’d want to slum it at the movie theater and eat popcorn and Junior Mints.”
“Hey, in no way was that slumming it. I consider our combination of movie treats the highest of haute cuisine.”
“Good.” I swirl the prosecco in my tall flute and watch the bubbles rush to the top. They look like little kids racing to win, each one being chased by a new upstart.
Our server sweeps our empty plates away and replaces them with slivers of yellowtail crudo with a ponzu glaze, edible flowers, and shaved radishes.
“I feel like I should be eating this with tweezers.” I look around my plate, where three forks sit, waiting for this new course.
Colin looks right at home here, deftly using the proper fork for each “amuse bouche” our server brings to our table before we even look at a menu of three possible tasting configurations. When we arrived, he shook hands with the maître d’, who offered to seat him at his “usual table,” which is in a private corner with a view of the Bay Bridge through a giant floor-to-ceiling window. We can’t see the other restaurant patrons, and they can’t see us.
I imagine Colin holding court with investors, giving them his impassioned take on why Mars exploration is “vital for the future of humanity” and sipping soda water from the same flutes.
Thinking of this other Colin who has charmed the world with his visionary ideas makes me feel like I’m with a different personthan I’ve grown to know over the past couple of weeks, and I’m not sure how I feel about it.
Even though he says he’d rather eat a burger or shove his hand into a bucket of popcorn in a small-town movie theater, this is his world. The real world. Not the fairy tale place where he’s been hanging out with me and lifting my body to heights I’ve never imagined.
This is where he resides. And he’ll return here in a few short days, and I’ll return to my world.
Nothing is new there. I need to reel myself back in and remember to enjoy the here and now. Like I always do.
“Hey.” He reaches for my hand on the table. When I look up, the creases have deepened across his forehead. The last time I saw him look this concerned was when Mallory caught sight of us at the movie theater and snapped a photo. This time, his concern is focused on me. “What’s wrong?”
It’s then that I realize my own forehead has creased. I’ve been looking out the window for who knows how long, mulling the ways I don’t fit into Colin’s world.
“Nothing. Sorry. It’s just interesting seeing the real you after seeing the vacation you.”
He sits back against his chair, frowning.
“This isn’t the real me. I think you’ve gotten to know me by now. These are just the trappings of my everyday life, and it’s all really centered around work. We talked about that.”
The restaurant is bustling, alive, and festive, with every table filled on a Tuesday. We’re in a touristy area of San Francisco, and I can almost feel the warm weather through the large windows with vistas of water and hills to the east and south.
He scoots his chair closer, so we’re sitting almost next to each other. “I needed you closer,” he explains as though he’s speaking a plain, universal truth, and my heart expands against the walls of my chest when I feel the warmth of his arm drop around me.
Leaning my head against his muscled shoulder, I inhale the scent of him, all woodsy and fresh. With each exhale, I feel calmer. Finally, I decide to go for broke, baring my deepest insecurity to a man I don’t think will judge me, even if he doesn’t fully understand what I’m about to say.
