Leftovers by SK Tony

“Nothing lasts forever. If the world was meant to look golden and beautiful forever, then we’d never be able to appreciate it. I understand.”
I told myself this in order to feel better about where things in life had went since the last time we met. This was a good lie, good enough for me to believe it after repeating a thousand, thousand times. And it was true. Truer than anything.
“Ice cream melts. Milk curdles. Sour cream molds. The finest breads become useless. Steaks rot. Everything ends.”
And this was my life once again. My public moments were spent smiling and acting like nothing had been lost. I was now involved in culinary school full force with the hope that one day I could become the kind of personality that had entranced me on The Food Network. On the other hand, my private moments had become darkened and dull, a shadow of what they once were. She had left me.
"Leftovers don't carry the same flavor as the original meal. It's worthless to try and recapture a taste after it's gone."
First it was Lauren.
Then it was The Food Network itself.
“I’m breaking up with you because you can’t make a commitment to anything but those shows and they get worse and worse every year!”
Lauren left me because I’d failed to hold up my end of the relationship and left our shared life in a holding pattern. A love triangle where my attention was split between basic cable and her. As time passed one became greater than the other and our perfect recipe for love was beyond my grasp.
“It’s fine. Even Alton Brown lived long enough to see himself become the villain.”
As time passed I thought about all of the things she used to say to me. It ruined my life in the kitchen. As I thought of her I felt myself slipping, falling away, like the dry bits of pancake batter drowning in a sink’s cold water. I could see the perfect science of my recipes leaving the pages of my mind’s eye while staring through a stove that hadn’t even been pre-heated.
The Food Network itself betrayed me next. Every show I watched became worse than the last. The original ideas and brilliantly cooked foods I’d fallen in love with had been replaced by reality shows with aging celebrities and concepts that were now past their best by date. Even my first love showed her age and became undesirable.
Months passed by. Maybe they were just long days or slow weeks that dragged on forever. Without inspiration or a vent for my frustrations the concept of time no longer mattered as I had nothing, or was it no one, to spend it with. I spent my nights alone, flipping channels, finding nothing to pique my interest and bring me back to the comfortable life I knew. Every muse had abandoned me.
And then I saw it.
“Lauren, I’m sorry for disappearing on you when you needed me. I’m a bit of wreck and I have a hard time connecting with people. Commitments scare me because I’ve never made them. If I knew how much it meant to you, how valuable our shared time was, I wouldn’t have distanced myself.
I’m wrong a lot. Sorry.”
She stared back at me stunned. “Truthfully, I never thought I’d hear you say that. I didn’t even think we’d see each other again. Didn’t you say you hated leftovers?”
It made sense that she felt that way. I hadn’t told her yet. We spent the night out at a fancy restaurant where a friend of mine worked. I remembered how much she like a certain flower garden and took her for a walk. We took our first few steps in silence. I breathed in the sweet smelling air and caught a whiff of something. Was it a memory, her, or the flowers?
“You never told me what changed your mind about us.”
“If you’re not too tired I can show you.”
She wasn’t.
Back at my place she jumped on me. My tie askew, jacket on the floor, top three buttons of my shirt unbuttoned, she curled into me, head on my chest, I sat and she laid on the couch as I turned on the tv.
“The Cooking Channel?”
“Yeah. The Cooking Channel does nothing but show old stuff from The Food Networks back catalogue of shows; literally televised leftovers. They were showing this particular re-run of classic Iron Chef when it hit me.”
This time, I’ll show her.
“Everything was moving all at once. It was so hard to focus on any one aspect of what was going on in the kitchen. Two people giving everything they had against each other to form something.”
Her dress slid off. I didn’t notice earlier, but she’d cut her hair shorter than it used to be. I kissed her as she removed was left of my clothes.
“Every second something new was happening. A fresh challenge to overcome. Sometimes things went bad but both chefs charged forward.”
She even tasted different. I smiled noting that she’d stopped smoking. After all, if her taste buds went bad how could she rate my new recipes?
“They used every tool at their disposal and were exhausted by the end of it.”
I was sweating, using everything I remembered about her body to make this worth it. As we moved on the couch all I could hope for was that she would understand what I was saying.
“And that’s when I realized: True love can’t be perfected in a half hour or on twenty dollars a day. True love is turbulent, eventful, and chaotic.”
We both moved back to the bed. I could feel myself drifting off but fought the urge to sleep, “Will you be here in the morning?”
She smiled back at me, “Every good battle deserves a rematch, don’t you think?”
My eyes closed and I began to drift off. I felt her warmth and heard one last thing before I dozed off.
“I can’t wait to battle you again, Iron Chef.”
Leftovers aren’t so bad, after all.