Truly (New York 1)

He peered at the machine as though it would tell him what to say. “I came back from Europe planning to work my way up through the best restaurants in New York. I w

anted to learn everything I could and get my own kitchen as fast as possible.”

He glanced at her. “Now, to be clear, these are shit jobs. The pay is shit, the work is shit, and they own you. No sick days, long hours on your feet, burning the hair off your arms at the grill or sweating to death at the pasta station.”

He hit another special bonus thing that required him to launch a fusillade of paddling. May traced the shapes of his arms with her gaze, every tendon and sinew taut. All that effort, thrown away on this pointless thing. This game.

In the lull that followed, he looked down at his hands. “The scars are from back then. Prep cooking, grill station, pasta. Hazard of the job.”

“That’s awful.”

“It’s just the life. You have to really want it, or you might as well find some other career.”

“You wanted it.”

“I wanted it as bad as anybody.”

With three hard whacks of the paddle, he lost another ball. All the fun had left his playing, replaced by that restless aggression she’d gone to such great lengths to avoid. May felt a pang of guilt, a stomach-flipping premonition.

But it was only pinball. They had to have this conversation—for her peace of mind, but also because she had a strong hunch that he wanted to talk about it. He needed to.

“So what happened?”

“Take over this flipper.” He released the ball and reached for the beer with his free hand, his eyes cutting back to the glass. “Now, now! C’mon!” With a quick grab, he put her hand on the button. May punched it in time to prevent the ball from falling down the drain.

“Good save.”

He took a long drink, watching the game in his peripheral vision and effortlessly knocking the ball back into play when he needed to. May felt like a kid in the front seat of her grandfather’s car, asked to take the wheel so he could fiddle open his pack of Salems. “This is weird to do left-handed.”

“Good sobriety test. How drunk is May? Can she work one button without falling over?”

“I’m not going to fall over.”

“You didn’t have any dinner.”

“You’ve been stuffing me full of food. I could stop eating and live for a month on stored fat.”

He laughed. “I’d like to see you try.”

She wanted to be offended by that, but she couldn’t work up the requisite indignation. “Yeah, I’d probably give in the second you cooked me something.”

“I’d tempt you with an eel pie.”

“Yuck.”

“Don’t knock it. You haven’t tried my eel pie.”

“And yet somehow I’m not tempted.”

“If you tried it, you’d be more than tempted. I could tie you naked to my headboard and have you begging for it.” He slanted her a glance that made her flush all over. “Oops. Did I say that out loud?”

She elbowed him in the stomach and then had to scramble to catch the ball on her flipper.

“Slick,” he said.

“Thank you. So are you going to tell me the rest of this story, or did you intend to keep distracting me until I forgot all about it?”

“I thought you might want to hear more dirty thoughts.”