Pit Row Letters

I moved to Cedar Falls six months ago with two crock pots, a folding table, and a business plan my sister called "aggressive." I was 28 then, I'm 28 now, it wasn't that long ago. Freelance catering had dried up in the city, so I found a rented commercial kitchen above a garage on the bad side of Main Street and put my name on the door.

The first real booking came in on a Thursday. A corporate thing at the speedway, two hundred people, qualifying weekend. I said yes before I read the whole email. Then I read the whole email and sat down on a milk crate.

Because the speedway meant Javier. I was 25 when I met him at a racing convention three years ago, 25 and cocky and only in town for one night. We flirted over bad coffee, he walked me to my hotel, and we spent one night together that I still thought about in the shower more than I want to admit. Then I left the next morning and we never properly said goodbye.

So I wrote him an email. It took me four drafts.

*Javier,

Diana. Caterer Diana, hotel night Diana, yes that one. I'm in town now, actually living here, and I'm doing the food for the corporate tent at your speedway this weekend. I don't know if you're still around or still doing the pit crew thing, but if you are, hi. Come say hi. Or don't, no pressure, I just figured you'd rather hear it from me than spot me from across the paddock and wonder if I've been hiding from you. I have been hiding from you a little.

Diana*

He replied in eleven minutes.

*Diana.

I read that four times. You're HERE? I've been at this track every weekend for like four years and you pick now to show up? Okay, sorry, hi, hi. I'm thrilled. I'm also nervous, which is stupid, we're adults, I'm 30, you're 28, we had one night three years ago and it was great and then you left and I made peace with it. Sort of. Mostly.

I'll come by the tent. Fair warning, my hands will smell like brake cleaner. Also fair warning, I remember your hands. Weird thing to remember? Maybe. You had flour on your knuckles at that convention and I thought about it for way longer than a normal person would.

Come find me after qualifying.

Javier*

I read "I remember your hands" while standing over a stock pot, and I had to turn the burner down because I suddenly couldn't be trusted with boiling liquid.

* * *

The next week I emailed him from my kitchen during lunch prep. He'd come by the tent like he said, and we'd talked for an hour while my staff side-eyed us. So the emails kept going. That's how it started, anyway. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

*Javier,

Kitchen update: I found out the hard way that the vent hood above the garage does NOT vent, it just makes noise. My sous chef is a college kid named Brooke who thinks thyme and time are spelled the same, and I love her. Today I prepped for a wedding and ate standing up over the sink like an animal.

Here's a question I shouldn't be typing. If you were in my pantry right now, what would you want me to do to you? Because I've been thinking about it. There's a shelf at hip height and it's sturdy and I keep looking at it and thinking things a professional businesswoman should not be thinking about on a Wednesday.

Delete this if it's too much. Don't delete it.

Diana*

His reply came an hour later, and it wasn't an email.

It was a voicemail transcript, typed out, with a note at the top: "Couldn't type this one. Didn't trust my hands. So I said it instead."

*I'm in the pit trailer. Qualifying got rained out, everybody's gone, it's just me and the rain on the roof. I'm going to say this and you can never play it for anyone, which is why I'm typing it out instead, see, I'm smart.

I locked the door. I've got my belt undone and I'm thinking about your voice. Not even anything dirty, just your voice from the tent, the way you said "that's not for you, that's for the bride" when I tried to steal a canape. I'm hard just from that. That's embarrassing. I don't care.

If I were in your pantry I wouldn't make it to the shelf. I'd want you against the door with your hand over your own mouth so Brooke doesn't hear you. I'd get you off with my fingers first, slow, because I remember how you move and I've had three years to memorize it. Then I'd take my time with you and we'd miss somebody's lunch service and you'd fire me from your pantry.

I just touched myself thinking about your email and the pantry shelf and I'm sitting here in a rain-out trailer with my forehead against the cabinet saying your name. Your turn. No pressure. But your turn.*

I read it twice. Then I stood in my empty kitchen at two in the afternoon with a towel over my shoulder and typed the least professional thing I have ever typed, and I typed it by hand on paper first, like a lunatic, because I wanted it to be a letter. Then I scanned it.

*Javier,

Okay. Letter format, because this one is a memory, not a fantasy, and memories deserve ink.

Three years ago. Hotel hallway. You walked me up and neither of us knew how to end the night, so you didn't, you just stood there. And I was doing that thing where I rock on my heels and talk too much, and you put your hands on my waist. Both hands. Flat. Not grabbing, just holding, like you were steadying a plate you didn't want to drop.

And I stopped talking. I have never once in my life stopped talking.

You said "tell me to go to my room and I will." I didn't say that.

I said "you'd better not."

That's it. The memory ends there. Except it's not, because I've replayed your hands on my waist maybe four hundred times since, and last Wednesday I was elbow deep in tart dough and your hands showed up in my head again and I burned a batch of shortbread and blamed the oven.

Here's what I'd do to you in my pantry, since you asked so nicely and since you were so brave about the trailer. I'd push you back against the door and undo your belt the way you did it in that transcript, slow, and I'd tell you to keep your hands where I can see them. Because I want to