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“Oh. Thank you. For making this. It smells amazing.” Rye’s smile was a little shy and he busied himself serving the food. “For the record I know about tofu. I just didn’t know what it was made of.”
“Yeah, you’re clearly an aficionado.”
“Where’d you get it, though? And mango. Did they have all that stuff at Smith’s?”
“No, I drove to the Safeway.”
“Wow. Thanks,” Charlie said as Rye heaped noodles and salad on his plate.
Flavors exploded on his tongue—spicy and salty and sweet; hot and cold; the familiar taste of peanuts and the unfamiliar taste that must’ve been sesame. The contrast of the warm, soft noodles and the cold crunch of raw carrot and cucumber...the creamy sauce and the slap of spice. It was like nothing Charlie had ever eaten.
“Holy cow,” he said. His mouth tingled. He tried the mango and avocado salad, bright and limey and cool. “Where did you learn to cook like this?”
“I moved out when I was sixteen. Could never afford to eat out, so I had to learn to cook. I’ve lived with so many different people since then that I’ve learned dishes from a lot of them.”
Charlie took another bite. He must have been even more exhausted than he’d realized because the taste almost brought tears to his eyes.
It was complex and bright and alive.
He’d cooked five meals a week since he was eighteen and never experimented. Food had always been about fuel; about surviving. This food was about thriving.
“Why’d you move out at sixteen?”
Rye glared. Charlie was becoming familiar with the spectrum of his glares and was pretty sure this was a glare at whatever he was about to say rather than a glare at Charlie.
“My parents kind of...sucked?” he said—the Rye version of diplomacy. Charlie was pretty sure they’d have to do more than just suck to make Rye leave home.
“Yeah?”
Rye chewed his lip.
“My dad was—is—really not a nice person. He’s homophobic. Racist. Just a closed-minded bigot all around, actually. When I was fifteen, my dad saw me kiss my friend Jarrod. He flipped his lid.”
Rye didn’t elaborate, but his flinch told Charlie enough to hate Rye Janssen’s father.
“I wasn’t as... I didn’t tell him the truth. I told him I did it on a dare.”
Charlie realized Rye’s cringe had been partly for himself and his anger intensified.
“You were a kid and you were scared of your father.”
“I know. Still don’t like that I lied. Anyway, my mom never said shit about it to him, or to me. I’m not sure if she agreed with him or was scared of him or just didn’t care. My mom was...” Rye got a faraway look like he was picturing her. “She had some problems, I guess. A germophobe. But like, couldn’t use a plate without wiping it down with alcohol first. My dad would say something awful and she would start cleaning, like she could banish his shitiness with antibacterial soap or something.”
Rye was moving food around on his plate.
“When I was sixteen it just fell apart. I was so sick of hearing these awful things come out of my dad’s mouth. Awful things about me and my friends and about other people. I had this... I don’t know, I was worried if I stayed too long I might start to think like him or something. And then that year at Christmas, my mom kinda deteriorated.
“She started decorating our apartment in September and she would freak out if you touched any of the decorations, but they were everywhere and the place was really small. I tried to tell her that maybe she should talk to someone but she wouldn’t hear it. So I went to my dad. He, uh. Didn’t receive that well. Turned it on me. Basically said he would never let any wife of his see a therapist because only weak, crazy people see therapists, et cetera. And he told me to get out.”
Rye shrugged.
“I could have waited him out, probably. Stayed with a friend for a few weeks then gone home once his temper cooled. But it felt so bad there all the time. So one night after school I packed my shit and I left. I tried to get my mom to leave with me, but she just waved me off. I stayed with a friend for a little while, and then I just...”
He shrugged again, a gesture to say The rest is history.
Then, self-consciously, he said, “Anyway. That’s how I learned to cook.”
It was clear that Rye didn’t want to talk about it anymore, so Charlie just nodded and said, “I invited my brother and Simon over for dinner next weekend. Any chance I could convince you to cook?”
Rye nodded, looking relieved. “Sure.”
* * *
The turning of the lathe always gave Charlie time to think and tonight was no different. Usually it brought with it meditations on store problems he needed to solve, improvements he wished to undertake on his house, or worries about Jack. Now, though, he thought of Trevor.
