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The first time he kissed her was like the first time her emulsion didn't break at CIA.
It was a total rush. All the anticipation. Care and patience went into it. Watching and waiting until just the right moment, and then two things that seemed so unlike on the surface, suddenly came together with just the right amount of heat-
Okay, maybe a lot of heat.
The idea of him cooking just for her, to begin with. Totally insane, considering she followed him to The Beef, wanting to show him just what she was capable of. He was on his second chance, but he was hers, too. He'd worked at Empire where he managed to retain the stars. And there he was, just another Chicago chef somehow down on his luck, too.
Only, he wasn't what she'd expected at all.
What she'd felt when she ate his food at Empire wasn't chaos. It was controlled, deeply personal, almost like reading someone's diary. She wanted more. But when she arrived at The Beef, that chef wasn't there. Until that night he made that lamb tonnato during service. She felt him again.
She tasted it, like she was tasting him somehow.
It made her a little obsessed all over again, mixed with the deep disappointment that he said he was still leaving the restaurant. For what or why, he never said. He kept that to himself. All that talent, and he just didn't want to be in restaurants anymore.
Then, he came back. He just came right back and asked if she still had that open position. She was reviewing Tina's COGS for the week up at the pass. First one into the restaurant. Even before Marcus, because she rolled out of bed, not wanting to think about this reoccurring dream she'd been having ever since she started running things.
She's always had dreams in vivid color. The cyanidin-3-sophoroside that makes raspberries tart-pink. The bubbling liquid caramel chaos of CO2 forming cola bubbles. She spent so much time at CIA learning food chemistry, but that isn't what anyone thinks about with a memorable dish.
It's the flavor and feeling.
And now she wonders where she is really headed. How she's supposedly arrived because of these Michelin stars. Now she has to retain them.
When she closes her eyes, she's right back there on stage again, in her dream. The theater's stage lights are warm and blinding, but when she looks out into the audience, there's only a stuffed bear watching her. An audience of one waiting to see what she's going to do. And when she looks up and beyond it, those two stage lights flood her vision, like a pair of stars.
Carmy showed that morning dressed like he never left. She remembers him starting to apologize again, then stopping himself. How sleepy and soft his voice sounded.
She just didn't think he'd be back there so fast. It made her wonder if maybe he'd just forgotten something. He left all his books in the office and his food journals with Marcus, so she asked.
“No,” he had told her. “No, I didn't. I didn't forget anything.”
It felt so loaded. The idea that he was choosing to be here now. Not because of Mikey, or his family. Because he wanted to be. It made things shift, fast.
He asked to help again, so she just told him to make family this time. Like he'd told her to do. He wasn't even gone that long, but it seemed like the right thing to fold him back in. Marcus showed up, watching them talk from his station and snarked that he'd only been gone for, like, two whole days, and that he knew he'd be back.
He made them all bracciole. Richie said that he only ever made that with Mikey before now. And the moment she tasted the food, it clicked. The bear in her dream, it's Carm.
He made her fresh pasta for service. He would do whatever she asked. He would stay late and put in the work, and the old part of her wanted to believe it was driven by guilt, but she knew it just scared her that maybe what he cared about more than anything was her.
Then he cooked her the brodo with the handmade pasta, another old family recipe, and whatever doubts she had were washed away, just having him there with her, all to herself. Outside the restaurant.
Their first kiss was in her kitchen, and she can't remember ever being kissed in a way that excited her near the way cooking does. Like a part of her that had been put to the side to focus on building the restaurant and getting her second chance, had emerged again and was hungry.
That was when she knew this was the inspiration that she needed. The direction she was heading in. And it wasn't alone. She asked him for seconds.
The brodo cooked for the rest of the afternoon, and they spent it on her couch. Talking, kissing, laughing together.
He showed her how to make pasta by hand, which she'd always fantasized about, because it felt so deeply connected to him. Carm standing behind her, jazz music filling the room as he guided her hands as he planted kisses on her neck, whispering into her ear about getting the dough to the right firmness as they both giggled.
They didn't rush the meal, because the food and the company were so divine. It was just a few simple ingredients. Lemon and ricotta raviolos they made together swimming in his all-day brodo broth. It felt like she was being held by him with each bite.
So unlike what he had made at Empire. That dish that was always going to remain just between the two of them because she wasn't about to tell on herself in front of them all. But the brodo was the opposite of that, just like the tonnato. The hamachi dish was pure technical excellence, and it wasn't ever even on the menu. They both came to realize that afternoon that somehow she was the only person that ever ate it.
That's what actually really finally did it. But everything always happened so fast with them. The same day as their first kiss, they ended up in her bed, too. She regrets nothing.
“I think that we kind of have to tell someone, yeah?”
His voice sounds tired, his body heat huddled against her beneath her sheets in the dark room. He still smells like the restaurant to her. He probably always will.
“Okay,” she answers, after thinking it over. This is about the hamachi dish, again. “But only, like, close, close family. It makes me look like a stalker, when that's not-”
She hears him laugh low and warm. “I kind of stalked you back, so-”
“Is that what this is?” she teases him, turning to face him, settling her head back down on the pillow.
“No,” he replies, and she can feel the smile in his voice. “No, that's not what this is.” His fingertips find her check and brush against it, feather-light. “So, not Cousin, obviously-”
“No,” she laughs. “If my cousin ever found out, I would never hear the end-”
“Okay,” he goes on, his fingers on her shoulder now, rubbing along her arm. “Just us, then. Only, it feels pretty...unbelievable, right?”
“Totally,” she tells him, snuggling in closer to him. “People will think...they'll think we're making it up. It's like something only a child would believe,” she suggests.
“Oh, yeah,” he tells her, pressing his lips to her forehead. “Hmm, I see your point.”
She likes the way his hands feel on her skin. How he already seems so familiar to her that him being in her bed just feels like an extension of everything else. That there's this whole new dimension now, to both of them, but there's still their families and everything else to deal with, and running a restaurant in this economy-
It's just nice to have this. Maybe they can hold onto this for awhile. Something just for them.
“I like this,” she says, and hears him sigh against her, his arm wrapping around her to hold her in close for a moment.
“I always hoped you would.”