Page 74 of The False Flat

I took another sip and smiled over the rim of the glass. This is what contentment felt like.

“I probably shouldn’t admit this, but I thought of kimchi as an allegory for our relationship.” Then, like he’d just said something romantic, he reached up and touched my face, a slow caress down my cheek. “Because it takes time to develop and is really healthy, and . . . are you ready to try this so I’ll stop talking? I learned how to make it from that little Korean grandma.”

I didn’t want him to stop talking. I wanted him to go on forever. I wanted to keep listening forever.

He lifted the spoon to my lips.

There was no way I wasn’t trying it now. I nodded without fuss and opened my mouth.

I chewed, picturing the tiny Korean woman and a twentysomething Grant making kimchi together. I wasn’t sure whether it was that mental image or the food, but to my surprise, it was . . .

“Good,” I said, shocking myself.

An I told you so perched on his lifted eyebrow. He put the spoon down and handed me his glass of wine.

“She also gave me this.” He pulled out a second little pot from the cooler. This one was more rustic; the deep–sea blue pot had three tiny flowers carved into it and looked like it held not only rotting cabbage, but stories, pulled from the past and secured in that vessel. “This is a fermentation pot, an onggi. She made this one herself. I ordered the other one from Amazon. It’s tradition to bury the kimchi during the winter to keep it from freezing, but why not now, right?” He took the pot and placed it in the hole left by the other onggi in the ground, and then he covered it up again.

“For next time. Fermented foods are good for the gut.”

“How romantic—you worried about the state of my intestines.”

“How else would you know I cared?”

“Ummmm, chocolate.”

“Look in the cooler.”

Inside, beside the tiny vase of miniature pink roses, were little petit fours, small, dark chocolate cakes with white chocolate dollar signs on the top of them. My eyes floated to Grant’s, misty. “Did you make these?”

“Hell no. Deanna made them. I told her what I wanted them to look like. She also made the chicken salad cups and those bite-size quiches.” He pointed back inside the cooler. “She must’ve thought we’d turned into gnomes or something because everything is small. Is that—”

I cut him off, my lips pressing into his. It was too perfect. He was too perfect. I didn’t deserve him, or at least, he deserved someone who would think of desserts shaped like little houses to surprise him with. I bet Elaine would think of that. But that didn’t stop me from letting my lips roam his, letting our tongues get tangled like brambles on a perfect summer day, when the sun’s warmth heated your skin but the cool breeze balanced it out.

“You like the picnic?” he asked, pulling away with a smile. I didn’t want to stop kissing him.

I nodded.

As the city lights beamed from windows and streetlamps, the trees and rocks folded in like a nest around us. The lanterns Grant had retrieved from the car danced like tiny fireflies, and we munched on sumptuous chicken and smooth bites of egg in pastry.

“You grew up in Nashville?” I asked. “Did you always want to be an architect?”

Up to this point, I knew a lot about Grant—that he liked healthy, “gut-protective” foods, that he was impulsive yet grounded, how he made me feel when I was with him—but I knew little about where he came from.

“The city and I kind of grew up together. After my parents died, I spent a lot of time walking around downtown, looking at decades-old buildings right next to the new ones going up. And it all kind of fell into place for me. They called out to me, told me what to do.”

“I like that. Your parents would’ve been proud.”

I wanted him to talk about his parents, to tell me what had happened to them, but I couldn’t ask because I knew what it felt like when people asked about mine.

“How much has Deanna told you about our childhood?”

I shook my head. “Nothing really. I’ve heard you both talk about your parents fondly, but I know very little.”

He half smiled. “You want to know about me?”

I swallowed, nodded. “As much as you’ll tell.” I picked a piece of phyllo dough off the side of a quiche, let it melt on my tongue. “You already know a good bit about my past. I know nothing about yours.”

“Fair enough.” He took a sip of his wine. “My dad, Davis, was an actuary. My mom, everyone called her Clemmie, was an ICU nurse.”