“Do you want to talk about things we could do for social media?” Kia asked, although that was the express purpose of their meeting. Of course, we’ll have to do wedding-y stuff. Then after that, I asked the manager at the Tennis Skort if we could stage a spontaneous cooking challenge at the bar. You know. You. Me. Throw down on the cocktail napkins.”
“They’d let us use their kitchen?”
“Sure. I asked nicely. We need to go on dates. The socials love cute couples on dates. There’s a new exhibit at Hopscotch. We could do a mani-pedi.”
“Do you know how much formaldehyde is in nail polish?”
“No. And I don’t want to,” Kia said. “What about zip-lining?”
“Terrifying.”
“Thank god.”
“You don’t want to zip-line?”
“I’m just trying to be helpful here and think of dates for us,something that might go viral. You definitely have to come to the state fair and watch me cook. And we can play Ping-Pong at Pips and Bounce.”
“You grew up on a yacht. Do you know how to play Ping-Pong?”
“Of course not. And going back a few, I think we should make our own wedding cake. That’d give great reels. I’ve had this idea for a piñata cake with.… wait for it… Pop Rocks! I haven’t quite figured out the engineering, but when you cut open the cake, the Pop Rocks spill out, and somehow they get activated. With water. Or liquor.” Kia scrunched her lips to the side, looking adorable. “And maybe you could set it on fire. But anyway, flaming Pop Rocks would look great against a traditional three-tiered cake. You could do the cake. I can do the Rocks.”
“Sweetheart, I am never making anything with Pop Rocks.” Sullivan only saidsweetheartto take the sting out of her teasing since Kia was obviously (and unexplainably) delighted with her Pop Rocks wedding cake. And calling Kiasweetheartwas funny, because they weren’t sweethearts. That was the whole reason they were discussing Pop Rocks wedding cakes. And yet the endearment felt natural, and Kia smiled shyly.
“Fine,” Kia said, looking up at Sullivan coquettishly. “What do you want to do to look sexy and in love on social media?”
“Mushroom hunting?”
“Oh, babe, there is nothing sexy about mushroom hunting.”
Kia calling herbabedidn’t mean any more than Sullivan calling hersweetheart, but the word still felt friendly.
“You don’t know how sexy mushroom hunting can be.”
To Sullivan’s surprise, Kia said, “You’ll have to show me.”
Sullivan was thinking about mushroom hunting when her mind flashed to her parents and her brother, Paul, with theirwood-paneled offices at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University.
“Who do we tell about the wedding? I don’t want to lie to my family.”
“You’re not going to tell them what’s really going on?” Kia asked. “I told my cousin Lillian, and she’ll tell her folks. I’ll tell my dad as soon as he’s back in cell range.” Kia sighed. “Don’t worry. They won’t give up our secret. I absolutely trust them.”
“I trust my family,” Sullivan said slowly. She tried to picture their reaction.I’m in a marriage of convenience with a developer who wants to buy the Bois. Yeah, the land Grandpa spent his whole life trying to preserve.They wouldn’t know what to think. She wasn’t an unruly child who made bad choices. But she didn’t fit in their PhD-ed trio. They didn’t keep her confidences because she never shared any. They talked but they nevertalked. “I mean, if I told them that I’d be in trouble if they talked about it, they wouldn’t.”
Kia sat quietly. Her back straight, her elbows resting on the table as she leaned forward ever so slightly.
“Tell me about your family.”
Kia’s wide eyes were fixed on Sullivan, and Sullivan felt like Kia was soaking in every word.
“We like each other. They want good things to happen to me, and I want good things to happen to them. But they’re a set. They make puns. They’ve read the same German philosophers, and they have in-jokes about them. And it’s been that way since I was a kid. They tried to include me, but it was like trying to include Nina in a rugby match. So we see each other on holidays. They live in Chicago, so they always get together. I’m always invited, and I go when I can.”
“Did you grow up in Chicago?”
“Suburbs. But I feel like I grew up in the Bois.” That soundedpointed, but Sullivan couldn’t tell her story without talking about the Bois. “I came alive when I visited my grandpa. I loved being in the woods with him. Climbing. Jumping off things. Catching bugs. Getting dirty, except it never felt dirty. I never thought,Eww gross. I knew what was dangerous. My grandfather taught me what to do if I saw a cougar or a paper wasp nest. I was part of nature, so stuff like touching slugs or getting mud in my mouth when I went swimming in a creek didn’t make me uncomfortable. It made me feel… whole. I was home. The Bois was home. Chicago and school felt like a nice prison. When I was home in Chicago and I couldn’t go outside because it was twenty below, I’d cook. When I was cooking, I had the same feeling of beinginmy body. Using all my senses. Being a part of something that wasn’t my own body.
“My parents suggested I go to culinary arts school and paid for it. They believe in education even though no one in our family had ever done physical work. But they wanted me to have the best, so they paid for the Jean Paul Molineux School of Culinary Arts. That’s them. That’s us. They love me, even if they’ll never care about filleting techniques and I’ll never spontaneously say,Putting Descartes before the horse.”
“That’s a good pun,” Kia said grudgingly.
