“Lucky guess.”
“I know my wines, Chef.Ican still cook pâté en croûte. Even ifyouhaven’t learned how to deep-fry a tursnicken.”
“I will never cook tursnicken,” Sullivan said. “But I do like the idea that Chef Guillaume’s best student is churning out turducken knockoffs. You should drop into the alumni newsletter with that. Serve him right for all thatYou will never be a true chef until you’ve cooked at Restaurant Mirazur.”
Kia laughed. “I was his favorite.”
“I will not admit that you were the best.”
“You don’t need to,” Kia said in a teasing, singsong voice. “I know.”
Sullivan swatted the air in Kia’s direction. “Brat.”
They sipped their wine. A comfortable silence gathered around them. Finally, Kia pulled a mustard-yellow scarf out of a pocket in her hoodie and wrapped her hair up as if getting down to business.
“Want to look at the pictures Deja took? See what you want me to post?”
A sip of wine burned the back of Sullivan’s throat. Kia was right. It was too young.
“Can you just not tell me anything about them?”
They’d had fun at the Tennis Skort. She didn’t want to see it curated for social media, her real memories filtered, emphasized, or erased for someone else.
Aubrey’s posts cascaded through Sullivan’s mind.
“Sullivan?” Kia placed her open hand in the space between them. “Why do you hate social media?”
“Fake news. FOMO. The servers have a huge environmental impact even if the companies say they’re using sustainable energy.”
“The day we got married, Opal pulled me aside and suggested that if I put you on social media, she’d kill me.”
“Opal would never say that.”
“She didn’tsayit. Opal didn’t tell me what happened. She just said you had a bad experience.”
Sullivan should brush it off.Bad experience. No big deal.The memory of Kia’s fingertips lingered on her face, and her body was a longing, lonely creature that didn’t know anything about the legacy clause and just wanted to feel Kia touch her again. She wanted to hear Kia tell her she was perfect exactly as she was.
“I was with a woman, Aubrey. She was the first woman I’d dated seriously. It was all new, and it was… great. She liked all the same things I did. She loved backpacking, and she worked for Blue Sky Clean Air, an environmental nonprofit. And she loved social media. At first, we’d go hiking out of cell service, and when we got back to the car, she’d post a hundred pictures.
“Then one day we were camping. We always brought a few of those survivalist food packs. We didn’t eat them. They were just for emergencies. But I made one to see if it was any good. It was so bad, it was funny. We took videos of each other’s reaction as we tasted it. She’s so animated. Her smile was the best. When she smiled at me… but this time, she made the video look like I’d served it to her for real. She pretended to like it, and then when I turned around she made thisgreatface. Have you ever seen someone taste Malört for the first time?”
Kia chuckled. “Yeah. It’s terrible.”
“It was like that, and the video was funny, and we both cracked up about it. And it went low-key viral. She loved that. So she kept making these videos. They started out sweet. Just things we did that she thought were cute and funny. Our handle was Love Sullivan n Aubs.”
Sullivan stroked the velveteen surface of a throw pillow Aubrey had bought to add color to living room scenes. So many times she’d longed for real affection, only to find Aubrey holding a camera to capture their kisses.
“At first, I was flattered. She posted nice stuff about us. But then everything became about her social media. We had to redo everything because I didn’t stand right or look happy enough. Or I had to change clothes because my sweatshirt wasn’t on-brand. It felt like everything I did was wrong. I lost my confidence. I’dneverlost my confidence before that.”
“Not even by point six percent?”
Sullivan’s hand rested on the back of the sofa, and Kia covered it gently with her own, as if to let Sullivan know that her teasing was just a way of saying she cared. She was saying,I can tease you because you’re strong, because you’re still you. Kia’s skin was warm, and Sullivan felt that warmth suffuse her body, like Kia could keep her safe. Sullivan turned her hand over so she was holding Kia’s. She half expected Kia to pull away, but instead Kia stroked Sullivan’s wrist with her thumb, looking at her tenderly.
“No. Not even when a ridiculously talented prodigy beat me by point six percent.”
“Good.” Kia squeezed Sullivan’s hand. “What happened then?”
“Aubrey quit her job to become an influencer. She wasn’t making a lot of money, but the restaurant supported us fine. That wasn’t the problem. The thing was her channels became everything to her. We stopped having sex. Why do it since we weren’tputting it online? All I wanted was for her to kiss me or touch me or give me a compliment or a present that wasn’t for her reels.”
