Opal’s freckles scrunched together apologetically as she winced.
“Yeah… sorry. I’d pick Kia. She’s pretty impressive.”
Great. Her friends liked Kia because Kia was ruthless and impressive.
“I told her you didn’t want any social media,” Opal added.
Nina leaned in. “How’d it go? Do I need to add another clause to the contract?”
“She said she’d keep you out of her socials.” Opal folded her arms on the table. “She was pretty cool about it. She was worriedthat someone was stalking you. Likegenuinelyworried, like she cared about you. You kissed her in front of your whole graduating class. That must have meant something.”
“It was like when two straight women kiss onstage at the Oscars to support gay rights.”
The night came back like an old reel, still as clear as when it was posted. Kia gazing into her eyes, frozen for a second before the kiss, more focused than Sullivan had ever seen her. Most of the guys in the program had flirted with Sullivan. Back then, Sullivan walked into bars and picked her next date like selecting a mango from a vendor at the Manhattan Fruit Market. But she and Kia were just friends… friendly rivals. Colleagues bonded by mutual respect and competitiveness. Then Kia kissed her with a fire that felt like the end of the world or the beginning of everything. That hadn’t been about Sullivan. That had been about graduation, about winning, about the first step into their new careers.
Right?
The first days of being married to Kia Jackson were just like not being married to Kia Jackson. Except for the impending food truck invasion. Sullivan went to work. Strawberries were in season. Her customers loved the mushroom risotto. Blake, her intern from the Portland Night High School apprenticeship program, was on his phone in the kitchen again. Opal shot her the usual you-know-you-have-to-let-him-go look. As usual, Sullivan couldn’t bring herself to do it. It was all weirdly normal.
Sullivan resisted the urge to look at Kia’s social media for a few days. Then she gave in and downloaded one of Kia’s social media apps. The app and her phone remembered her account even though she had supposedly deleted it. She didn’t sign in. She just wanted to look.
Sullivan couldn’t help herself; she smiled as she scrolled to a video of Kia making hot-and-sour empanadas in New Orleans. The video started with Kia’s face close to the camera, her eyes wide and playful.All right, folks, today we’re cooking empanadas with my helpers, Grady and Tyler.Two boys, one white and one Black, stood at her side grinning.Or as I like to call empanadas, little pockets of joy.Kia held up an empanada.Let’s see how many I can drop on the floor before we get one perfect!The video showed a series of bloopers, Kia laughing as she fumbled with the dough. The bloopers were almost certainly on purpose. The final shot was of a perfect empanada, golden and steaming.Couldn’t have done this without my little pockets of joy.She set down the empanada and ruffled the boys’ hair.
The early posts were a delightful mix of humor, culinary tips, and snippets of Kia’s travels. There was a post about the food experimentation Kia did to keep her menu fresh. This reel was about a disastrous one, a lobster ragout in Boston, complete with a picture of Kia covered in lobster guts.Note to self: Secure the lid on the blender. Oops. #LobsterRagoutNah!The only things Sullivan thought might be fake about the videos were the mishaps. She guessed they were usually to cover up something one of her guest chefs had done. There were so many moments of genuine connection. A photo of Kia sitting with a group of older women in a park, all of them laughing and sharing stories.Met these lovely ladies in Milwaukee today. They taught me more about life and love over a cup of sweet tea than I’ve learned in years. #MidwestHospitality #LifeLessons.
Sullivan found herself charmed and drawn in. Kia’s posts were not just about food; they were about people, places, and the small moments that made Kia’s life rich and meaningful. There was an authenticity that Sullivan hadn’t expected. No wonder Kiahad a staggering number of followers. She made them happy. Her posts made Sullivan happy. Maybe there was hope for humankind. Maybe, despite their differences, people across the country, across race and political divides, could come together and eat tursnicken.
And yeah, as the posts got more recent, Kia was obviously getting more sponsors. She spent a lot of time working American Spirit breakfast sausages into her recipes, and the number of Fizz Bang soda cans strategically placed in the shot defied coincidence. But she still seemed sincere. In the most recent post, she was split-screen chatting with a handsome man in an Army T-shirt sitting in a wheelchair.Taste the Love Land is a game changer for us, he said. Kia beamed through tears that seemed real. And Kia didn’t mention Sullivan anywhere. In Kia’s online life, everything was going as planned, all filtered and sparkling. As promised, she’d left Sullivan out of it.
Then it was Sunday morning. Mirepoix was closed Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. Sullivan drew a deep breath as she stepped out of her house. The Bois smelled of clean, damp soil and conifers. The vegetable garden in front of her house looked like a little Eden. There were the green peas. There was a marigold planted to lure bugs away from her lettuce. A few birds trilled in the underbrush. You could hear I-405 in the background, but you could pretend it was wind. You couldn’t pretend away an off-ramp cutting through your front yard. She looked up at a glimpse of white clouds beyond the fir trees. The storm had cleared, like the sky had cried itself out.
Did I do the right thing?
Her grandfather wasn’t sitting on a cloud looking down, but if he was, he’d say something about trusting her heart.
What if my heart doesn’t like any of it?She pictured Kia in her bluesunglasses and beautiful hair. She saw Kia in her chef’s coat whirling fire in a pan as their professors looked on with curiosity that said they’d forgotten they were supposed to be grading her. How could Kia run a food truck? How could she throw away her talent to be an influencer? Kia’s career was none of Sullivan’s business, but it wasn’t Sullivan’s morning coffee that made her stomach roil. Influencer-Kia was also saving her from the off-ramp. She didn’t want Kia here, and she had to admit she’d missed Kia too. Sullivan’s heart was a failed fusion, poke spaghetti or peanut butter stuffed inside le religieuse pastries. Probably something Kia would cook.
Sullivan knelt down in the muddy soil and gently extricated a vetch plant from her kohlrabi.
“How did you get here?” she asked. She moved down the row, slowly getting muddier as she pulled the weeds by hand.
Near the end of the row, she stopped to examine an owl pellet tucked between kohlrabi and a clump of oregano that had jumped from a nearby pot. A white skull was perfectly preserved in the clot of gray fur.
“Look at you. The cycle of life.” Owl pellets weren’t creepy. This was the owl turning its head three hundred degrees. Seeing in the dark. Swooping down.
A soft voice startled her from behind.
“What is it?”
Sullivan turned. She’d been so focused, she hadn’t seen that a woman with a golden retriever had strolled down her driveway. As she drew close, the woman gave a little wave. The dog sniffed at the owl pellet.
“Stop it, Hazel,” the woman said.
“The owls spit them up. It’s the parts they can’t digest,” Sullivan said. “They’re not gross.”
“Just the cycle of life.” The woman knelt down beside her. Herchocolate-brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Her smile was friendly, and she was pretty.
“Yeah,” Sullivan said, a little surprised. “They’re kind of beautiful. That’s probably a mouse.” Sullivan pointed to the skull.
