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I didn’t want to watch his face crumple, so I turned away from him toward the stove. “I didn’t get the promotion. Andrew hired someone from the outside.”
Sound from the television in the living room drifted into the kitchen, a commercial for some type of medication. The announcer recited a long list of potential side effects.
“I’m sorry,” Kyle said. He placed a hand on my shoulder, and I jumped as if a bug had landed on me. I didn’t know how to respond to his sympathy. In the script I had rehearsed, he said,Well, that seals it, then. We’re done with Dr.Evans.
Kyle sighed as he shuffled to the other end of the counter to open a bottle of red wine. My chest tightened, and I wondered if we would ever go back to being us. Telling him about the withdrawal from our retirement account wasn’t going to help.
After he filled our glasses, he sat at the table and studied me at the stove. My hands shook as I plated the food. A manicotti slipped off the spatula and landed on the floor, splattering red tomato sauce on the gray tile and white cabinets. As I cleaned up the mess, I tried to imagine Kyle agreeing that withdrawing the money was a good idea, but all I could picture was him storming away from the table.
Finally, I slid into the seat across from him. The commercial on TV ended, and the home-improvement show came back on. I fiddled with my silverware as I rehearsed my speech in my head. “Black mold,” someone on the television said. “Dangerous.”
I looked up, ready to tell Kyle, but lost my nerve. He took a bite of his pasta.
“Is it too dry? Do you want more sauce?” I spun the lazy Susan so the gravy boat was within his reach. He poured more sauce on his plate.
We sat without speaking, both of us staring at our dishes like parents mesmerized by their newborn. It was the most uncomfortable I had ever been with him, and that included our awkward chance meeting on a chairlift at Mount Stapleton. Halfway up the mountain, high above the trails, our chair had jerked to a stop, swaying from side to side when thewind blew. The air was so cold and dry that my nostrils stuck together every time I inhaled. I tapped my poles against the bar, waiting for the chair to move again. It didn’t. Shivering, I pulled my hood over my hat and zipped my coat to the top so that it concealed my mouth and half my nose.
“This will help.” Kyle extended a flask toward me.
I raised an eyebrow.
“Don’t judge.” He pulled it back and took a swig. “I only do it to keep warm.”
“You’re not really warm,” I said. “You just don’t know you’re cold.”
“Same difference.” He licked his lips and thrust the flask at me again.
This time I accepted his offering. He laughed as I sipped. “First drink?” he asked. I tilted the flask back and took a large gulp. Whiskey gushed into my mouth. I squeezed my eyes closed and twisted my lips as I swallowed, my throat burning.
I handed the flask back to him, but he refused to accept it. “Try again. This time without the face,” he insisted.
My throat was still on fire. “Nope.” I dropped the container into his lap. At that exact moment, the lift lurched forward. The flask tumbled downward, bouncing off the seat and plummeting through the chilly air into the deep, ungroomed snow beneath the lift line.
Kyle’s eyes widened in horror as he watched it fall. “That was my granddaddy’s,” he said. “Had it since I was seventeen.”
“So it was probably time for a new one.” I thought if I could make him laugh, I wouldn’t feel as bad for losing his grandfather’s flask.
By the time we reached the top of the mountain, I had agreed to buy him a new one. We exchanged numbers. For the next two weeks he sent me links that led to ridiculous flasks, one disguised as a bottle of suntan lotion, another as a folded tie, and others with funny sayings. I never did buy him a replacement, but he bought me dinner. Nineteen months later we were married.
Now Kyle took another bite of manicotti. The recipe I used was passed down from my maternal grandmother, who had moved from Palermo to the States. It had been on the menu at DeMarco’s Diner only on Sundays and was the most popular meal on that day. “Delicious,” he said.
He was trying to make things better between us, and I was about to ruin it all. I shredded the napkin in my lap into tiny pieces, ready to tell him. “I ...” A clump of tomato sauce smeared his chin. It made him look so vulnerable that I couldn’t go through with what I was about to say. “I got a bonus.” I blurted out the words, not knowing where they had come from.
He put down his fork, and he waited for me to continue.
“A big one. To thank me for filling in for Leo.” My face burned with shame. I had never lied to him before.
“How much?” He wiped his chin with his napkin.
I swallowed hard and forced myself to maintain eye contact. “Fifteen grand.”
I could tell by his arched eyebrows that he was surprised. “Wow.”
“I couldn’t believe it.”
His hand had frozen on his wineglass. “Unbelievable.” He whistled.
Neither of us said anything else. The home-improvement guru’s voice floated into the kitchen. “You can’t fix it. You need to tear it down and rebuild.”
