The Line Cook's Wife

I unlocked the break room door at eleven like always, and there was Drake, sitting on the worn couch with two coffees from the machine, grinning at me like he'd won something. He'd brought a third coffee too.

"Hey! What are you doing here?" I said. "Your shift ended at ten!"

He was thirty-two, my husband, big shoulders from hauling stock pots around the restaurant kitchen all day, and he still had flour on his forearm somehow. Seven years married and the man still surprised me at work like a golden retriever with a newspaper.

"Glenda closed the salon early," he said, holding out a coffee. "So I got off early too. Sit down, Val. You smell like the car wash."

"I always smell like the car wash. It's my job." I took the coffee anyway and sat. The couch cushion dipped the way it always does, that broken spring in the middle. The coffee machine behind us gurgled like it was choking on something. The whole room smelled of soap and wet concrete, which is just Tuesday for me.

"So guess who's coming by," Drake said, and he did the smirk. The smirk I've known since I was twenty-two.

"Who?"

"Glenda. She's parking out front right now. She'll be in, oh, two minutes maybe."

My face went hot so fast I actually put my hand on my cheek. "What? Drake, no! I can't."

"You can," he said. "You've been talking about it for years, Val. Years. Since you were twenty-six, that's three years of me hearing about it."

"That was one confession. One. I was drinking wine."

"You were on your second glass and you told me everything, and I married you anyway, didn't I?" He sipped his coffee like this was nothing, like he hadn't just turned my whole Tuesday upside down. "I've thought about it a long time. Glenda cuts half the guys' hair at the restaurant, she comes to the staff parties, she's fun, and when I asked her, very casually, over a beer, she said yes before I finished the sentence."

I nearly dropped my cup. "You asked her? You actually asked her? When?"

"Last week. Thursday. After service." He shrugged, which he does when he's proud of himself and trying not to show it. "She's thirty-three, she's been divorced since she was twenty-eight, and she told me point blank she's never done the couples thing but she's curious. Then she bought my beer. So."

"So?" I stood up, then sat back down, then stood up again. I couldn't help it, my legs just wouldn't stay. "Drake, I love you, I do, but you can't just spring a whole woman on me at eleven p.m. on a Tuesday. I smell like tire foam."

"You look great."

"I smell like the inside of a Honda Civic that went through the mud package."

"Glenda cuts hair for a living. She's smelled worse." He patted the couch next to him. "Sit. Please. Nobody's going to make you do anything. If you hate it, we all go home, I make eggs, we never mention it again. That's the deal. That's the whole deal, I promise."

And okay, here's the part I have to admit. Three years I'd been carrying this around. Since I was twenty-six I'd had this thing, this wanting, this picture in my head that wouldn't leave. A woman. Just once. Just to know. And I'd told Drake about it one tipsy night when we were twenty-something and dumb and he'd gone quiet, and I'd thought, great, now he thinks I don't love him, and instead he'd kissed my forehead and said, "Someday maybe."

I never brought it up again. But he remembered.

The break room door has a little window in it, and through the window I saw headlights sweep the lot out front. Bay one was dark, the big brushes hanging still and dripping, and a silver hatchback rolled up to the curb out front and stopped.

"She's here," Drake said.

"I noticed. I have eyes, Drake."

He laughed. He has a good laugh, my husband, even when I'm snapping at him. "Val. Breathe. Do you want to meet her or not? Say it out loud. Yes or no. I mean it, this stops here if you say no."

I looked at the window. I looked at my coffee. The coffee machine gurgled again, rude thing. And I thought about three years of not saying it out loud.

"Yes," I said, and my voice came out tiny, so I said it again louder. "Yes. Okay? Yes. God."

"Okay." He grinned and stood up and opened the door before I could fix my hair, which there was no fixing, it was under a car wash visor cap, I want to note. "Come on in, Glenda. She said yes."

In came Glenda Stockman, and I understood immediately why Drake had picked her. She was tall, taller than me, with a curly red bob she'd obviously cut herself that morning, and she was wearing jeans and a green shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and she had this easy way of walking like the world had never once told her no. She smelled like her own shampoo, a whole salon's worth of it, which honestly beat my tire foam.

"Hi. You're Valeria," she said, and she stuck out her hand like we were at a job interview. "Drake's told me about you forever. All good, I swear."

"Hi. Um. Hi." I shook her hand. Her grip was firm. Warm. "Sorry about the smell. It's the job."

"What smell?" She looked around the break room, at the coffee machine and the sad couch and the motivational poster of a kitten hanging from a branch that some manager put up in 2019 and nobody ever took down. "This is cozy. I close up a salon, trust me, I know break rooms. Mine has a mop and a radio that only gets one station."

Drake poured her a coffee from a third cup he'd apparently gotten, sneaky man, and she took it and sat down on the couch, right on the broken spring, and didn't even flinch.

"So," she said, and she looked at me, really looked, not at Drake. "Your husband cornered me over a beer and asked if I'd ever thought about, you know, a couple situation. And I said sure. And I meant it. But listen, honey, we can also just drink this coffee and talk about car washes and hair and go home. No pressure. Genuinely none. I'm a big girl, I've been divorced since I was twenty-eight, I know how to take no for an answer and how to give one."

And that right there is what undid me. Not the red hair, not the smile. The fact that she said no pressure like she meant it.

"I've never," I said, and then I had to start over. "I've never been with a woman. I've wanted to. For like three years. Since I was twenty-six. I told Drake once and then I pretended I didn't. But I did. Want to, I mean."

Glenda set her cup down on the floor, slow, deliberate, and turned her whole body toward me on the broken couch.

"Well," she said. "Aren't you the honest one. Okay. Same page?"

"Same page," Drake said from the chair by the door, and he had that smirk again, but he also had his hands folded in his lap like a man being very careful to stay put. "Just so we're all clear. This is about Val. Whatever she wants. If she wants you two to talk all night, we talk all night."

"Shut up, Drake," I said, and Glenda laughed, a big open laugh, and reached over and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, gentle as anything.

"Is this okay?" she asked. "My touching you?"

"Yeah," I whispered. "Yeah, it is."

"Good. Because you've got pretty hair under that ugly little cap, and I've been dying to see it since I walked in."

And that's when I took off the visor, and that's when everything started.

So there I was, cap off, hair a mess, and Glenda Stockman running her fingers through the front of it again, like she was checking for split ends.

"Honey, who cuts this?" she asked.

"Me. With kitchen scissors."

"Drake, is she serious?"

"He's not allowed to answer," I said. "He cuts his own hair too, it's a whole household of crimes."

Drake raised his coffee cup like a toast. "Guilty. We're a two-scissor family."

And then it was just easy. That's the part I didn't expect. I'd spent the whole shift in my head, imagining it would be awkward. Like we'd all sit there staring at each other waiting for somebody to say something sexy. Instead Glenda told us about a bride who wanted her hair to look like a waffle. Drake told her about a customer who tried to pay for a wash with a live crawfish. She laughed so hard she had to put her cup down again.

"A live crawfish."

"In bay four. Tuesday. This was a Tuesday, actually, funny enough."

"It is Tuesday."

"It is," I said. My shift starts at eleven p.m. on Tuesdays, always has, and here we all were at eleven p.m. on a Tuesday, on a couch with a broken spring, and my husband's friend was sitting close enough that I could feel warmth coming off her arm.

Because that was the other thing. Somewhere in the middle of the crawfish story we had drifted. Not on purpose. The couch is small and she leans when she talks, she's a leaner, and I guess I lean too, and suddenly her knee was resting against mine and neither of us moved it. I was very aware of her knee. You'd think I'd be thinking bigger thoughts, but no, my brain had filed everything under knee.

"Excuse me a sec," Drake said, standing. "Three coffees is three coffees. Bathroom."

"Down the hall, past the office," I told him.

"Yep. Don't have too much fun without me."

And then he was gone. And the door clicked. And it was just the two of us and the gurgling coffee machine.

Glenda didn't pounce. That's what I want to write down, for anybody reading this who thinks this kind of thing happens like in the movies. She picked her coffee back up and asked me how long I'd been at the car wash.

"Six years."

"And you like it?"

"I like nights. It's quiet. I get to think."

"What do you think about?"

Oh, she was sneaky. I saw the trap about one second too late. "You, lately," I said, and then my whole face went hot. "I mean. Recently. Not you specifically. The, um. Situation."

She smiled, slow, and set her cup down again. "Val. Honey. Can I tell you something?"

"Okay."

"I'm not in a hurry. Look at me. I'm not going anywhere. I closed my salon early today, I have nowhere to be until noon tomorrow, and my couch at home has two broken springs, so honestly yours is an upgrade. We can sit here all night. We can talk about crawfish. If in two hours you say you want to go home and just go to bed, I will drive my little hatchback out of your lot and wave goodbye and that's that. No hard feelings. Nobody's mad."

"Really?"

"Really really. I've done the pressured thing before, back when I was married. It's garbage. Life's too short to be somebody's chore."

"You're not a chore," I said, too fast. "You're not. It's me. I've wanted this for three years and I built it up so big in my head that I'm sitting here like a, like somebody in the dentist's chair."

"You're twenty-nine. You can say one sentence."

"I know. I know. That's the dumb part. I'm a grown woman who works nights and pays taxes and I still got shy about saying one sentence out loud."

"Well." She turned toward me again, the whole slow turn, knee pressing warmer against mine. "You said it. And here I am. And here's what I can do, if you want. I can go first. You don't have to make the first move, ever, tonight. How's that?"

"That's," I started. "Yeah. That's good."

"Good." And she reached up and took a piece of my hair again, twisted it once around her finger, let it go. "So. Can I kiss you? Just a kiss. Nothing more. You say no and we keep drinking coffee."

I looked at the door. There's a window in the door and the hallway light was on and Drake was presumably doing his business somewhere down there and not watching, because I know my husband and he'd want to watch, but he wasn't, he was being good.

"Yeah," I said. "Please."

And Glenda Stockman kissed me.

Okay. So. I've kissed exactly one person in my adult life, my husband, seven years of his mouth, I know his mouth like I know my own coffee order. This was different and my brain shorted out a little. Her lips were softer. She tasted like the bad break room coffee. Her hand came up to my jaw, light, like she was holding a bird, and she kissed me like she had all the time in the world, which she'd literally just told me she did.

When she pulled back I made a noise. I'm not proud of the noise.

"Oh," I said.

"Yeah," she said, grinning. "Oh."

"Do it again?"

"Honey, you don't even have to ask twice."

So she did it again, longer, and this time I did the thing where you open your mouth a little, and she took the invitation, and I learned what it's like to kiss a person who smells like