It’s sultry in the way certain evenings are sultry, when someone you’ve sat across from a hundred times suddenly looks different in the late June light, like maybe you’ve both finally noticed. (Maybe it’s your uncle’s hot, perpetual bachelor of a friend — the one always brings his own wine and whose cologne smells like a birthday candle just blown out: smoke, French vanilla, and an unspoken wish). The air is warm, the wine is sweating through its glass, and the scent of ripe, fragrant tomatoes clings to your fingertips. You don’t cook the sauce. You let it happen.
Maybe that’s the secret. Or maybe there isn’t one at all.
