Behind the Pass

Preston had been at his desk since six in the morning, and by nine that night the words on his screen had stopped meaning anything. He was thirty-six years old, he was an editor, and he was pretty sure the manuscript in front of him had been personally written to destroy him.

"Come on," he muttered at the page. "You already made this point in chapter four. I highlighted it. In red. There's so much red on this screen it looks like a crime scene."

His phone buzzed. Roger. Of course it was Roger. Roger had been his author for three years now, and Roger treated every deadline like a hostage negotiation.

He picked up. "Roger."

"Preston! Thank god. Tell me you're still at the office."

"I am still at the office. I have been at the office for fifteen hours. My eyes are two raisins."

"Well, I finished the revisions. The real ones, the good ones. I want to go over the final proof with you tonight, in person. Are you near the warehouse district?"

Preston closed his eyes. "Roger, I can barely see straight. Can't this wait until Monday?"

"No, no, it can't, because I fly out Tuesday and I'll spiral the whole flight if I don't know where we landed. Please. There's this restaurant called The Gantry, farm-to-table place, everyone's talking about it because of the food festival. It's the only place open late over there. Come on. I'll buy you dinner. I'll buy you two dinners."

Preston looked at the manuscript. The manuscript looked back. Fifteen hours. His chair had molded itself to his spine.

"Fine," he said. "One dinner. And you're reading your own proofs out loud, because if I read another page tonight my head is going to fill up with red ink and overflow."

"That's the spirit. See you in twenty."

* * *

The Gantry was packed. It was late November, festival weekend, and every table in the place was full, every server was moving like a pinball, and the kitchen was running so loud Preston could hear it over the crowd. He stood by the host stand feeling like he'd wandered into someone else's party.

Roger appeared out of the scrum, waving. "Preston! Over here, I got us table 6, right on the edge of the kitchen. Best seat in the house, you can watch them work."

"That's exactly what I want, Roger. To watch people work while I think about work."

"Grumpy. I love it. Sit, sit. Order something with butter in it."

Preston sat, dropped his bag under the table, and picked up the menu. And that was when he looked up through the kitchen window, just for a second, the way you do, and saw him.

Rory.

Rory, thirty-four now, eight years since Preston had seen him, standing at the pass with his sleeves rolled up calling out orders in that low quick voice. The sharp jaw was the same. The way he moved was the same, that easy economy, like he never wasted a single motion. His hair was shorter. His forearms were better, somehow, which didn't seem fair.

Preston felt it land in his chest, a jolt that wasn't entirely surprise. Because some part of him, some dumb superstitious part, had known. The Gantry. Of course it was Rory's kitchen. Of course, on the worst night of his year, in the only restaurant still open near his office, the universe would seat him eight feet from the man he used to love.

"You okay?" Roger asked, already halfway through the wine list.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. Spotted a face I know."

"Who, one of the cooks?"

"Someone I used to know. A long time ago."

Roger nodded, not really listening, because Roger was reading about duck. Which was fine. Which was better, honestly.

Preston watched the window. Rory plated a dish, wiped the rim, set it on the pass. He didn't look up. Of course he didn't look up, the man was in the middle of a festival Saturday, eight years was eight years, and Preston was just some guy at table 6.

So why did his heart feel like it had been shaken awake?

"Okay," Roger said, slapping proofs on the table. "Chapter one. Read me your margin notes, I'll defend myself, we'll fight, we'll hug it out."

"Roger, the food hasn't even come."

"Then we multitask. Go."

Preston sighed and opened the folder. And this, at least, was familiar, this was ground he knew how to stand on. "Fine. Page 12. Your detective says the timeline doesn't work, and then nobody mentions it again."

"He fixes it off-page."

"You can't fix a timeline off-page, Roger, that's like paying off a mortgage off-page."

"Wow. Fifteen hours in the office and you've still got juice."

"I'm running on fumes and spite."

They went at it, page by page, and it was good, actually, it was the kind of work Preston loved when he wasn't drowning in it. The server brought bread. Roger ordered for both of them because Preston waved the menu away. Somewhere in the middle of it all Preston kept glancing at the window, and Rory kept not being there, and then being there again, and Preston kept pretending he wasn't checking.

"Stop looking at the kitchen," Roger said, not looking up. "You said you knew someone. Go say hi after we're done if it's bugging you that bad."

"It's not bugging me that bad."

"You've read the same proof page four times."

Preston looked down. He had, in fact, been staring at page 30 without reading a word of it. "Okay. It's bugging me a little."

* * *

The food came, and it was stupidly good, and Roger talked with his hands while Preston ate and tried to be a professional. The service rolled on around them, loud and hot and fast. Then, at some point past ten, Preston looked up and Rory was standing at the pass, and Rory was looking directly at him.

Not glancing. Looking. That flat, steady look Rory had always been able to hold for a beat longer than anyone else, the one that used to make Preston laugh and squirm in equal measure.

Preston froze with his fork halfway up. Eight years. What was the protocol here? Did you wave? Did you mouth hello? Did you pretend to be reading a proof, which, conveniently, he was?

Rory solved it for him. He turned, deliberately, picked up a whole tray of flatware, and dropped it.

Forks hit the tile everywhere. The kitchen flinched. Rory said something Preston couldn't hear, something that made the nearest server laugh and wave him off, and then Rory was coming around the corner with a bus tub, crouching to pick up silverware, working his way down the line of tables. Toward table 6.

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me," Preston said.

"What?" Roger asked, mouth full.

"Nothing. Nothing at all."

Rory arrived at the next table. Collected two forks. Arrived at their table. Crouched there, gathering a runaway knife off the floor, close enough that Preston could see the gray coming in at his temple now, just a little, just enough to notice.

"Excuse us," Rory said to the table in general, casual as anything, and then his eyes came up and caught Preston's and stayed.

"Hi," Preston said. Stupid. Perfect.

"Hey, Preston."

"You remember my name."

"Yeah, well." Rory stood, tub on his hip, that sharp jaw tilted. "Some things stick. Eight years, huh?"

"Eight years. You look good."

"You look exhausted."

"That's the most honest thing anyone's said to me all week."

Rory laughed, short and real, and god, Preston had forgotten what that laugh did to him, or maybe he hadn't forgotten, maybe he'd just filed it away somewhere it shouldn't have stayed this accessible. Behind them the kitchen called out an order and Rory didn't move.

"You're in the book business still?" Rory asked.

"I'm in the book business forever, apparently. I'm the reason that man," Preston tipped his head at Roger, who was watching them both with open delight, "has a career."

"Roger? The novelist Roger? I read his first one. It was pretty good."

"Don't tell him that. His head is already a safety hazard."

"I heard that," Roger said cheerfully. "Preston, you didn't tell me your friend was the chef here."

"He's not my, we're not, we used to," Preston heard himself fumble, and Rory watched him fumble with the smallest, worst smile.

"Used to date," Rory supplied. "Back when we were babies. Twenty-something."

"Right," Preston said. "Right."

"Well," Rory said, and the kitchen shouted again, and this time he took a half step back toward it. "I've got a dining room full of festival people and a sauté station that wants my head. But we're open till midnight tonight. Kitchen closes at eleven. If you're still here when the storm's over, come say a real hello."

"Yeah," Preston said. "Maybe I will."

"Maybe." Rory smiled, and it was the old smile, the whole one, not the small careful one. "Your proofs are upside down, by the way, editor."

He was gone before Preston looked down. They were not upside down. The little shit.

Roger waited exactly three seconds. "Preston."

"Don't."

"That was the most romantic flatware drop I have ever witnessed."

"It was an accident, probably."

"He looked at you like you were the special."

"Roger, we have forty pages left."

"And you're going to fly through them," Roger said, refilling his own glass, grinning as a man who had just found a better plot than his own book, "because you want to be done by eleven. Go. Read."

Preston read. He read fast. He was aware, the entire time, of the kitchen window, and of the fact that Rory did not look over again, not once, and of how much that not-looking felt exactly like being looked at.

The second rush hit at ten-thirty like a wave hitting a seawall. Every table in the place was full, the festival had dumped three extra reservations on them, and suddenly The Gantry went from busy to war zone. Preston watched it happen over the top of page 47 while Roger argued with himself about a sentence.

"Listen to this. 'The rain fell like a verdict.' Verdict. Is that too much?"

"It's a lot."

"That's what I thought. Cut it?"

"Roger, it's your rain."

"My rain is giving me hell," Roger said, and went back to his copy, and that was the last Preston heard from him for ten minutes.

The kitchen, meanwhile, was coming apart in the loudest, most organized way possible. Orders were stacking up. Somebody at table 12 sent back a fish. A server came through with a tray of glasses that somehow survived, barely. And through all of it, at the pass, Rory stood calling tickets in a voice that