There used to be this Brazilian restaurant in San Francisco that was very creatively called Rio. Rico’s birthplace, his hometown. It was the only place in the entire Bay Area back then where you got churros filled with doce de leite. They didn’t begin to compare to the churros he had bought from the hand cart vendor down the street from his Leblon home, but still it had been something. Naturally he’d taken Ashna there too often.

“Mr. Silva?” DJ asked. “Any clues?”

“It’s not mac and cheese?” he said, making the audience laugh.

Ashna let a smile slip too—the first bloom of it was even real, then all her other feelings turned it into a lip-stretch again. Would she pretend not to know? She bit her lip, and he knew she was wondering if he had mentioned mac and cheese on purpose, if he still felt the same way about it. Her obsidian gaze bored to the center of him. Everything was different about them, and yet nothing was.

“Definitely not mac and cheese,” she said, her eyes revealing a flash of something they had both lost.

Her red-painted mouth twisted in mock confusion. “He grew up in Rio de Janeiro. So, it could be so many things. Such a rich tradition of comfort foods. Maybe not something entirely traditional. Umm . . . churros?” She said it exactly the way he had taught her to say it, many moons ago, while feeding the crisp-on-the-outside, pillowy-on-the-inside confection into her mouth and then tasting the sticky sweetness on her lips.

Her huge irises turned smoky.

Far too much knowing sparkled in the air between them.

She’s just a girl I dated in high school.

DJ turned to him. “Is she correct?”

With the barest shrug Rico flipped over the flashcard.

CHURROS, the card said in careless all caps.

The audience lost it, screaming and clapping.

From their competitors, several pairs of envious, even suspicious, eyes turned on them.

“Wow! That easy?” DJ said, studying Ashna like someone who thought he knew her and suddenly found he might not after all.

Welcome to my life, mate!

“What can I say, I’m predictable,” Rico said for the cameras. “Maybe I should’ve lied and gone with mac and cheese?”

That got him a half-fake, half-real smile from Ashna.

He disliked mac and cheese. She did too. It feels like an incomplete dish, they had loved to say. Like it’s missing an ingredient or seasoning or something. How they had loved agreeing on things, finding common threads, even though every thread of the fabric he was made of had already been tied to her.

“You better be careful if she can read you that easily,” DJ said.

Too late. But he smiled for the cameras. “Hey, having teammates who can read you wins you games.”