The Seven Year Slip

by Ashley Poston

For all the food lovers out there who burn popcorn in the microwave: we’d be too strong if we could cook, too

I loved how a book, a story, a set of words in a sentence organized in the exact right order, made you miss places you’ve never visited, and people you’ve never met.

He was a little taller than I was, and gangly, but I had nails and the will to live. I could take him. Miss Congeniality taught me to sing, and I was nothing if not a prepared, depressed millennial.

I hesitated, twirling my chocolate around on the table. “I . . . like to sit in front of van Gogh’s paintings at the Met.” That did, in fact, surprise him. “Just sit?” “Yep. That’s it. Just sit and look at them. There’s something peaceful about it—a quiet gallery room, people moving in and out like a tide.

And there was a gap between early twenties and late twenties that only people existing in bodies in their late twenties understood. You could still fight god, but you’d have to ice your knees afterward.

By the time six o’clock rolled around, Fiona had to drag me away from my computer before I sent another heated email to the book box company, absolutely about to sign it with Have the day you deserve.

I had been so focused on looking ahead, catapulting myself toward the next step in my plan, the rest of the world a blur so I didn’t get hurt— I hadn’t looked around me. Hadn’t been part of the world. Part of anything, really. I’d just gone through it, head down, heart shuttered, like a traveler against a torrential rainstorm. But when I finally stopped for a moment and looked around, he was— Everywhere.

“You are going to travel the world,” I said. “You’re going to cook widely and you’re going to absorb cultures and foods and stories like a sunflower drinks in the sun. And I think people will see a spark in you, and your passion for what you do, and someday you’ll make recipes people will write about in magazines, and you’ll host guests from all different walks of life, and you’ll make good food, and they’ll fall in love with it. With you.”