Second Helping

Chapter 7: Not Putting It In

The knock came at seven, and she knew the shape of it before she looked.

Grace opened the door. Ethan stood on the landing with his jacket over his arm, one hand still half-raised, and for a second he was exactly the man who had gotten up off that old couch and walked to the door three years ago. Same shoulders. Same pause before he decided how to come across.

Except the door was hers now.

"You're going to ask what I'm cooking," she said. "It's hot pot."

He stepped in past her without being asked. His eyes went around the small living room the way a man checks a room he used to have a key to. No photographs. Nothing of him. The kitchen light was on and the new pot was going, red oil turning over hard against the sides.

"Eating alone?"

"Mm."

He stood in the middle of the room like a piece of furniture set down in the wrong house. His gaze landed on the plate by the stove — noodles, tofu skin, greens, meatballs.

No tripe. He looked at that plate a long time.

"You used to get tripe in it. Every time."

"I used to add it because you liked it."

He leaned against the doorframe and went quiet, and she let the quiet sit there.

"Grace." He said it to the floor. "I'm stopping it. The account. I'm not posting anymore."

She kept the chopsticks moving.

"I started the trademark transfer. The name — you came up with it. I can't keep using it." His voice came out dry. "And the studio stuff. The blender, the rig, the ceramic bowls. If you want any of it."

"I don't need it."

"Grace." He took a step and stopped at the line where the kitchen tile met the carpet. "That word you said to me on the phone. I hear it every time I try to sleep."

"Then stop."

"I know you're not going to forgive me."

"It's not that I won't forgive you." She lifted the noodles out with the strainer and set them in the bowl. "There's nothing to forgive. If you think there is, you already know what those years were."

He opened his mouth and closed it.

She carried the bowl to the small table and sat. One portion. Red oil. No tripe.

He watched her eat two bites.

"When did you first think about leaving?"

"About the time you started saying anybody could do it."

He pulled in a breath. "I didn't — that's not what I meant."

"What you meant doesn't matter now." She bit into a noodle. "What I heard does."

He stayed where he was. Waiting. She had learned that pause a long time ago — the one that expected a way out, a door held open, one small word he could take back with him. There was nothing waiting for him on the other side of it. She had eaten that months ago, sitting alone at this same small table, and finished it and washed the bowl.

"There's one key left." He took it out of his pocket and set it on the coffee table. "For the studio."

"What about Wren."

"I told her to go. The brand thing is off." He looked down at the key. "She's — she's simpler than you think. A kid who wanted to be famous. I used her."

"And when you used my recipes to sell Goldbrook and the audience. Was that using them too?"

"Yeah."

She drank some of the broth.

"Ethan. You want to know your problem."

He looked up.

"You actually believe the person in front of the camera is the one who matters. Who made the food, who wrote the script, who sat up cutting the video — to you that's the back of the house. Anybody can do it. Anybody can be traded in."

She set the chopsticks down.

"It's not that you don't care about me. It's that you've never thought the person behind the camera was worth caring about."

His shoulders came down and kept going. Not a collapse. More like a building that had had its foundation taken out, going down from the inside.

"I can't make that soup," he said. Quiet.

"Mm."

"I can't make the chicken either."

"Mm."

"I can't make any of it."

"Mm."

He picked up his jacket and went to the door. He put his hand on the knob and turned his head and looked back through the kitchen at the pot, still steaming.

"That hot pot," he said. "You're really not putting the tripe in."

She looked at the bowl in front of her. The note in the app, every time, extra tripe, mild. Then after, alone, still typing it. It had never been for her.

"Not putting it in," she said.

The door closed. His footsteps went down the stairs, one flight, two, three, and then the spring on the entrance door banged, and then it was quiet.

She finished the last noodle. Washed the bowl, wiped the counter, turned off the burner.

The phone lit up on the counter — some app telling her something she usually bought was on sale. She opened it. First item on the list was tripe. She turned the recommendations off.

The delivery app had one address saved in it now. Harris Street, third floor.

At nine, Perlman's message came in, right on time.

*First brand spot drops tomorrow. Goldbrook loves the cut. One small thing — what name do you want on the end card?*

She thought about it for a second.

*Mine.*