Page 79 of Fate Fiction

Nick could never see this place for what it was. I couldn’t convince him that there was something special about this place, I couldn’t force him to pause for a second and exist in its beauty. Even now, after twenty some-odd years of summer mornings like this one, there was a rare magic that coursed through the air. My mind itched with a childlike wonder watching the dock bob in the waves. The stars at night felt like they were dotted across the sky just for its witnesses.

Every wonderment would result in a “huh, nice” from Nick, and that would be the end.

Evan saw the magic here.

“You and Hollyweird made up, I see,” Sue was elbows deep in dishes when I entered her kitchen around eleven. Randy practically pulled Evan off my porch while we were drinking our coffee and talking. Randy said they were going to hike to a few of the hidden ponds and fish for our dinner tonight. Evan looked at me like he was actively being kidnapped, but still went along with it.

“Something like that,” I laughed. Last night still felt like a dream. It happened so fast. Layers of myself peeled away and we woke up tangled in his bedsheets. It was good, and it had to be good enough because this was all I’d ever get.

“More than made up from the sounds of it,” Sue turned to me and waggled her eyebrows. “Made up, made out, made love…”

“Stop!” I cut her off as my cheeks heated. “You guys heard all that?”

“I heard something, Randy didn’t. He was dead asleep without his hearing aids in, a tornado could hit and he wouldn’t even stir.”

“That doesn’t make the situation that much better.”

She placed the last dish in the drying rack and dried her hands off. “If you only knew what Randy and I did back in the day to christen this place⁠—”

I waved my hands in front of me in protest. “Please, please do not tell me. I will gladly live with the mystery of it all.”

She shrugged. “Suit yourself, they’re good stories.”

Every time Sue and I made pupusas together she’d use the same massive robin’s egg blue ceramic bowl to make the dough. There was a chip on the lip from the time I bumped the bowl into the counter when I was too young to have any hand-eye coordination. I apologized profusely that day, I had committed one of the cardinal sins a child could commit, breaking something. Sue laughed it off, ruffled my hair, and said it had character.

A pot of homemade refried beans was cooling on the counter, the warm smells of cumin and onion and garlic lingered in the kitchen. It smelled like home.

“Grab the masa harina would you?” she asked as she set the bowl onto her butcher-block counter.

I pulled the bag from the pantry and passed it to her. Sue never measured how much corn flour or water she used, it was always by feel alone. She could shut her eyes and touch the dough and know exactly what it needed more of. Every time I tried making them for myself they’d always come out wrong, somehow.

She shook the flour into the bowl and added a heavy pour of water, mixing it with practiced hands. I stood to the side and watched with the same awe I used to when I was watching her from a step stool.

“No need to stand there troutmouthed, you can shred the cheese and save us some time,” she nodded to the fridge.

“On it, sorry, it’s been so long since I’ve had one of these.”

“We won’t have any if you don’t get that cheese shredded,” she chided. I rolled my eyes and got right to work. “They don’t have any Salvadoran food in Boston?”

“They do, they just never taste like yours,” I had tried them all at some point. They were close, but missed whatever magic Sue put into hers. “And the ones I make definitely taste nothing like yours do.”

“Well, that only gives you a reason to keep coming up here, then.”

We worked alongside one another in silence. Sue formed the dough into uniform balls and passed them over to me to stuff and flatten. She critiqued my methods and I gently reminded her that these were only supposed to be lunch for the two of us and leftovers for Randy, not a Michelin star meal.

“Did I ever tell you how Randy convinced me to finally go out with him?” Sue asked, rolling the dough in her hands.

“Wasn’t it something with a broken down car?” I spooned the refried beans into the center of the dough.

She nodded. “We were in the same social circle, and I had been planning to hike the Appalachian Trail solo while between jobs. He begged to take me out before I left. I said no.”

I laughed because I could picture it perfectly. Sue and Randy’s home was filled with photos of them from their youth, everything from band tour buses with cigarettes dangling from their lips to at the summit of Mt. Denali after they’d hitchhiked to Alaska. They lived a thousand lives together.

“Clearly that didn’t stick,” I said.

She shook her head, trying to move a stray hair that had fallen out of place without touching her face with dough covered hands. I leaned over and tucked it back. “It didn’t stick. He also said he’d wait for me until I got back. The weekend I was supposed to leave, my friend’s car broke down. We lived in the city, I didn’t have my own car, and I was too broke to buy a plane ticket. Hell, I was too broke to buy a bus ticket. Randy said he’d drive me. He called his boss and said he needed to take a week off to drive his future wife to Georgia.”

“‘His future wife? Before the first date?”