Deep Down

Epilogue

Epilogue

Six months later

With the tips of her chopsticks, Eve picked up a translucent slice of carpaccio, dragged it through a small pool of sauce, and took a thoughtful bite.

“Ease up on the espelette pepper,” she said. “Just a touch will do.”

“What about the pink peppercorn?” asked Ken.

“It’s good. Floral.” She wrinkled her nose. “Although I worry that the paint fumes are still messing with my sniffer.”

Ken shook his head. “The paint in the dining room has been dry for two weeks. You’re paranoid.”

“We open in a week. I’m detail-oriented, not paranoid.”

Outside, the sun had set a couple of hours before and a cool wind whipped against the front of the building. Eve looked up through the window to make sure the new sign was holding. It swung back and forth but stayed in place. After she and Chris Mercutio had overseen the remodel of the Compass Rose, Eve hung the sign herself: a thick wooden panel with black lettering carved on both sides.

Charlie’s.

It was everything she’d wanted her own sushi bar to be. Casual, small, clean. A long polished wooden bar and a few tables in the dining room, Japanese beers on tap and a full selection of sake. Stainless steel prep surfaces and brand new appliances. And best of all, it was exactly where she wanted it—right next to the water, close to the dock where the fishermen brought in their daily catch.

Someone knocked on the door. Eve put down her knife and went to unlock it.

“Hello, sugar,” said Tiffani. “Is he ready?”

“Just about,” Eve said, giving her friend a warm hug.

Tiffani had helped out with Eve’s business plan. The sex shop on State Street was making money hand over fist and Tiffani was planning a second location in Ventura.

Ken had changed out of his chef’s jacket and left the kitchen. Tiffani greeted him with an enormous hug and a smoldering kiss.

“How’s my beautiful girlfriend?” he said.

“Fine, now that I’m with you,” Tiffani said, grasping his butt with both hands.

Eve made a face. “God, you two.”

“Don’t worry about her, Ken,” Tiffani said. “She’s just grouchy because Sam’s still out island hopping with his dad and brothers. How many days has he been gone now?”

“Two,” said Eve. “But he’ll be back tomorrow morning.”

Tiffani gave Ken a kiss on the cheek. “You ready to go?”

He turned to Eve. “Will you be all right here on your own?”

Eve nodded. “I’ll just take a look at that pound of ridgeback shrimp and see what I can do for a special. Then I’ll head on home.”

“Okay, chef,” said Ken. “Good night.”

“See you tomorrow.” Ken and Tiffani left, holding hands.

Eve pulled the bowl of live ridgeback shrimp out of the reach-in and examined them. She decided to boil the kicking shrimp just until they turned bright pink. With deft hands, she peeled off the thick, sharp shells. The meat was achingly sweet, needing just a kiss of soy and some sea salt. She decided to serve the ridgebacks on dishes of crushed iced with the heads and carapace in place.

Eve was admiring her work when the door to the restaurant opened and someone walked in.

She stood up in alarm. She realized she’d forgotten to lock it when out of the shadows appeared her father, rumpled after his dinner shift. He was wearing his old jacket, the one that smelled perennially of cigarettes.

“Dad,” she said, unsure of why he’d come. She hadn’t spoken with her father in almost a year.

“Eve.” He sat down at the bar opposite her. He looked much older than when she’d seen him last.

They looked at each other in silence as Eve waited for her father to say something more. He said nothing.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, the question was unnecessary. Hundreds of things were the matter between her and her father, things that existed in the empty space between them that could never be fixed.

“Nothing is the matter,” he said. “I’ve come here to eat.”

“What? Why?”

“Because I’m hungry.” His voice was weary. “Please, Eve. Make me something to eat.”

Eve straightened. She wiped her hands on a bar towel. She braced herself for his words of cruelty, for the emotional impact of his coldness.

“W-What would you like?” she asked softly. She had never cooked for him.

“Anything. Your choice. Omakase.”

She took a deep breath. “Okay.”

First, she poured her father some sake. Then she picked up her knife.

For the first course, she placed a piece of nigiri sushi in front of him, a slice of local Petrale sole seasoned lightly with soy sauce on a ball of rice. It was followed by a piece of octopus, then live uni, topped with the tiny yolk of a quail egg.

She gave him a plate of Ken’s whitefish carpaccio with pink peppercorn then finished with the ridgeback shrimp on ice. After that, she served him a piece of custardy tamagoyaki, the sweet, fluffy Japanese egg cake that was her grandfather’s specialty.

Last, she placed a small dish of seasonal fruit in front of her father. Pomegranate seeds, raspberries, and cubes of kiwi and passion fruit—tiny jewels on a plate.

As Eve watched her father eat in silence, she wondered about the man he had been, the one who was once close to his mother and father, the one who had married and loved her mother before his broken heart had made him bitter and distant.

After her grandparents had died in the tsunami, Eve was bitter and distant, too. She couldn’t find peace in her hometown or in Tokyo, but she found it thousands of miles away in Santa Barbara, among a ragtag group of friends who had become her new family. And she had found it in Sam.

Her father ate every piece of fruit and finished his sake. When he was done, he took two hundred-dollar bills from his wallet and put them on the counter. It was far more than the cost of the meal.

“Dad, that’s not necessary. Please.”

“No.” He put his wallet back in his pocket and stood up. Then, to her astonishment, he straightened up and gave her a slow, deliberate bow, a show of kindness that she was not prepared to receive. She bowed back, tears welling in her eyes. She wiped them away quickly, unwilling to let him see her cry.

But he’d seen. And he himself had tears in his eyes that he wiped away almost as quickly as she had.

“Eve, listen to me,” he said in Japanese. “My father didn’t give me a choice. I never wanted to become a sushi chef. And I never wanted it for you. I thought I could scare you away from it by being cruel. But I failed. Because here you are. A sushi chef. And a fine one.”

Her voice was ragged. “But, Dad—”

“Gochisosama deshita.”

He turned and left without saying anything more.

Thank you for the feast. A message of gratitude and respect for the chef.

Her father had given her his blessing.

****

Early the next morning, Eve heard Sam get out of the shower. He slid naked into their bed and took her in his arms.

“Did you miss me, baby?” he whispered.

She looked into his eyes. One brown and one blue—one foot on solid ground, one in the water. Her Sam. “More than I want to say. Did you have a good time?”

“Not as good as the one I’m about to have.” He slid his hands slowly up underneath her tank top.

She loved making love to him this way, in the space between awake and asleep. When she guided him into her body, she was so slick that he got up on his arms and danced into her, moving his hips back and forth, tapping the head of his cock against her sweet spot again and again and again.

Her hunger for him was bottomless. She raised her hips and wrapped her legs around him. He closed his eyes and accepted the invitation to sink deeper into her, gasping like a drowning man coming up for air.

“God, you’re amazing,” he murmured.

He withdrew and rolled onto his back. Mesmerized, he watched as she climbed on top of him. Together they guided his cock into her pussy. She slid deep on the down stroke and clenched him hard on the upstroke, again and again and again. A light sheen of sweat formed on her chest and between her breasts.

“I missed you so much,” she gasped.

He slid forward and sat on the edge of the bed, planting his feet flat on the floor and fucking upward into her as she ground down. He gripped her hip with one hand and with the thumb of his other hand, drew tiny circles on her clit. She threw her head back and hissed between her teeth. Sweat poured off of both of them. The heady scent of lovemaking overwhelmed Eve’s senses. He covered her breasts with open-mouthed kisses, sucking her hardened nipples. Blue light poured in from the windows.

Then every muscle in his body contracted, and he came in a violent shudder, eyes closed tight.

“Feel it, baby. Feel it all,” he growled in her ear.

He was taut muscle and tanned skin, wicked grace and tenderness and wildness all rolled into one. He grabbed her and pulled her down so hard on his cock that she exploded at once, screaming like a banshee. He was buried so deep inside her that they could’ve been welded together by the heat of their lovemaking.

There needed to be a new word for love. There needed to be a word that went deep enough to express how she felt for him.

For now, she had only one word that came close. One she wanted to say to him forever, no matter what came their way.

“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes.”