Page 83 of Ricardo
“You make that sound like a bad thing.”
“It was admiration.”
Her eyes hold mine.
The room quiets around us, though nothing has changed. There is still the distant murmur of the dining room beyond the wall, the soft clink of plates somewhere down the hall, the faint hiss of carbonation in her glass.
But Julia is not laughing now.
She is watching me the way she watched the documents on Valecourt’s table. Attentive. Careful. Aware that one wrong word might change the terms.
I should give her a way out of this.
I should lean back, pick up the menu we no longer need, say something harmless about lunch or Valecourt or the absurdity of country clubs with salads named after dead men.
Instead, I remain exactly where I am.
“You do this on purpose,” she says.
“What?”
“Say things that sound ordinary until they’re not.”
“I could say the same about you. You ordered fries.”
She furrows her brows. “I don’t understand.”
“No,” I murmur. “I suppose not.”
Her smile is quizzical.
Before I can decide what to say next, the door opens.
The server enters with the burrata.
Julia looks away first, and I take the small mercy for what it is.
The plate is set between us with grilled bread, tomatoes, olive oil, basil, and a small dish of sea salt. The server places clean plates in front of us, asks if we need anything else, and disappears again when I tell him no.
For a moment, we both look at the food as if it has rescued us from a burning building.
Julia picks up a piece of grilled bread and scoops a generous amount of burrata onto it.
“Oh,” she says after the first bite, looking genuinely pleased.
I pick up my knife. “Good?”
She closes her eyes for half a second. “I’m furious that a place I hate this much has food this good.”
“The cheese has done nothing wrong.”
“It’s guilty by association.”
She takes another bite, and the tension in the room dissolves a little more over good food.
My mother always did say food was magic.
I serve myself a portion, then push the plate slightly closer to her.
