“I like the food,” he finally says. His voice—I’d thought of it as flat before. But it’s not, not really. It’s deep and quiet and purposeful, nothing wasted. “Not the fancy, expensive restaurants. I like that you can walk into some tiny place that’s three-quarters kitchen and get a huge plate of food for cheap, and it’s good, too. It has to be good, for it to survive in this city. The food here, in those kinds of places—it’s a meritocracy.”

I can picture the exact kind of place Reid is talking about. I’ve been in and out of those places the whole time I’ve lived here, and I like them, too. Places so worn-out and dumpy looking you can’t imagine at first why your mailman or your bodega guy or your brow waxer or your boss basically shouted in your face about how you have to try it; you’re an absolute philistine because you haven’t yet.

But then you do. You wait in the long line, you stumble through your order while all the regulars are rolling their eyes at what a rookie you are. You stand at a narrow counter inside with a plastic fork and taste food that’s better than anything you’ve ever eaten, or at least anything you’ve ever eaten before the last place you went into like this. You get ready to shout in the face of the next person you see.

Reid probably doesn’t do that last part, but still. Handwritten letter of apology, photocopied photograph from the library, phone pressed to my ear: None of it makes me feel more connected to Reid than this small piece of information about his preferences in this place he says he hates so much.

“Okay,” I say softly, and I wonder if he can hear the smile in my voice. “You want to try again?”

Chapter 7

Chapter 7

“I admit,” he says dryly, hunching his wide shoulders yet again to let another customer by, “that I generally get the food to go.”

Reid and I are standing—standing close—inside a narrow corner storefront in Nolita, an Israeli place that ticks every box he and I discussed on the phone last night: tiny place. Big portions. Cheap. It’s a place he comes to somewhat regularly, he’d told me, and I’d checked my list and said I was certain I could find some good signs in the area.

It’d all seemed a good start for my suggestion to try again, a way for us to loosen up around each other with a meal we’re both likely to enjoy before we get out on another letter quest.