She texted at 3:41 p.m. —

Don’t make a fuss. Just something simple. I’ll swing by after the meeting.

No smiley face. No emoji. No “can’t wait.” Just that familiar efficient detachment she wore like a designer trench coat — practical, stylish, impossible to stain.

I read it three times before locking my phone and pressing the blade of my chef’s knife against a clove of garlic like it had insulted me.

---

By 5:00, I’d gone feral in the kitchen.

Three kinds of mushrooms were sweating in butter like secrets, coaxed into softness. I was reducing a red wine so expensive it felt like betrayal. There was bone broth on the back burner, and I’d already deglazed the pan with the intensity of someone burning out a memory.

I shouldn’t have been cooking for her.

But then, hunger makes fools of us all.

---

Her name was Thalia. The kind of name that sounds like a dare. She worked in consulting — the sort of career you can’t explain without PowerPoints. Her shoes cost more than my entire pantry. She was married to a man she referred to only as “D.” Like a variable. Or a threat.

They were on a break. Or not. Or maybe she just liked the drama of dangling ambiguity. Either way, she came to me when things were tense. Or when she needed to “not be known for a while.”

And I let her.

---

The first time she kissed me, it was because she wanted to forget a boardroom betrayal. The second time, it was because I’d made crème brûlée without being asked. She tasted like bourbon and loneliness. I thought it meant something.

It didn’t.

---

Tonight, I braised lamb in rosemary and tears I would deny if asked. I chopped thyme with the care of a surgeon. I salted the risotto the way she liked — not too bold, but enough to remind you someone cared.

I set the table. Candles. Two wine glasses. Cloth napkins. Her chair turned slightly toward the window, just how she preferred.

She didn’t like dessert. “Too much expectation,” she said. “Too many finales.”

So I didn’t bake. I didn’t plan for sweet.

I only made enough for heartbreak.

---

When the doorbell rang, it wasn’t tentative. Thalia never arrived like someone uncertain. She entered like punctuation — sharp, final, necessary.

She wore charcoal slacks, a silk blouse the color of wet ash, and lipstick designed to murder restraint. Her eyes scanned the apartment with a smile I didn’t trust.

“This smells dangerous,” she said, slipping off her coat.

“I sharpened every knife in the drawer,” I replied. “Figured I’d meet the evening on equal footing.”

---

We ate slowly. She talked. I listened. The wine flowed like confessions we never made.

When I handed her the bowl of stew, she tilted her head.

“This looks like effort,” she said.

“It is.”

“I told you not to fuss.”

“You told me to feed you.”

She didn’t argue.

---

Halfway through the risotto, she sighed and leaned back. “God. I could fall in love with your cooking.”

“You won’t,” I said too quickly.

“No,” she agreed, more softly. “I won’t.”

We sat in silence for a long moment.

I wanted to touch her hand but didn’t. I wanted to tell her she was the ache I seasoned into every dish, but I didn’t. Instead, I offered her more wine.

---

Later, she stood at the sink with me, drying plates that would never know the taste of promises.

“I should go,” she said, not moving.

“You could stay.”

She looked at me then — not with cruelty, not even pity. Just emptiness polished into grace.

“I never said I’d love you,” she murmured.

“I never asked,” I lied.

---

Before she left, she touched my cheek. “Thank you for the meal.”

“You came hungry,” I said. “That’s all I asked.”

She paused at the door. “You didn’t even taste it, did you?”

I smiled. “I wasn’t the one starving.”

---

When the door shut, I sat at the table and finally lifted my own spoon.

It had gone cold.

But hunger, I’ve learned, isn’t always about food. Sometimes, it’s just the ritual. The braising of hope. The setting of places that no one fills.

Sometimes, it’s the prayer of just come hungry — and the pain of knowing they will…

But never for you.

©2025 Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys