“That one’s great,” Ben says. “It’s not OTP, but I won’t tell if you don’t. All the recipes are simple but delicious. My gift to you.”
“You’re giving this to me?”
“Yes.” He looks up. “Maybe one day you’ll cook me something from it.”
I smile. “Deal.” I flip through the book again. “You know what the ideal cookbook would be?” I say. “One that focused on flavor pairings.”
“Lots of books do that.”
“No, I mean, just on flavor pairings, maybe some recipes but mainly … I don’t know. Like, an index page and I follow the section on tomatoes and that chapter tells me what to pair it with and what best brings out its natural flavors. Like, why do fresh tomatoes and mozzarella work so well? Or it tells you to pair tinned tomatoes and bay leaves to make great pasta sauce. Simple pairings you might not think of but which make great flavor combinations.”
Ben considers this. “You’d need to work on your pitch, but that’s not a bad idea.”
“Pitch?” I repeat. “No, I can’t pitch the idea—I’m not at that stage. I make tea.”
“Maybe that’s how you stop making tea.” He winks. “What harm could it do to put together a paragraph and email it over? Just a ‘Hey, I am doing the work you asked me to do but had this idea, just an idea, it’s probably nothing but thought I’d mention it.’ Managers love the self-deprecating thing.”
I shake my head, but I’m already thinking about it. Ben’s right. What harm could it really do? I could even alliterate the title, something like Finding Flavors or Cooking Combinations. Hmm … It’s definitely a work in progress.
* * *
We move on to our mains and the risotto is equally delicious and so delicately flavored I just want more and more. Ben serves white wine because “this one specifically pairs wonderfully.” As true as that may be （I really wouldn’t know）， the wine is going straight through me, and I ask to use his bathroom. He puts a hand on my back when he points upstairs and says, “First door on your right.”
I try not to take any detours, even though I’m desperate to, and when I step into his bathroom, I consider not peeing at all. “Oh my…”
Ben’s bathroom is larger than the living room back at the flat. My heels click on the marble floor, a caramel color that the walls have copied. There’s a large circular mirror above the sink, in which a six-month-old baby could bathe, and columns of neatly folded towels underneath the counter （why does he have eight towels?）。 His shower door is framed in chrome and its walls, floor, and bench （yes, bench） are the same marble as the rest of the bathroom.
Will he be able to tell if I’ve opened his bathroom cabinet?
I open it anyway, and it’s meticulously organized. He puts me to shame because all of my bathroom products are thrown into a plastic basket under the sink. In neat rows, Ben has different aftershaves, face creams, eye creams, hair products, and, oh, condoms. I fight the urge to giggle like a seven-year-old hearing the word “willy.” I close the cabinet doors.
I shuffle over to the toilet and pee while staring at the built-in shelving housing hand towels, plants, and expensive-looking toiletries. Some of which don’t even have labels.
“Fuck,” I breathe. “This is generational wealth, huh?”
I pull up my drab-in-comparison cotton underwear and look for the flush handle. Of course there isn’t one because it’s motion-sensored. I wash my hands with soap from a perfume bottle and dry them on a towel.
When I walk back into the kitchen, Ben says, “Ta-da” and proudly holds up two ice-cream sundaes, tall glasses, and spoons included. “Banoffee pie ice-cream sundae,” he announces. “You’ve got caramelized bananas, crumbled cookies and shortbread, salted caramel sauce, and the ever humble vanilla ice cream.”
I smile at his enthusiasm. “You know, Ben, as the night proceeds, the less I believe you’re really single.” I take the sundae he offers me. “Somewhere upstairs, behind one of your many doors, is a thriving harem.”
“You couldn’t be further from the truth,” he says. “Can you imagine me having to make this dinner five or six more times?”
This time when he sits at the table, he pulls out the chair next to him. When I’m seated, he uses his leg to drag the chair closer to him, but I stick my spoon in my sundae. I think of Cam’s friend being ghosted by the man who brought her flowers and then shortly after had his hand in someone else’s hair.
I have to ask. “Are you single, Ben?”
He doesn’t waver. “I am. Are you?”
“Of course I am. I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t.”
Ben tilts his head. “You have this real innocent thing about you.”
I don’t know whether that’s a good thing or not; I don’t know whether I want him to think I am or not. So I sit and eat my ice cream.
“I think the opposite of you,” I finally admit. “Not that you’re not-innocent, but rather … experienced.” I twirl a finger around the kitchen. “You’ve done this before. It’s been such a smooth night, there’s no doubt you’ve done this before.”
“I don’t deny it,” he says. I have to wait for him to swallow his ice cream before he continues. “Last year, I came out of a four-year relationship.”
Four years? “What happened? If you don’t mind me asking.”
“We grew apart,” he says. “It took me a while to accept that, sometimes, nothing is wrong.” He looks calm as he says it, maybe a little sad even. “Growing up and apart—it can happen.”
“Growing up” catches me off guard because he’s thirty-four. He’s already grown up, but then I realize how naive that sounds. I don’t think you turn thirty and become immune to mistake-making or lesson-learning. You grow wiser （supposedly） but never omniscient. There’s always something you need to be taught, and so you keep learning and you keep growing up—until you’re dead.
But I don’t know that feeling and I’m having difficulty imagining it. Ben has experienced real love, having a partner, another half. He’s grown older with someone, experienced life with them, years, milestones, celebrations as well as lamentations. It’s a mature response to the end of all of that, to the end of four years with someone you no longer see.
“Do you date much, Maddie?”
I don’t want to tell him my last date was eight years ago at Nando’s and that my ex had brought his friends along so we could all share the platter. But his response was so honest I can’t find it in me to lie.
“No, not much at all,” I admit. “I am … or was a homebody.”
Ben puts down his spoon to listen to me; I feel quite trapped by how warm his stare is.
“I spent a lot of time with my dad. My mum travels…”
I hear her voice before I say anything else. Our matters are private, remember? You tell one person, they tell another and the next thing you know, important people are asking all sorts of questions.
“My mum travels a lot, so it was just Dad and me for a while,” I say slowly. “She’s back now and so I moved out and…” I shrug, not sure of where I’m going with this, if I should be going anywhere with this. “I guess I’m finally living a little.”