“I remember,” she said.
Aaron had gotten a job as a bartender on a booze cruise. Brad had always been game to try new things, so when Aaron offered him tickets to the cruise, he liked the idea. The ship had a casino room that was only open during the time when the ship tooled around in international waters. It quickly became clear that this was the reason most of the people had boarded the ship. As neither Lindsay nor Brad had much interest in gambling, they mostly hung out at the bar with Aaron. Then Aaron said that the trip back to Manhattan had a view worth seeing, so Brad had led Lindsay up to the main deck.
Hardly anyone was up there. And Aaron had been right; the view of the skyline as the ship headed back toward Manhattan was breathtaking. Brad and Lindsay had sat alone on the deck of the ship gazing out at the skyline, letting the magic of the city waft over them.
“This is so weird but also kind of fun,” Lindsay had said as they looked at the lights flickering on the tall buildings.
“I know.”
“The crowd here is a little unsavory. Or at least very drunk.”
Brad had laughed. “I believe it is largely what the locals call ‘bridge and tunnel.’”
“I haven’t lived in the city very long, so I can hardly make fun of them.”
“You’ve been here, what, five years? Six? That’s enough.”
“It’s a great city, isn’t it?”
Brad looked out at the skyline. Something swelled in his chest, his breath stolen by the sheer magnitude of the buildings rising out of the land, right up to the edge of the water. “Yeah. It’s pretty amazing.”
The woman he was with was pretty amazing, too. He put his arm around her and kissed the top of her head. “I love you, you know.”
“I know. I love you, too.”
The words were a new part of their vocabulary. They’d only just expressed them a couple of weeks before the cruise. Brad liked how they tasted in his mouth, though. He wanted to say it all the time.
Even now, all those years later, he still cared about her. He wanted her back in his life. It wasn’t love, exactly, not anymore. Too much time had passed. They needed to get to know each other all over again. Probably they were doing all this backward, though, considering they’d just slept together.
“What’s Aaron up to these days?” Lindsay asked.
“He works at the Food Channel. Are you still in touch with anyone from school?”
“Sure.” Lindsay yawned and snuggled closer to Brad. “Tom Roston works for Daniel Boulud.”
“That checks out. He was obsessive about French technique.”
Lindsay laughed. “The bane of your existence.”
“That class was brutal. I learned a ton, but I’ve never had a teacher who was more anal about knife cuts. ‘All those bits of celery for the mirepoix must be identical in size!’” He affected a French accent to imitate his teacher.
Lindsay giggled. “Well, anyway, Mandy opened her own brick-oven pizza place in New Jersey. Yvette moved to California and is making small plates at a winery in Napa.” She rattled off a few other names.
Brad did the same, listing the half-dozen people he still talked to regularly, a few of whom were working at some of the city’s top restaurants. And he had Milk Bar under his belt; it was a bakeshop at the top of many of the city’s Best Dessert lists.
He did not mention that he’d heard through the grapevine that Phoebe was working at Serendipity. Phoebe didn’t matter. Mentioning her would just upset Lindsay. Besides, he felt like they’d reached some sort of…well, maybe not truce, but an understanding at least. And she was here. No need to bring up the past again.
Brad took her hand in his, played with her fingers. They were long and graceful, her nails manicured and covered in pink polish but chipped in a few places. That seemed very Lindsay also.
They’d dated a little over a year. Enough time for Brad to have started thinking about the future but not really deciding anything. He hadn’t thought Lindsay had really been in that place back then, either. They were twenty-five, on the verge of starting new careers, neither in a position to settle down or make a big commitment. Sure, they’d talked about the future in the abstract, fantasizing about opening a restaurant together, but Brad had thought it was hypothetical. A lot of their classmates had come to New York to study at one of the best culinary schools in the country and then gone off to find jobs in other cities, or in their hometowns, or wherever they could find jobs. It wasn’t outrageous to think he or Lindsay might have to move to find employment. It seemed silly to make plans.
But maybe he should have thought harder, because wow, he’d missed this. He’d missed her in a way he was aware of but didn’t fully realize until she was back in his arms again. This felt right in a way nothing had since she’d left him.
But he didn’t want to say anything that would scare her off.
“And what about you? I googled you in preparation for my story,” Lindsay said. “Your résumé is impressive.”
He moved his shoulders, shrugging as much as he could while lying on his back. “I got lucky.” And it genuinely felt that way. His culinary career was a lot ofright place at the right time.
