Meg and Jo

by Virginia Kantra

I’d always known I was going to be a writer. I did not want—I couldn’t afford—to fail. Again.

  When we were growing up, our house was full of art projects Amy had started and abandoned, lopsided pots and half-pieced quilts and tangles of jewelry beads. “An artist in search of a medium,” our father called her wryly.

  I never wanted him to say that about me. I was his dinner table audience, the straight-A student, the daughter who loved reading, the son he never had. When Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows came out, he took me to the midnight release party at the bookstore. Not Beth, who was sick. Not Amy, though she begged and pouted to be allowed out past her bedtime. I’d grown up with Harry. I was wild to get my hands on the book. But the time with my father—just the two of us, alone—felt nearly as magical.

  I shoved my hair into a ponytail and dragged a Windbreaker over my faded NYU sweatshirt. Hey, it wasn’t like I was getting ready for a date. My idea of dressing up was basically throwing on a clean T-shirt and a pair of skinny jeans anyway.

  I laced up my running shoes. Dressed and done.

  At the bodega, I bought two cups of coffee, one for me and one for Dan the Homeless Guy. I walked down the street, sipping the hot liquid, warming my hands on the cup. The city that never sleeps was stretching and stirring, the rattle of early-morning construction like the twitter of birds back home. My feet took me back to yesterday’s route, my body putting into motion a plan my mind hadn’t quite acknowledged yet.

  Ten minutes to the High Line. Pitching my empty cup into the trash, I headed up the stairs, my heart pounding as if I’d already run a mile.

  A wind whipped off the river. The tall grass bowed and swayed. As I ran, my gaze bounced from the bright horizon to the graffiti-splashed buildings rising along the track.

  And . . . He was there. Chef. In almost the same spot as yesterday.

  Warmth flooded my midsection, more potent than the coffee. My cheeks were hot with happiness. Stupid.

  He leaned against the wall of the shelter, watching the water. Waiting? For me?

  I gave him a little wave, like a dope. “I’m not stalking you.”

  Laughter leaped into his eyes. “I am crushed,” he said politely. “It is my dream that you follow me everywhere.”

  Ha. He’d made a joke. I thrust my hands into my pockets. “You’re up early this morning.”

  Yesterday, I had almost finished my run and was on my way back before I saw him.

  “Indeed. I have not been to bed.”

  “Late night?” I asked sympathetically.

  It happened. When you were jazzed after a successful service—or, God forbid, an unsuccessful one—after the kitchen was restored to gleaming order and the prep lists written up for the next day, it hardly seemed worthwhile to lie down for the few hours before you reported to work again. Chef didn’t go out with the rest of the kitchen crew at the end of the night, doing the rounds of late-night bars and hookups. But maybe he’d stayed behind, working in the office. Maybe he had a whole other social life I didn’t know anything about. Friends. A girlfriend.

  The thought was vaguely depressing.

  He shook his head. “I was home. I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Gosh, I’m sorry. I hope it wasn’t something you ate.”

  His eyes crinkled. “No. Your food last night was very good.”

  I flushed, ridiculously pleased. “Pretty simple stuff. I didn’t season with anything but salt and pepper. Well, and a ham hock for the greens.”

  “Simple is best,” Chef said. “That’s how you honor your ingredients.”

  I grinned. “Right. By flattening the chicken in a cast-iron skillet and cooking the shit out of everything.”

  He laughed.

  I grinned back, something inside me relaxing. My instructors at NYU had made it clear I would never be a Great Southern Writer. But I was a good Southern cook. Chef made me feel like it was okay to be myself. Like I was good enough without trying so hard.

  Of course, he made everybody feel that way. The kitchen was full of misfits whose lives outside the restaurant were a mess. He taught them, trained them, inspired them to pull together as a team, to strive for perfection every night. Even me. The idiot hipster food blogger.

  “They’re my mother’s recipes,” I confessed. “We always had greens on the table.”

  “Ah yes, the collards.” His mouth tugged in that small, ridiculously appealing smile. “Ray had seconds.”

  He’d noticed.

  I glowed. “My mother always boiled them like that. For hours. To make pot likker.”

  “Vegetable stock.”

  I nodded. “With ham grease. It’s a Southern thing. Sometimes she serves it in a cup with corn bread on the side.”

  That was what was missing from the blog, I realized suddenly. I’d listed the ingredients. I hadn’t told the story.

  “Then your food honors her, yeah?” His voice was kind. “The best cooking is from the heart.”

  My throat closed. I nodded, speechless.

  “How is your mother?” Chef asked. As if he really wanted to know.

  I swallowed hard. I was not going to weep all over him again. “They wheeled her to the dining room for dinner yesterday. And she walked down the hallway and back.” A good day, according to Meg.

  He nodded. His silence pulled at me like the end of the dock back home. Jump on in. The water’s fine.

  “The thing is . . .” I hesitated, then took the plunge. “My mother’s always been so active. She runs that farm. Meg says she can hire someone to help when Mom gets out of rehab, but she’s never had to depend on anyone before.”

  “I am sorry.” His voice was kind, his eyes soft hazel.

  I shrugged. “Whaddaya gonna do?” I asked, mimicking the New Yorker I’d tried so hard to become.

  The real question was, What was I going to do?

  But he took me literally. “I thought today I would run with you.”

  Wait. What? I looked at his feet. Yep, those were running shoes. Wide toe box, thick sole, well-cushioned and salt-grimed. Like mine.

  He cocked an eyebrow. “Unless you prefer to run alone.”

  He made it sound like a choice. My choice. No pressure.

  I smiled, suddenly light. Free. “Let’s see if you can keep up.”

  I took off.

  I heard the air escape his lungs—a gust of surprise or laughter—and then his shoes striking the path. For a big man, he was quick. The frantic pace of the kitchen, the constant cries of Hot! and Behind!, must have honed his reflexes. He caught up to me easily.

  For a while we ran in tandem. Maybe I slowed down a little. Or maybe he adjusted his stride, matching his steps to mine. I snuck a look at his profile. He wasn’t even breathing hard. I wasn’t at race pace, but . . .

  “How’s your family? Your mother?” I heard myself ask.

  His eyes did that crinkle thing, as if he found me amusing, but he answered politely. “She is fine, thank you. She and my father are spending the holidays with my sister in Frankfurt.”

  Ooh, a personal detail.

  “You think when I was training that I went home to my mother every night?” he had asked me. “That I asked for weekends and holidays off?”

  “I guess you won’t be joining them,” I said.

  “Not this year. I will miss seeing them, of course. But Germany is not home for me. We were military.” A quick glance. “You understand.”

  “Kind of. I mean, I get the whole military-culture thing. You must have felt it even more in a foreign country. But our family never had to move, except to the farm. We always had ties to the community.”

  To the land.

  “Roots,” Chef said, as if he could read my mind.

  “Yeah.”

  Our feet pounded, side by side. Our breath puffed, intermingling in the co
ld air. I hadn’t had a running partner since my cross-country days. I’d always liked running alone, with no one to measure against but myself. But running created an instant intimacy. Shared sweat or something.

  “My mother says the farm is our heritage,” I said. “But I couldn’t wait to leave Bunyan. I always felt . . .” Too bookish, too stubborn, too ambitious, too competitive. “Like I didn’t belong.”

  “Ah. In Germany, I was a mischlingskinder. Mixed race,” he explained. “It is a term from the Second World War, when American GIs had brown babies with German women. The prejudice is not so bad as it was a generation ago, but . . .” He shrugged his big shoulders.

  Not protesting the unfairness of it all. Just . . . sharing his feelings with me. As if I were somehow worthy of his confidence.

  “There’s prejudice here, too.” Like he needed me to point that out. My hot face got hotter.

  “Yes,” he said simply. “But my roots are here, too. My boys are here.”

  His sons, I remembered, living with their mother near Fort Bragg.

  I wondered how he’d met his ex-wife. How long had they been together? When did they get divorced? I wanted to know him better, beyond the bare facts of a Google search or the speculation in the kitchen. What was he looking for? But we didn’t have the kind of relationship that I could ask.

  We ran to the rail yards and back, a mile, a mile and a half, occasionally dropping into single file to pass a mother with a stroller, a tourist with a camera, an old couple holding hands. Always drawing level again, our shoulders rubbing, bumping companionably, the rasp of our breathing like a conversation without words. The sun painted a broad, broken swath of light across the river, splashing the tops of the towers with gold. Half a mile to go. Almost home.

  I picked up my pace, pushing myself. Challenging him. Our rhythm changed. Our running transformed to something raw and alive, our breathing hard and ragged, our muscles hot and loose. My world expanded and contracted to the rush of my blood and the thud of our footsteps. It was exhilarating, like flying or swimming or sex.

  When we reached the access stairs to the street, I pulled up, panting, perspiring, high on endorphins. Chef stopped beside me, radiating heat, his chest laboring in and out. I was laughing. He was not. Sweat trickled in the crease of his ear, under the curve of his jaw. I’d never minded sweat as a general thing. The body’s coolant and all that. But now I wanted to lick his neck.

  So this is lust, my mind said brightly. Good to know. Pay attention to how it feels so you can write about it someday.

  Our eyes met.

  I was drenched, my heart pounding. “Do you want to come to my place?”

  That green gaze sharpened, bright as a broken bottle, all his fierce concentration focused now on me. “For breakfast,” he said. Asking a question? Or setting a boundary?

  My lungs burned. I could barely breathe. I’d never invested much energy in emotional entanglements. Relationships were messy. Demanding. Distracting. I tugged on my ponytail. “If that’s what you want.”

  “What do you want?” he asked evenly.

  Obviously he wasn’t seized by a desire to drag me back to my place and rip off my clothes. Maybe he was afraid I’d accuse him of sexual harassment. Or maybe he had more self-control, more consideration, than any boy I’d ever been with.

  My heart jerked.

  He waited. Leaving the choice to me. Making my decision that much harder. That much easier.

  “You have to follow your heart,” my mother had said at Thanksgiving. “No matter where it leads.” She’d been referring to Beth’s audition, obviously, not my sex life. But she could have been talking about my move to New York. About taking a risk, about making a choice, about going for what you wanted with everything you had, even if you failed.

  Chef Eric Bhaer was a risk. A bite of life I wanted desperately to take.

  “I want you to come home with me,” I said.

  His smile—warm, approving, intimate as a kiss—started in his eyes. “I am hungry.” His smile deepened mischievously. “Not for breakfast.”

  I led the way quickly back to my apartment, afraid to look at him in case he disappeared. Like Orpheus and Eurydice, and why I was even thinking about that now, I did not know. But he kept up with me, the way he had on the High Line. When we stopped to cross the street at the light, he took my hand. Startled, I glanced at him. Sex was one thing. Holding hands—in public, too—was something else, another level of intimacy, more Meg’s thing than mine.

  But his big, rough chef’s hand felt so good holding mine. I held on, at least until we reached my building.

  Climbing the steps to my apartment, I was aware of him behind me. Not too close, just . . . There, muscled and sure, moving lightly, confidently up the stairs. I could feel his eyes on my butt. Or maybe that was my imagination.

  I unlocked the door, squeezing to one side to let him enter.

  Ashmeeta and I had chosen to sacrifice space for location, the way you do in New York. Even so, our studio apartment had always been big enough for the two of us. She’d had a bed by the window; I slept on a mattress on the platform above. Now that she was gone, I’d turned the alcove where her bed used to be into a space for my desk.

  My desk. I threw a panicked glance at my laptop. Closed, thank you, Jesus.

  Chef turned slowly in the center of my . . . Well, not a living room, exactly. One chair, two lamps, shelves crammed with books, cooking supplies, and photos from home. He was so much larger than Ashmeeta. Like a fire burning in the middle of the room, sucking up all the available oxygen.

  What was I thinking, inviting him here? Into my space.

  What was I supposed to say? Want to climb a ladder and have sex?

  “I stink,” he said. “Use your shower?”

  Another question? Or a suggestion? I must stink, too.

  “Uh, sure. Through there.” I waved a hand in the direction of the tiny bathroom. Which I’d cleaned . . . Not recently. Damn it.

  “Thanks.” His eyes crinkled, and then he was gone, leaving me in possession of the empty room.

  I drew a deep breath, wondering if I’d left hair clogging the drain. On the other side of the door, a faucet creaked on. I listened to the rush of water, imagined him tugging off layers of shirts.

  His deep voice echoed in my head. “What do you want?”

  Everybody I cared about was busy getting on with their lives, Ashmeeta with her job and Rachel with her boyfriend. Beth had her show, and Amy had Paris. Meg had John and the twins. I had . . . a blog. Readers. Advertisers, even. But I missed feeling connected to somebody by something more than words on a screen.

  Before I lost my nerve, I stripped off my clothes and followed him into the bathroom.

  Behind the steam-clouded glass, his shape moved, big and dark against the white tile. I opened the glass door.

  He turned in a cloud of steam, soap lather sliding over his skin like foam on a wave. My heart was beating so hard I could almost hear it.

  “March. You are . . .” He stopped.

  “Naked?” I suggested.

  Laughter leaped in his eyes. “I was going to say beautiful.”

  I grinned back, relieved. “For most guys, it’s the same thing.”

  He shook his head. “Although naked . . . It’s a good look on you.”

  “You, too,” I said honestly.

  His gaze met mine. His chest expanded. “Jo.”

  Just my name. Like he saw me. Like he wanted me, red face, wild hair, and all. My stomach relaxed and steadied.

  “I thought you might need help scrubbing your back,” I said, and stepped into the shower with him.

  It was a tight fit. He had to put his arms around me so I could get under the warm spray. His body was warm, too, solid and slippery against mine.

  His hand curved around my jaw. His thumb stroked
my cheekbone, and then he was kissing me—slow, soft, unhurried kisses in delicious contrast to the hard demand of his body. He kissed like this was the main course instead of merely an appetizer, like he could go on kissing me for hours. Which was great, but I was hungry. Greedily, I ran my hands up his arms and around his neck, sinking against him, into him, trying to absorb as many textures as I could. He felt so good. I wanted to climb him like a tree.

  He turned me, my back against the tile, protecting my face from the spray. “Jo.” His voice was husky. “I didn’t plan on . . . I don’t have anything with me.”

  I was so drunk with what he did have—hot muscled smoothness—it took a moment for me to understand. “That’s okay,” I assured him. “I do.”

  Scrambling out of the shower, I lunged for the shelves, digging past the towels and toilet paper, grabbing and discarding boxes by feel. Tissues, tampons . . . There. At the back. Condoms. I’d bought them when I moved to New York, a single woman in the big city.

  I turned, flushed with triumph at my foresight, brandishing the half-empty box like a prize.

  He stood motionless under the shower, studying me as if I were a plate he was about to send through the pass. Serious. Focused. No smile at all.

  “I don’t do this a lot,” I said. “Invite guys back to my apartment.”

  The corner of his mouth kicked up in that knee-weakening smile. “Then I better make it worth your while,” he said, and pulled me with him under the spray.

  In the cramped shower, he took up everything, all the space, all the air. He took me over, his hands following the flow of the water, gliding over my muscles and angles, the texture of his calluses grazing my skin. Broad hands, scarred, nicked, and tattooed. Strong hands, capable of breaking down a pig carcass or applying microgreens to a plate with delicate precision. Deliberate hands.

  It was hot and wet, carnal and wonderful. I was drenched, drowning in sensation. In him. When the hot water finally ran out, when I was fed, filled, satisfied to bursting, he rolled me in towels and we staggered up to my loft so he could do it all again.

  * * *

  Ididn’t have my phone. For once, I didn’t care. Chef sprawled on his back beside me, legs spread, one massive arm thrust under the pillow, the other anchoring the covers. The pale winter light illuminated the broad curve of his forehead, the shape of his lips, his curly lashes, dark against his cheek.