Page 10 of Considering Us

He smiled. “Devon, I remember everything.” He raised an eyebrow. “Everything.”

Don’t think about it, I instructed myself, as I felt the blood rush through my body. I cleared my throat and started making simple syrup in the microwave. “Okay, we need to talk. We’re living and working in close quarters and obviously have a past.”

“We do,” he agreed. “And the more I’ve been thinking about it, the cooler I think it is.”

“Why is that?” I asked, reaming the citrus halves through my strainer to separate out the pulp and seeds. While my dad mixed his whiskey sours using a neon yellow mix that my mom picked up at the local package store, I saw mine as a subtle, nuanced work of art—not too sweet, with an amber hue from the high-quality bourbon I chose, plus lemon juice, simple syrup, and just one Luxardo cherry.Perfection.

“The way I look at it,” continued Kyle. “Considering us for a moment—”

“Wait, wait,” I insisted. “First of all, there is no ‘us.’ I haven’t seen you or talked to you in well over fifteen years. I tried to get in touch with you multiple times. I never heard from you. That was humiliating for me.” It was time to lay all my cards out on the table; I had nothing to lose. He needed to know where I was coming from. “The only reason we’re talking right now is because I took a job at the school you happen to be teaching at.”

“You didn’t realize I was here?” Kyle asked, clearly surprised and maybe a little amused.

“No!” I replied, horrified at what Kyle might be assuming. “Not until the very end of my tour with Andrea, after I had already agreed to the job when I saw you walking with the soccer team. What kind of person do you think I am? That I followed you here? After fifteen years? Like some kind of stalker?” Even though I hadn’t followed him to Rockwood, I felt so embarrassed. “Tamara is my best friend in Boston—Andrea’s college classmate! That’s how all this happened. This hadnothingto do with you. Don’t flatter yourself,” I said, handing him a whiskey sour. I was incredulous but somehow continued to go through the motions of mixing drinks. Years of working under pressure in restaurants were excellent training for moments like this.

“You never even Googled me?” he asked, taking a sip. “This is really good, by the way.”

“Nope. Ask Tam. I told her that.” I immediately regretted this revelation.

He smiled. “So, you were talking about me.”

“Yes, because I almost withdrew from the job after I saw you,” I said, starting to heat the milk for the roux that would bethe base for the cheese sauce. “But I need it for now, so I didn’t. But I never Googled you. When you ghosted me, I decided I didn’t want to know anything else about you.” Maybe it was harsh, but it was the truth, and he needed to hear it.

Unfazed, he continued, “Well, I Googled you. I Googled the hell out of you. For years.”Why does it sound sexy when he talks like this?“You had a feisty reputation as a chef. I never saw that in you.”

“Once again, you knew me for twelve hours.”

“Those were twelve good hours,” he said with a sigh. “Okay, I get it. You’re pissed. I should have gotten in touch with you to let you know what was going on. I was putting together something for you in London that I wanted to send you when things changed for me very quickly, and then I threw myself into a relationship that ended up being a complete and utter disaster. It just took almost two years for me to realize it.”

I poured the hot milk into the butter and flour mixture and whisked vigorously. The whisking was therapeutic. I had no idea if he was telling me the truth about his intention to mail something to me, but I decided to hear him out. “Okay, continue. Tell me what happened.”

He poured more straight bourbon into his glass. “This girl, Lila, knew my roommate Jack. She came bursting into our room to ask him if he had finished, in her words, ‘the blasted international politics assignment.’ British girl, obviously. Jack wasn’t there, but I was—sitting around by myself, feeling a bit lonely. Thinking of you.”

I rolled my eyes, trying to remember what I might have been doing at that same moment. Probably stuck in a seminar related to Washington, D.C. internships or scurrying around free receptions and happy hours throughout the city to find decent food to eat. “I’m guessing Lila is the almost-two-yearrelationship gone wrong,” I said while adding gruyère and parmesan to the sauce.

“Yes, she was. And everything was going well, or so I thought. There were weird signs along the way, which I didn’t initially see. I was all in, as I am with everything I do.”So I gathered. “I transferred to LSE. Stopped playing soccer on organized teams. Abandoned so much of who I was to spend my time with her. I told her I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. But then I started to realize that I had never met her family or any of her friends from home. There were tons of excuses. Then, finally, two weeks before graduation, I started asking a lot of questions. She broke down and told me that no one from her hometown, including her parents, knew about me. I gave her an ultimatum: that I needed to meet them, or we were over. She said she didn’t want that, so she brought me to her house way out in the countryside.” He took a long sip of his drink. “Once we were there, it was terrible. It was clear that her parents weren’t happy, and within hours of our arrival, her next-door neighbor showed up. His name was Nigel, and he was super nerdy. When he realized that I was Lila’s boyfriend, he started crying. And she’s comforting him and telling him that she loves him and that we’re not really serious, andI’m standing right there.I might as well have had a sign on me that said ‘idiot’ or something like that.”

“Or at least ‘pushover,’” I said, shaking my head while brushing toasted bread with mustard. It was a strange story, and even though I still wasn’t over what Kyle did to me, I did feel bad for him. I had certainly been in my own tough situations. “What on earth did you do then?”

“I got my bag and called for a cab. It cost me a fortune, but I took it all the way back to London. Lila barely apologized or got up from the bench she was sitting on with Nigel. I think her arms were still wrapped around him, and he was still crying, even though I was leaving. They got married the next summer.”

“That’s ridiculous. How did you find that out?”

“The alumni magazine. I think their marriage was almost arranged by their parents in some way. The magazine said they grew up together,” he answered. “You bake the sandwiches with that sauce on them? They didn’t show that part on the show I watched.”

“And then I broil them at the end. They probably showed you that part, but it was a food truck, so who knows.”

“Yeah, I don’t really remember. I was busy looking up recipes at that point,” he said. “Anyway, I packed up my stuff, booked a one-way plane ticket, and flew to JFK. I emailed LSE and told them to mail my diploma to my parents. And then I sat in their basement in Connecticut for a month, feeling like the biggest loser and looking at job ads. I had something lined up in London, but there was no way I was staying after that debacle.”

“Okay, let these cool for a second,” I said, pulling the sandwiches out of the oven. “Was Rockwood your first job after that?”

“Yeah, they needed a dorm proctor, and my parents were driving me crazy, so I jumped at it. I actually lived in this dorm on the first floor. I love this building. It was horrible pay, but I got free room and board, and they hired me to help with the soccer team, so it was a good diversion for me. Gradually, I started taking on more responsibilities and eventually became a teacher and the varsity boys’ team coach.”

“And you got married,” I said, cutting the sandwiches in half.

“Guessing Andrea told you. She talks almost as much as I do,” he said, taking a huge bite. “Delicious! This is so amazing, Devon! Thank you so much. Really.”

“It’s just a sandwich,” I said, secretly happy he liked it so much and that his first food-impression of me was a good one. “Yeah, she realized afterward that she probably shouldn’t have told me, but it was already out there.”

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