“I’m more of a whiskey person,” she said, wrinkling her nose at the wine.

“Help yourself,” I said, gesturing toward the mini bar in the dining area beside the kitchen.

She did just that, pouring a double, then moving to stand at the far end of the black marble rainfall island, watching me as she raised her glass for a sip.

“Where’d you learn to cook? Your mom?”

“No. My mom didn’t cook.”

“Ever?”

“I was lucky if there was anything edible in the house,” I admitted. “Half of what I ate came from the free school lunch and the occasional stolen bag of chips or candy from the corner store.”

I never told anyone about my mom.

But something told me that Saff would understand. If not relate.

“I know a thing or two about shitty moms.”

“Did yours cook?”

“Sure. Yeah. She cooked a lot of meth.”

“Oh,” I said, taken aback. I hadn’t expected that.

“Yeah. That was basically all the sustenance she needed. So when the teachers noticed my bones sticking out of my skin, they called the ‘good people’ at child services to come and take me away.”

“How old were you?”

“Eight. But a mean and bitter eight. Unsurprisingly, most foster families didn’t want a mean and bitter kid sitting at their dinner table.”

“You bounced around a lot?”

“I’m pretty sure I held the record.”

“Were the foster homes worse than your actual home?”

To that, she snorted. “That’s a complicated question. One of those ‘devil you know’ type situations. Living with my mom sucked. But at least it was consistent. I never knew what a new foster home was going to be like.”

“My mom preferred benzos. And when she couldn’t afford that anymore, she switched to heroin.”

Saff’s gaze bore into mine, seeing something I was sure no one else had ever been able to. “When did you cut out?”

“Fifteen. You?”

“Sixteen.”

“Where’d you go?” I asked, turning to mix the onions and garlic, then salting the pasta water.

“The street. There was nowhere else to go. You?”

“I had a… friend,” I told her. I wasn’t exactly lying. But I wasn’t giving her the whole truth either. She wasn’t the only one with secrets. Hell, mine were likely much worse than hers. “He took me in, gave me some work. It let me slowly save and work toward… all this,” I said, waving around at the apartment.

“Did they teach you to cook too?”

“No, this I did myself. Started with adding things to my ramen to try to make it better. But as money for more and better ingredients came in, my skills grew. It’s relaxing. I cooked a lot that first year when I worked on my first club.”

“Is everything alright with the club?” she asked, tensing.