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There was a brief pause as we both looked at our plates.
“Oh well. If we can’t have happy marriages, at least we can have cake.” Lucy grinned as she took a bite, then made an ecstatic face “Ohhh, you’re right. This is amazing.”
“That’s the spirit. Glad you like it.” I grinned back as I picked up my own fork.
“Okay, so let’s get to these samples.” She hesitated before continuing. “Matt did mention that you were getting the work done so you can sell, is that right?”
“Yes.” I ignored the sudden squeezing of my heart at the answer.
“So, we want to keep it fairly neutral, to appeal to the widest variety of buyers.”
“Makes sense.”
Lucy turned her head and surveyed the kitchen. “If you’re keeping that old, super fancy oven, I think you’d be best going with these cream tiles to complement it.”
“Okay.”
“Does it work?”
“The oven?”
“Yeah.”
“No idea, sorry.”
“I see. Well, let’s assume that it does, and you’ll be keeping it. Those ovens are very rare around here and it would be a real selling point. Might even be worth fixing it if you had to. So… Cream tiles to match, yeah?”
“Sounds good to me.”
As Lucy pulled out samples for the countertop and laid them out, she said, “So tell me, even if it’s not your passion right now, what made you want to be a chef?”
I paused, giving my answer some thought. “Well, I always liked to cook, I suppose. And I spent quite a bit of time in this kitchen with Aunt Ruby when I was a kid. She was a great cook, so we did a lot of that together. So I guess she started me off, and then I had to cook for myself as I got older, because my mom was always working. And Ruby had started me off so well that it kind of grew from there.”
“That’s awesome.”
“What about you? You always wanted to be in IT?”
“Hell no. When I was little, I was determined to go into construction.”
“No way!”
“Way. It was what Matt and Dad did. Our dad’s a carpenter, so Matt and I spent a lot of time following him around as kids, begging to be allowed to play with his tools. He was very patient about it. We’d spend hours on the weekend in his workshop. Then, when I got older, he’d take us to work with him during the school holidays.”
“So, what happened? It’s a bit of a leap from that to IT.”
“Well, I started seeing Richard, my ex, in high school. As we got serious, he talked me out of it. He loved all the tech stuff and thought it would be a good, long-term career. Which it is, I guess. I’m pretty good at it, too.”
“But you don’t love it?”
Lucy shrugged and without adding anything further, turned her attention back to the samples. Hefting a square of stone for the countertops in her hand, she looked between it and the kitchen with narrowed eyes. “Oh! I think I’ve just had an excellent idea!” she exclaimed after some time. Pushing to her feet and taking her coffee cup with her, she looked around the kitchen with narrowed eyes. “Yep, we need Matt.”
“Do we?”
“Yes, because he’s going to tell us that my idea of keeping the cabinets and just giving the doors a makeover is going to save you a lot of money.”
“Yeah? He already said that that could work.”
“Great. Let me tell him how to make it look even better,” she said, her eyes dancing.
